Why This AI Startup Is The Secret Weapon For Next-Level Customer Insights

In the overly crowded and competitive financial services sector of the country, call centres have long played a key role in not only generating new business but also infusing trust, loyalty and satisfaction among customers. However, behind the scenes, financial services agents, who work in a call centre setup, face numerous challenges, which can have a direct impact on customer satisfaction.

Worth noting is the issue of the complex nature of all financial tools offered by the provider company via its agents. To address this pain point, companies put their agents through intense training sessions every now and then to help them stay abreast of new developments, including regulatory changes. Not to mention, these training sessions are highly time consuming and resource intensive.

Moving on, what further complicates the role of a call centre agent is high customer expectations. Not to mention, today’s new-age customers demand personalised and efficient service tailored specifically to their financial needs. They also demand timely redressal of their queries, putting pressure on agents to resolve issues quickly and accurately.

To address multifaceted problems for banks and financial institutions by improving the efficiency of call centre agents, Aman Goel and Harshita Srivastava founded GreyLabs AI in 2023. The speech-analytics startup analyses every conversation of agents with customers to provide detailed insights into improvement areas.

The Inception Of GreyLabs AI

Before incorporating GreyLabs AI, Goel, an IIT alumnus and second-time entrepreneur, cofounded Cogno AI 2017, a platform focussed on chatbots and WhatsApp bots for large banks and financial institutions.

Srivastava joined Goel when Cogno AI’s other cofounder called it quits. Later in 2021, Cogno AI was acquired by Exotel, a cloud telephony platform. Here both Goel and Srivastava worked for two years before finally floating GreyLabs AI.

Before starting their new venture, Goel and Srivastava reached out to their enterprise clients from the previous startup, Cogno AI, to understand their key areas of concerns.

Soon, they had an entire list of problem statements. Some of these queries were related to building an efficient payment tech stack, improving payment experience of current accounts, and enhancing the productivity of branch and field employees.

Initially, GreyLabs AI focussed on developing a solution to enhance the efficiency of field agents by recording and analysing conversations between bank employees and customers. However, when they presented this solution to clients, it was a natural fit for call centres. As a result, they shifted their focus from field agents to call centres, catering to the specific needs of their clients.

What’s Inside GreyLabs AI’s Tech Stack?

GreyLabs AI offers a speech analytics product that listens and analyses all calls of call centre agents as of now. The AI startup’s tech helps identify leads lost due to ineffective agent interactions, thereby improving sales conversion between agents and customers.

The tech also ensures compliance in collections calls by monitoring for negative customer sentiment or agent misbehaviour. It also enhances customer service by verifying that agents adhere to call scripts and provide accurate resolutions.

Explaining the functionality of the startups’ tech, Goel gave an example of a company that provides loans. He stated that their tech first analyses the agent’s efficiency in contacting query-stricken customers.

“The tech then examines other parameters. For instance — Did the agent effectively attend to his customer’s complaint of interest rates being too high. Similarly, the tech will analyse if the agent was able to keep the customer engaged, along with pointing out specific instances where the customer lost interest, leading to the loss of a good business lead,” the cofounder said.

He added that the GreyLabs AI also flags high-potential calls gone wrong, making supervisors to intervene. This has often helped retain or create new high-value customers.

Goel added that the tech can also flag calls in which agents misbehave or ask for customers’ confidential information such as a CVV number.

“Also, if an agent does anything that can lead to poor customer experience, our tech is efficient and trained enough to spot it to ensure customers receive correct resolution and enhanced better overall experience,” the cofounder shared.

On the collections side, agents often have targets and are incentivised based on how much money they collect. This can lead to some agents misbehaving or using abusive language with customers. Such kind of behaviour poses a risk to companies, as customers may record these calls and file complaints. GreyLabs AI flags calls where agents use inappropriate language, misbehave, or where customers threaten to report to regulatory authorities.

The company connects with dialling tools like Cisco, Live.com, and Aspect to access call recordings. Additionally, GreyLabs AI integrates with CRM systems to ensure that tasks, such as sending account statements within a specified timeframe, are tracked and managed effectively.

How GreyLabs AI Building Its Business

GreyLabs AI is currently targeting large banks and financial institutions, including general insurance companies and NBFCs. It is also receiving a lot of interest from sectors like education and real estate.

“In real estate, our solutions can be used to ensure that agents are effectively communicating project details and scheduling site visits based on customer preferences,” Goel said.

Although GreyLabs AI is experimenting with industries outside financial services, its main focus remains on the financial sector. However, there are plans to eventually expand into industries like telecom, healthcare, hospitality, FMCG, and wherever large call centre setups exist.

Currently, GreyLabs AI has over 10 large enterprise clients, including some of the top Indian banks, insurance companies and fintech startups. The company is also sitting on a potential pipeline of more than 50 enterprises. It is in the advanced stages of talks with several small finance banks, fintechs, and broking firms.

GreyLabs AI charges on a per-minute basis for processing call recordings. The startup calculates its costing on the total number of minutes processed, regardless of the number of agents. Whether a client has 50 agents or 500, the billing is determined solely by the volume of minutes requested for processing.

What The Road Ahead For GreyLabs AI?

According to Goel, the company is cash-flow positive and has reached breakeven on a cash basis. In FY25, GreyLabs AI aims to exceed $1 Mn in revenue while maintaining profitability.

Recently, GreyLabs AI secured seed funding from Matrix Partners India. With the fresh funding, the Mumbai-based startup is focussing on product development and technological improvements. This includes expanding the technology to support additional languages and exploring new areas such as email analytics.

The startup also wants to focus on enhancing its core offerings. For this, it wants to refine machine learning models for better accuracy. It also wants to make its solutions language agnostic.

In the global speech analytics market, projected to reach $10.37 Bn by 2030 from $3.31 Bn in 2022, GreyLabs AI locks horns with Verint, NICE (Nexidia) and Uniphore, which, too, offer comprehensive solutions with extensive features in speech analytics and customer experience management.

Despite strong competition in the speech analytics sector, GreyLabs AI is expected to seed strong growth by expanding its services to more industries. Further, by advancing its technology to include multi-language support and email analytics, GreyLabs AI will only be giving a tough competition to its rivals lacking on diversification front.