Clarity Voice | Make the Call and Improve Your Sales Conversion Rate by 20% Today! (Our Interview with Heather Conley-Spangler)

Audio Transcription

As business owners and leaders of any organization. We all know now that the statistics have been proven true time and time again, that according to the U S chamber of commerce and CBS news world reports, 75% of employees are stealing from the workplace and most are doing so repeatedly. Now you’re just focused on the facts. Let’s not be some negative. Be positive, okay? We know that 85% of employees are lying on resumes according to inc magazine. You are just such a negative person. It’s just negativity everywhere. Well, what happens when our employees are on the phone with our customer or potential customer? What are they saying? You’re a scary man to our customers. You’re bad, bad, scary, bad. I don’t want to know what they’re saying on the phone.

Maybe when you’re going to get out, it’s right. Twice in a row now.

[Inaudible]

Won’t stop. Right?

Hello. This is the Johnson residents. How can I help you? Hi. Yes, this is telling me from vacuums in more. I was [inaudible],

Right? There’s the [inaudible].

No, no, no, no, no. This is, this is not a sales pitch. This is a, this is more than that actually. Well, okay.

You still have an air cold collar. Why are you cold?

I was calling for mr gene banks.

Well, let me carry this story key, right? He wasn’t bad. What they call it toolbox and I go down his eyeball. Hello buried. I’m alive. He died. [inaudible] Top guy back. I’m sorry sir. Do not call this [inaudible] when I walk in crew.

Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry. I hadn’t realized he had passed.

Yeah.

Well, who do I have in the line here? Hello.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity in a writer to introduce a show, but this show dies to may eight kids, Koch created by two different women, 13 moat time, million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time.

Oh boy.

[Inaudible] Yes. Drive nation. On today’s show, we are interviewing

An incredible source of wisdom and somebody who has improved my life and my business life byZ , I would say at least 40%. I was thinking more like 47%, but I, I, you know, I don’t call you a liar for 40. I’m not going to exaggerate that. This, I’m not going to say that this guest has doubled my happiness, but I’m saying I’m, I’m not kidding it. It’s definitely gone up. At least 30 to 40%. And you know why dr Z? Don’t know why. Tell me she gives me peace of mind all the time. So an elephant in the room, just this weekend, we had a wonderful customer who said he’s on the phone. He said, Hey I am so sorry that I showed up at the wrong location, but your call center rep told me to get my hair cut downtown. He said, I, I asked him if I could book my haircut downtown.

And he said, absolutely. And so I went downtown and then turns out he booked me at South Tulsa and that is why I’m late. And I thought, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to check the recorded calls. So I had Jonathan Kelly checked the calls and it turns out this particular customer was correct and my call center rep was incorrect. Then we had another person claimed the same thing last week. He was very irate,Z , very 4,000 customers. And I pulled the tape and our call center rep definitely said, sir, your haircut will definitely be at our South Tulsa location. Here’s the address. And he went to the wrong location. So I didn’t have to do, he said, she said, I just pulled the recorded calls of mine. Heather, welcome onto the thrive time show. How are you ma’am?

I’m wonderful. How are you guys doing?

Well, we are at least 17% better now that you’re on the show right now.

Wonderful. Thank you.

You obviously are the vice president of franchise accounts for clarity voice clarity voice.com who we shamelessly recommend on the show. But what can you tell listeners what is you know, clarity voice and how does clarity voice itself help entrepreneurs?

Sure, absolutely. So clarity Voice is a voice over IP, phone service and phone system provider. We are built around helping businesses drive dollars to their bottom line through utilization of their phone system. So we really refer to ourselves as a true partner rather than a simple Telcom or utility partner.

So you’re, you viewed yourself more as a partnership. I can say with Oxi fresh if you took clarity voice away from the good folks at Oxi fresh, it’d be tough to manage a call center when you don’t know what’s being said. Dr Z, you don’t work for clarity voice, but talk to me about this. Have you ever called Devin? I think we have a cat in the studio. We have a cat that we must, we must wrestle the cat. Heather. We have a cat in the studio. We must be taken outside here. But let’s talk about this for a second. With American express doctors see when you call American express, do they often say for quality assurance, this call may be recorded. Have you ever heard that message? Oh, absolutely. Why did they record their calls over at American express?

Well, you gave a couple of great examples. One, if someone makes a mistake, they can, they can begin a coaching moment or two, they can actually, maybe their team did make a mistake and they do need to do a, you know, make good to the customer. And so that’s one way you can verify that it’s, you know, cause anytime, I mean, before you had this technology, I mean, it was always he said, she said, I mean, nobody admitted to ever make a mistake. Nobody was always correct. And it was always this kind of a cage fight of, you know, who’s right, who’s wrong. And you finally shrugged and go, well, let’s just err on the side of the customer and eat whatever we need to eat or make them happy in whatever way we need to. Heather, I mean, we, we, dr Z and I see the benefits, but you work with so many more accounts than we could possibly speak to. What are a few ways that call recording can improve the lives of the business owners who listened to this show?

Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So call recording is a very useful and powerful tool for many of our customers and we see it utilized for things as simple as what you’re talking about, like call coaching. Even if you’re sitting right next to your employee, you can only hear one side of the conversation. So call recording is really great from an employee coaching standpoint. We also see it utilized when customers end up having some kind of dispute with their customers. And so from that perspective, it’s really a great tool. So kind of going back to what you were originally saying, did they go to the right location or not? So you know how to deal with any kind of customer dispute that comes up. And one of the big things that’s a little bit different with our call recording is it records through the end of the conversation. So even if you have calls forwarding out to, let’s say a cell phone or an answering service, at the end of the day, all of those calls are still recorded. So you can still hold your team accountable. You can still listen to those calls. You can still do employee coaching and you can actually listen to your answering service calls that way. It really gives you, as a business owner, the full transparency into your business. 24, seven three 65.

You know, Heather, I have found, and I’ll just see, I see. I cannot, I cannot mention the specific names of the, the business owners that have benefited from this the most because I don’t have their permission. You know what I’m saying? Sure, sure. But, but I’m going to mention a few go of course Shaw homes show homes.com this is now the largest home builder in Oklahoma. And I started working with them when they were doing $37 million a year of sales three years ago, three and half years ago now, they just passed $80 million of sales for the year. Wow. And the moment they put in, and Heather, you might know how long they’ve been an account, a more than I would, but the moment they installed the calls and installed clarity voice to listen to the calls, as soon as they could hear the calls, Aaron antice and I, the sales manager, we sat down and listened to the calls and Z. What we’ve found blew his mind. I mean, we had great salespeople that we didn’t realize how great they were. And then we add some people that were off the reservation. I mean, where you’re, Whoa, Whoa, Heather. How often do business owners have an eyeopening apifany when they realize, I mean, is it common for people to realize that they are literally leaving thousands of dollars on the table on a daily basis or a weekly basis?

[Inaudible]. Yeah, so one of the things that we really stress to the business owners that we work with is to take a step back and work on their business versus working in their business, which means that they need to do things like listen to their call recordings because again, it goes back to they don’t hear both sides of the conversation. Even if they’re sitting right there, they don’t know what’s happening when they’re not in the office. They don’t know what what’s happening when they have a salesperson who’s on the road all the time. And so by taking that time to really listen to those call recordings, it gives them an opportunity to really hear what’s happening. The good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. And the stories that we hear about the way that these call recordings can impact their business is amazing. And a lot of them have made very tough decisions for their business based upon what’s happening on these calls. Yes, you can improve your employee coaching and things like that, but it really has an immediate impact. If you can just take that time and listen to those calls, it makes an immediate impact on customer service, closing rates and all of those things drive dollars to the bottom line because you have happier customers.

Heather, would you address the legality of doing this? Cause that’s when one of the push backs I hear from business owners. Well it’s just not, it’s just not legal. I mean, and maybe it’s like what, what, what? So would you address that? I know, I know it’s state by state has different laws I assume. Right? And so you probably know them all, I would imagine.

Sure. So every state does have a law around a requirement for notification of call recordings. And it might be one party notification. It might be both parties have to be notified. One of the things that I strongly recommend to all of our customers, especially if they’re going to be using this for employee coaching, is that they immediately notify their team that every call will now be recorded and really touted as a benefit. Right. It improves them as an employee when you do so. So you don’t make them nervous, but if there is a state where it has to be a two party notification, then we simply can just turn on that. This call may be recorded recording that we have on file and simply help from that standpoint.

Sure. Z can I, is it, how long does somebody have to be deceased before you’re allowed to reference them in a, in a comedic way and none of the dah, dah. Not disparaging way, but a comedic way. How long, what comedic way is different than disparaging way comedy can be disparaging, but I mean, I just want to know for your, what is your statute of con comedic limitations in your mind? I would say a death. I’m not, was there dismembered? Was there dismemberment? Somebody died in 2019. Can I share a funny story about them? 2000. I was, I was going to say six months. So it depends on when it was [inaudible] here we go. There is, if everybody could look this up real quick. Look up the name. Oral Roberts. Alright. Oral Roberts famously started oral Roberts university. Oh my goodness. 1918 he was born January 24th and he was a very busy man.

It’s easy to see. There’s a lot of you who are very, very busy people, you know, very busy, busy, busy, busy. And back in the day we didn’t have a cell phone or a smart phone. Right. So after he passed away, they put his house up for sale and I ran a company called fears in Clark, a Z, the real estate company with Braxton. Yes. And we got a call from somebody who wanted us to list the property. Now he had a beautiful home located behind the universities eat swanky. So we’re getting a two. Have you, have you ever been into the house if he’s ever seen it? No. Nobody. I’ve got, I’ve got a funny story also about the house, but I, I isn’t going out to California at this time and late, late in his life, he, he, he still owned the property, but he still on the property.

You’re right. I was asked to look at listing the property. So I went to the house and there were two things in the house that blew my mind. Like super funny. One, there was the longest, most narrow hallway I’ve ever seen. Almost like an airport where you’re like, why is, you know airports have these massive hallways? Sure. It’s like this is the longest. I mean it was a hallway as long as some people’s house. And I thought, wow, it must, it must go to someplace special. Well, anyway, so we get into the restroom and we’re doing a tour of, of his how of his house. And I look at, open up the restroom and there’s a restroom is either, there’s a toilet there, there are phones, two phones next to the toilet too.

Two one on each side. That’s a present. I thought to myself, under what scenario, I know he’s a very busy tale, but I want you, what scenario are you going to answer one phone and say Bobby. And you can hear the echo, you can hear all the, you know, you could tell if someone’s in the bathroom. Sure. This is a great thing about clarity voice. I mean you can hear all the background noise, all this, and you can definitely hear me in his bathroom. Definitely had some tile going on. The porcelain palace. What scenario do you answer that call? Do you take the calls that important with your right hand? So nature’s Cohen with your, with your non hand, your co you’re answering the phone with your right hand and then with your left hand you say Carl, I gotta put you on hold. Greg’s on the line.

Yeah, I got it. I gotta to answer this. They got another call coming in. Did want to ask you this other, because you are the phone wizard. I have seen this unfortunately with the mobile sales reps, when we have sat down with business owners to help them sales coach, they’ll tell their mobile sales reps guys, we’re now recording the phone calls. Even if you’re on your smart phone. Okay. So be aware. And there’s a lot of guys that wear that Apple headphone thing into the bathroom thinking that nobody knows that they’re in the bathroom. I mean, Heather, have you ever heard of stories like this? I mean it was, there’s some of the I’ve heard are crazy.

We’ve had it happen to us with customers.

Oh no, no. Oh, Oh.

So I’m very well aware.

It’s such an awkward conversation cause it’s like, cause when you’re in the bathroom and let’s say you can control the sounds that you make the guy next to you, maybe as an observer knows it’s serious. It happens a lot. So talk to me about this. Once somebody tells their team, I just wanna make this very actionable. And Devin, I want to put the notes on here. So step one, let’s say you install clarity voice or some sort of call recording system. Step two, I’m tracking you. Tell your team that you’re going to be recording the calls for quality assurance. Step three, how do you break it down to your team? Like, Hey guys, you know, let’s not be, you know, calling in the bathroom or let’s not be calling when the kids are in the background. I mean, do you have, do you ever have those kinds of calls and how do we have those kinds of coaching calls?

Yeah. So part of my role here actually with clarity voice is I actually coach and train all of our account management team ongoing training as well. So one of the things that you know, we, we tell them right out of the gate is yes, it’s really nice that you have a mobile app and you can have simultaneous ring. So regardless of where you are, you can take those calls, but just be observant of those areas where you’re taking the calls. You know, if you’re in the restroom, if you’re in a loud restaurant if you’re out shopping, if there are certain situations where you shouldn’t really be answering a call, it’s okay to let that call go to voicemail at certain times. And so that’s really one of the things that I really talk to my team about is to just be you know, aware of where you’re taking those calls. Even though you’ve got these great mobile options. Sometimes it’s okay to just leave your phone on your desk and take care of some business first.

No, I have a, a success stories. You know, I’m not going to share the name of this business, but I just going to tell the listeners out there, this was a business that does some kind of repairs. Okay. They do some repairs. All right. And we put the call recording on and we found out that the business owner, he had family working for, okay, so this is, the call goes like this, thank you for calling, yada yada. How can I help you? And the potential customer says, yeah, I want to know what are your prices on the yada yada service in this person’s mother was saying this. They’ll just kind of get my mind, my mother, mother medics like Robert’s in the restroom right now, or Robin, you know, he’s out of town right now. So you’ll have to call back. They just did.

And this is what they were doing. The virtually every calling, he’s out of town right now. You have to call him back. They were just like repelling business. Oh yeah. So they replaced him with somebody else and this guy told the customers that all of the pricing was clearly stated on the website. And when people would say, well, here’s why I’m calling is because I cannot find it on the website, he would say, well you just kind of need to go up there, you know, and you know, call back if you can’t find it. And that reminds me a lot of, yesterday I went to a big box retail store and I asked for a pillow Coke covers and the lady told me it’s in the pillow cover section, which is logical except like which is by Astros. Yes. So how often, where else would you expect to find in those?

Seriously? I mean, so is that a Shaka Khan? This is what I have found and I was this is there my stats that I keep, if I coach a business owner and they’re doing an average of $1 million of gross revenue per year, I have found that they are repelling $100,000 a year per year by doing a poor job on the phone minimum. That’s just the minimum. Many of the clients have doubled in revenue. Do you have any kind of stats that you guys keep cause you have, you know, thousands of accounts and I only have a couple hundred clients I work with, but talk to me about this. I mean how much money or is the average business owner leaving on the table as it is maybe a percentage or what kind of, how much money is bad customer service and bad sales really costing us?

Yeah. So while we don’t have the actual stats it’s not something that we are able to easily gather. And the reason being is that we work in a lot of different verticals. For example let’s say for for home services, right? You get a busy signal or they’re not listening to those calls for coaching improvement, there is a lot of dollars that are left on the table, but that industry is industry specific where if we go into another industry the way that they handle miss calls and call recording and coaching is completely different. So, so for us it’s a little bit all over the board because we’re not industry specific and there’s industry, the industry, those numbers are going to be very, very different. But I can tell you that the more that a business owner spends time focused on their business and working in their business or working on their business versus in their business, they’re going to see that bottom line impact.

And for some of our specific customers, I’m thinking of one overall. One of, one of the, the tools that they’ve used of our system is, yes, call recording is a really big piece of it. But the other piece of it that he used was with our co ms call notifications. So with a ms call notification as the call is coming into a business, if there’s a missed call for any reason, your staff is busy, the person hung up before a lie, the answer, you can get an immediate email and a text message notification. Well that franchisees specifically, that business owner would pick up the phone and started calling back every one of those miss calls and in a year had closed almost 60% of those missed calls.

Oh yes. Come on. We just, for a cosmetic surgeon in town, we’ve started making calls and it is amazing how many appointments were booked. And now Z, do you remember back in the day when you got your phone system installed before clarity voice, do you remember back in the day? Oh yeah. Well first off you, you call you a company that is some sort of phone installation company. And this is the cotton that they show up with a team. There is usually a tech, there’s was like an engineer guy. Oh yeah. And he would start talking to you about words that I wasn’t aware of. Like, now you know, a sir, you want to [inaudible] and are you wanting to have a router setup? Do you have a server and do you have a integrated, redundant, whatever. And then you, you, you talked firewall, you’ve got firewall, you have a firewall.

And it’s like, do you want to lease the system sir, or pay out right? And you’re like, Oh, pay out. Right. I’ll tell you that I’m no, I’m no fool. I’m not going to pay. I’m not going to [inaudible] your little scams and then you sit down and you talk to the guy and I remember this for DJ connection.com back in the day when I still owned it, I got a quote for 70 $70,000 and I had a machine about the size of a refrigerator. They, they, they came over to install, well for 70 grand it’s gotta be big

And this is, this is the sound of them installing it. It’s just like there’s a whole team of people to record that back. Then there’s a song, they’re just working on it. There’s like a whole team, like a crack squad of geniuses. It might sound like a repairing a car, but that’s really not what’s happening. No, of course they’re installing the recording system and you’re, I mean for days you’re posted by pretty nice car for 70 grand, especially back then for me, think about it for days your phone system is down, you know, you can’t, people can’t be calling, you can’t be calling them and stalling.

What are they doing? And then, you know, day two we’re still, they’re still working.

Day two, they’re still, and then they’re, now they’re polishing out, they’re finishing up. They’re changing the shock of the struts on the call center system. It rides better. I mean, the answer’s better that way than you have a guy who all of a sudden you notice that the, if the building is

Did, he says, I’d like to schedule an onboarding program to teach you how the system works. And then like you get a manual that it makes a, it makes VCR manuals look interesting. Or the manual is like a Ford escort look interesting. You’re like, yeah, I’m so bored after reading this thing, I need to go back and read my Ford escort manual that I’ve never read. I mean, you, you never read it. You know what I mean? See though now, I mean it was, it was cost a ton of money. It costs a bunch of time. Oh yeah. And it had very limited features. So I want to get into this whole thing here. What does it cost? Is it, is it, is it $50,000 to set up a system? You know, back in the day, like it’s $1,000 per phone and then 50 grand one time to set up and I paid like that. It was like 1500 bucks a month every month to use this phone system. How much are we talking? Yep, yup.

Yeah. So, so for every business that is a little bit different because we don’t have a one size fits all phone system or phone service, we really tailor it to the specific needs of each business and each business owner that we work with. So one of the great things with clarity voice is that we have a dedicated account manager who works directly with small to medium size business owners to really hone in on what they really need at their locations. And realistically it can be hundreds too. I mean, yes, you could spend thousands on a new phone system with us as well, depending on the size of your business. And depending again, if you want to purchase a new phone system versus we do have a rental program as well, which I know a lot of people do kind of do the same thing you did.

No, let’s not go that route. But from that perspective we’re looking at, it’s not going to break the bank and we work with business owners to really put the best plan in place. And really determine is it going to be a purchase, is it going to be a rental program? And the timing, right. So right now, right, we’re coming up to the end of the year. We have some business owners who have extra dollars that they want to spend and some are planning for 20, 20. And it’s all about us working with you to tailor the service and the system to really design it around what your needs are because you can add on additional services with us very, very quickly in the future. We don’t need to think about what does our business look like in six months. As your needs change, you simply just call us back and we continue to grow with you and change with you.

Now your a phone system here in Z a C what does he, do you mind if I, if I write down some hard facts? Yeah, I would really appreciate you breaking down part from the hard facts. So this comes to us via JP Morgan chase. And these guys said that 88% of employer firms have fewer than 20 employees. Z, do you buy that or do you find you’re just saying, ah, JP Morgan chase. I mean, you know, Z, you’re, you’re involved in region bank, you own 10% of a bank. I mean, do you even, do you even believe the statistics from JP Morgan chase a competitor like them? For the purposes of the show, let’s just go with it. Okay. So let’s talk about that for a second. Then. 88% of employer, 88% of employers have less than 20 employees. So let’s just, let’s, let’s go with the idea that I’m listening right now and I have five phone lines.

I need five phone lines for my business that has 20 employees. Okay, fine. I’m a plumber. I’m a doctor, I’m a dentist. I’m somebody with 20 employees or less. You got a lot of degrees. Dr Plummer and a dentist. I’m a Paul. I’m a, I’m a polymath. Wow. So I was just impressed. I watch a lot of YouTube videos. So the point is as a polymath and I also inventing the Franklin stove part two. Wow. And bifocals, part two. Wow. And transformers 67 and star Wars part 10 can I get a picture with you? Can I just say less than 20 employees? Wow. I’m like the Chuck Norris of business. So let’s talk about this for five phone lines. How much do you charge per phone line roughly just to give the listeners some idea? Because a lot of times when I talk to people about you guys, I’m specifically per cell, Stacy Purcell. She reached out to me and she said, what is it going to cost? Because the cost is so much for people, it’s just a huge number. You can just give us some sort of ballpark.

Yeah. Well the great thing is that we aren’t an add on to their business, right? They already have in the Mo in most cases, except for a new business, they already have phone service in place. And you know, if we’re looking at somebody who’s got let’s say five phones or extensions, they’re going to be spending roughly $2 a month, give or take plus taxes. It really, again, it’s all about we just design it out to what the, what the business owner needs. So you’re looking at probably 200 ish a month. And to get started again, it could be low as a couple hundred dollars if they determined they wanted to go with our rental program up to probably a little over a thousand dollars. If they determined that they wanted to purchase.

How much per phone is it roughly purchased for the phone itself? The physical, the physical phone?

Yeah. Great question. So with our system we have, I couldn’t even tell you how many phone actions across the board because we really want to maximize the, the usability of our system. And so again, we’re matching the equipment to what the actual business owner needs. And so the phones can range anywhere from you know, we’ve got some free like entry level phones that would be great for things like a break room. You know, a lunch room, things like that all the way up to, you know, some of our conference room phones are 600, $700 and everything in between. But on average for a desk phone, you know, we’re looking at probably anywhere from 160 to $200 per phone if they purchase.

Heather, are there any phone systems that have, fella could have, or a gal could had that you would say [inaudible] we can’t add onto that system or you can add on to any system.

So we’re, we’re a standalone service, so we actually would come in and replace whatever they have today, whether they have some analog based phone system or just an analog phone service like an old 18 T or something similar. We would come in and replace that phone service provider with our phone system and our phone service. If they have another VoIP provider we would come in and replace that VoIP provider is well sometimes we can reprogram the equipment. Sometimes they have to buy new equipment.

You

Do you sell and support Polycomm equipment, which is the leading voiceover IP equipment on the market.

Do you have any rotary dial phones? Oh, nice.

Okay.

I mean, can I do a rotary dial option? Yes.

My grandpa’s wallet. His house.

Could I get, could I get that? He wouldn’t mind what he, Oh man. Retros in clay retros. Yeah. Let me queue this up real quick. This is great. This is a good audio here. Let me get it. Let me get this. Oh yeah. Oh look at that. Let’s listen to that. Just Oh yeah. Oh, ah, love it. I’ll tell you what, folks, if you’re out there and you’re wanting to use retro technology that does not improve your sales tax shows your cool not call clarity voice. Oh, if you weren’t that old school tech or you don’t know what’s going on and you can just hit that rotary dial, Oh, play it again. If you don’t wear that, if you don’t have any, if you don’t make it up, you’re the good old days. A collection of telephone sounds of the 1970s Oh, this is just a small sampling, but it does. Here we go. Okay. This is not clarity voice. They don’t have this, Oh, this is not good. You want this. Don’t call Heather. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah. I mean this is, I mean, let me try a different one. This is, this is I think more what we’re looking for. This is a clarity voice doesn’t do this. I want this rotary dial. Let me try this. That action. Come on.

They don’t do that. That one. The phone with the red, the red phone that commissioner Gordon had already hit the button. They don’t, they’re we, Oh, just turn it up. Ah, man. Can’t get that loud enough. Ah, that takes me back to my, my youth,

My youth. There we go. Sit in bed. You know, you sit bed, you got that girl at school that you want to call, and then you get about, you get about six numbers into it and then you hang up, you get scared, you know, and so then you go take a deep breath again. You picked back up that phone. You go this time I’m going to let it ring.

No. Here’s what, here’s what, here’s what you would do. You wait for the phone or you hang, you call, and then her dad would pick up. Oh yeah. That’s what you’d do is you’d hang up and you would act somehow confused and then you would be high-speed dubbing. Richard Marks right here waiting for you. Oh yeah. Because you had the high speed dubbing technology. Oh yeah. And you were dating a girl named Amanda or Ashley, some of with banks. Huge banks. Huge, huge banks better. And they had massive bangs and they had a Jean jacket that you loved. The TJ who didn’t and they had buttons on it that would have like the middle vanilla on it and you’re like, crap, where’s my Paula Abdul? I can’t find it crap. Where’s my Richard? And he found the Richard Marx. It didn’t work. It was the tape no longer worked. Yeah. So you’d have to record the FM. Then the radio station would be playing Richard Marks and you would time it cause you wanted to hit record as soon as the song started. Like right now. So sound cues up and then you call back using your rotary phone. That clarity voicecannot provide, you know that Qantas, so you’d call and you would then shoot your head

So sweaty, you miss a number, then you’ve got to go yank up. You got a good start over.

And then she would say, hello, this is, this is a man, this is a man. And you’re like, girl, the song goes up and you did that play in the background. Her dad’s like holding the hands on the phone. What are you who you’re talking to? Anna. Amanda. And then you’d hang up. Did you look to your buddy Mark or Johnson or what was name was Mark and John [inaudible] and yet they were encouraging you. Come on dude, you got a call back on man. And then you’re like, dude, we gotta wait til it goes down. Just get the biggest bangs in school. Come on, man. Now it’s like 12 o’clock Oh yeah. And you’re wild now because it’s midnight. You had a friend spend the night. He was a special, it was to spend the night party drinking mountain Dew all day Twizzlers, big one pound bags. And so you’re going and we’re going to call her back and, and either Prince or going, dude, you’re the man. You have to call her back. I will call Ashley back because I met her for the first time. We danced slow at the, at the school dance with the appropriate distance in between you. Right. And so she’s there, dude, you cannot,

You cannot far back. It’s too late. I’m going to, I’m going to show you. We’re going to go together. No, I don’t have to know. She’s sitting right by that phone waiting for me. I don’t have a car. And even if we’re going together, we’re not going to go anywhere cause I don’t have the Viet vehicular means to get there. But, but I’m calling her back. So you got your phone, you do it again with no regard for humanity. You’re calling back. Oh yeah. And then you hit the numbers, you’re dialing and then she says hello

And then you hit it and you play to me. Beatty, my Belbin Devo and her dad picks up on the, on the, on the phone and he has bedroom. Hello? Who’s this? You’re like, Oh yeah man, this song goes out to you cause you think she’s on the phone all by herself. Was like, who’s this? And you’re going, Oh, this song goes out to you, Amanda for you. Come on, check those bags.

You’ve never seen her again. No. Never. That’s what happens. That’s why you got to use clarity Voice. Yeah. And that’s why the dad filed that stalking charge on you. And you know why you’re listening to this show from jail. That’s right. All it could really do. You’ve got to get serious about the call recording. I want to ask this seriously. Let’s talk about features, features. You’ve talked a lot about benefits, but let’s go deep into the features. Cause Z, there are features that clarity voice has that are so vast and so powerful that they scare me. When I think about, I mean, there are so many. I have had John Barnett explained them to me and I’m going, okay,

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Let me, it was like a Bon Jovi woo woo, woo woo.

So tell us about the features. There are so many good features.

Yeah. So we include over a hundred features and benefits automatically with the service. And of course we’ve touched on a few of them here, right? So we’ve touched on call recording. We’ve touched on analytics a little bit. But it goes a little bit deeper than that because this is really about the design of a phone system and with our over a hundred features and benefits, it includes everything from unlimited lines to making sure that your customers never hear a busy signal, even though we only need your main business telephone number, which I know everyone with analog lines is like what?

Right.

So were there unlimited lines? It ensures that because of the way we set up the service, that no matter how many calls you have coming in or going outbound simultaneously, nobody ever hears a busy signal, which means that, excuse me, you can capture every single call coming into the business, which helps to drive dollars to your bottom line. We help design things like your daytime call routing, your after hours call routing ensuring that every call gets to a live answer, no matter when they’re coming into your business. Things as simple as voicemail box. Everyone thinks, Oh, I have a voicemail box on my system. What about voicemail to email, voicemail transcription or better yet, what about getting a quick text message, letting you know that you’ve got a voicemail box or voicemail back on system for you to check so you can have immediate customer response even when you’re not in the office.

That transcription thing is hot. That transcription is thought that transcription is hot. That is a very effective servicy saves so much time. What about texting? If I’m in a call center and I have inbound, you know, people calling all the time, can I text people back using clarity voice,

You can we offer SMS and MMS, text messaging capability both through our online portal that also houses the car recording analytics. And then we also write through our clarity voice office anywhere soft phone app. Not only can you make and take calls from the app, but you can also check voicemails and send, you receive those text messages as well. White from your business telephone number.

We use the heck out of that feature. Elephant in the room. This is what happens is guys will search for Tulsa men’s haircuts or Oklahoma city men’s haircuts online. And they’ll call us and we’ll pick up the phone. They’ll go, Hey, I’m so sorry I got to go. This happens a lot. We get called from people and then they got, sorry, I gotta go, I gotta go. So I think they’re calling while driving. Maybe they’re calling while going into the office. I don’t know what happens, but this happens a lot. Probably what’s called while they’re going to the bathroom. Who knows, right? They’re like, Oh, and then so we’ll say, well and so we’ll text him back. Hey, when do you want to schedule your haircut? And they’ll tell us and we book it all online and we book it all with the tech. The T the text feature is a hot feature. Now I also want to talk about this. There’s a thing called self-awareness. Z. Are you aware of self-awareness? I don’t know that I’m aware that I’ve awareness. Heather, have you seen stepbrothers? The movie?

Of course.

Z. Have you seen stepbrothers? Of course. Can I show you the scene real quick? See you just picture in your mind, Heather from the scene. Stepbrothers. Will Ferrell and his, his brother the, these guys, they, they’re trying to get a job and they’re 40 years old and their, their, their their parents want them to get a job cause they’re living at home and their parents got married at kind of later in life. And so their, their parents want them to get a job cause they’re both 40 and they live at home and so they get their first interview with a lady named Pam. And this is what happened during the interview with Pam Brannon. You certainly have had a lot of jobs. I’m a bit of a spark plug

And a human resources lady. No, it’s actually, it’s Pam. I’m sorry. Well pan. No, my name is Pam [inaudible] pan. We’re Pam. I’m saying Pam, I’m sorry. Who is this gentleman sitting behind you? Hello ms lady. I’m deal. I’m Brenda stepbrother and I think I might be able to help with the pan Pam dilemma. Yeah, that’d be great. Pam, this with on the end there’s no D it’s Pam. It’s like calm. It’s P P a N M and M to M. M there’s just one M I, I think we’ve had enough for one second. [inaudible] Shut your mind needed someone to check your mouth. I’m sorry, what did you just come off? Stupid. I’m coming off as stupid. You’re wearing tuxedos. A job that

Requires you to please leave this office for Donald to center to any sort of souvenir out of my office now that, that unfortunately we had a guy on the call center who, and it’s, he’s helped a lot and if you’re listening out there, you know, you know, we know you love, we, we, you know we love you. But when I listened to his call the first time, I said, I want you to know something. And he said, what? I said, you know those movies where Z to save the day, MacGyver would have to cut the blue wire or the red wire or the yellow wire. And if he didn’t do it, if you cut the wrong wire, you know someone could die. Oh yes. And this is how he was answering the phone. At first. He wouldn’t go,

Thank you for calling in the room.

This, this is, and the person said, yeah, let’s get my hair cut. And then he would say,

I’m having a good time. I’m not,

And he was just nervous and I just, I told him, I said, you sound like a nerd, like a nervous bomb diffuser. And he said, you don’t know which wire to cut. And he goes, you’re right. I do. But he heard it. And it’s become a joke now because he wanted to do so well for so long, but he just sounded nervous. And without him being able to hear himself, I do not believe he would still have a job with us and he’s become great. But he was just in a job previously where you didn’t engage with people over the phone. Oh he was, he was nervous. Can you talk to me about how just the, the you, cause you guys have filters that limit the wind, you know, breathing into the mic, you guys have cool things like that. And just talking about the self awareness benefits of having this great system.

Yeah. So, so let’s start with the self awareness and then I’ll move into some of the other great features to backup, to help block out that background noise. So in, in terms of self-awareness one of the things that we strongly encourage with our employees here at clarity voice is that you cannot do a great job unless you’re really aware of the job that you’re doing. And so we really encourage our employees to listen to their own call recordings. I don’t care how long you’ve been with clarity, there’s always room for growth. I’ve been here for about 10 years now and I’m still learning things every single day. And as long as you’re keeping an open mind, you can continue to expand your horizons and become a better employee. So from that perspective, we really encourage our employees as well as are the businesses that we work with.

They have their employees listen to their own call recordings. With, with listening to your own call recording, you’re going to pick up on things that maybe somebody else isn’t going to pick up on so you can become better at your job instantaneously. One thing to note is within our portal, we also offer the ability when they’d go in and listen to their own call recordings, they can actually make notes and set the, the, the tone of the call so they can actually tell whether it was a sales call, was there a good call, bad call. And so they can actually go in, listen to their own calls and then Mark the ones that they would like their managers to listen to for better coaching and training. So from that perspective you know, you really can’t be aware of something until you’re aware of it.

And so having our employees listen to calls is crucially important. Ongoing. my team does it now. I have an employee who goes back and listens to your calls almost every single day because she wants to improve. And I think it’s great from an overall kind of equipment standpoint and being able to block out some of that background noise. There’s a couple of different things that we do to help with the overall, no pun intended, help with the overall clarity voice of the phone system. First and foremost with Polycomm equipment, there is something built into Polycomm that’s a little bit different than a lot of other phone systems out there. It’s called HD voice. And so it really does come through as a crystal clear connection. And if you’re talking at an older Polycom phone and you switched to an HD voice Polycom phone, you can absolutely hear the difference.

It’s kind of like when you switch from those old analog lines to our system, people comment on how clear that connection is. So we’ve got that going. We also offer which is turned on for every single one of our customers. It’s called acoustic fencing and it’s actually as Polycomm supported feature. And this, this feature actually helps to, to drowned out that background noise. So whether your in a, just a busy environment, busy office environment, you have an open concept office. There’s a call center environment going on or you know, if you’re working in kind of like what you were playing before when that audio clip you know, in automotive shop, right, it helps to drowned out that background noise. So your customers and prospects as they’re calling in can really focus on the conversation versus hearing all of that chatter and everything else going on in the background.

It’s really great to, for our customers who maybe have a home office and they’ve got kids constantly coming in and out of the house and just that background noise, it really helps with that. But then we also sell in support a headset that also have noise cancellation built into them as well. And you know, we really strongly encourage, if you’re going to have a headset to purchase one through us just because it does have that noise cancellation built into it as well. So there’s lots of great options when you’re looking to help your customers stay focused on the calls.

Z. Let’s see. Let’s see real quick, if, if clarity can cancel this real quick, I’m going to keep the sound effect and you tell me are you using or, or are we calling? Are you, are we calling you on a clarity voice phone right now? Can you cancel things right now? I mean,

Of course

I’m going to cue up this audio as you and you tell where you think, because

Again, we don’t know if this technology, how good this technology is. Now mind you on my end, we’re not using the technology, so the feature may not work, but I’m going to want to kill the audio and you tell me Z where you think we might be at this point here. Let’s see if, yeah,

This is often my background sounds, but where do you think this is? It’s probably my living room.

If you are thinking about participating in the running of the bowls, you need to use clarity voice. Because if I had the clarity voice system right now, I could block some of this out. Z and I can talk to you clearly as I’m running from the bowls. Yes. You’ll wanna be able to know I’m what? With the bowls Z. Think about that. I’m, I’m, I’m thinking about that. That’s it. Don’t think too long on it though. Don’t, okay. Now I want to ask, I want to ask you some questions about the future. Can we talk about the future? Okay. Z do you have any music? Do you want to queue up for the future? I think maybe, I think it’s like maybe the star Trek training theme. I think we should do the star Trek future. I’ll go get my, or wait, I left my face or in the car. I’ll be right back. [inaudible] My face. Or should I just wait? Here we go. I normally carry it.

Dr Z. Yes. Start a blog. Two seven three nine Oh two one Oh, what does it say in the future? Yes. People were using video conversations. Oh, my video calls. Really. What do you think the future of [inaudible] for Kirti voice as it relates to video call record? I think, I think it’s an, it’s a present.

I want to know how can you get more of it? I own a business and I, I want clarity voice. Heather, I’m going to ask you this. Is that going to be a thing or is that gonna be a thing in the future? Is video recording going to be a huge thing? Is it a thing? Is there already thing?

Yeah, great question. So we have already rolled out the first version of our video conferencing platform, which is available now on our portal available to all of our customers. And being the first iteration, there are a few things that we are still working on for a secondary rule outcome first quarter of 2020. But with the video conferencing it is a point to point video to where you can have a one person up to 15 people in your video conferencing platform. And it also which we just recently tested. It also works on an Android phone. And I’ll tell you a useful application for this is with some of our customers, they actually have to see a a prospect home. Whether it be for some kind of repair that they’re going to be doing or a move that they’re going to be making. And so that feature is going to be really powerful from that perspective as well. Being able to set up a point to point video call with a potential customer.

Is there going to be, Oh, go ahead. Is there going to be a lag in it? Because you don’t see a lot of these, a voice of these, these video recording things in the past, you’re talking to someone and it seems they’re like in a,

Like an Oriental Asian Ninja movies. Oh yeah. They’re all their voices. Always a little bit behind what they’re saying. I mean, it does, it, does it feel like you’re watching an old school poorly produced a Chuck Norris movie when you’re talking to people? Or is it, is it, I mean, does it, does it feel like this doctorZ actual call, you know, I mean, does it, does it, does it feel like that or does it feel more of like it natural? How does it feel?

It’s, it’s very natural. So if you think about something like a GoToMeeting or a zoom, right, and how those technologies work, that’s exactly how this technology works as well. So there’s, there’s absolutely not a delay. We use we use it every single day and we are pushing the feature just because we have so many customers who it would be really useful for.

So let’s just say for a show like this, see, you know, we get on the phone all the time with people and we’re calling people all over the world, very successful people. We just had the founder of Paychex on the show. We’ve got great people like a Wolfgang puck on the show, Heather on the show. These great people. Would we have to have the system on our end and then the person we’re calling doesn’t have to have it on their end, but we could still see them. Maybe have a camera that’s on their Mac or their computer or something.

That’s correct. Absolutely. So work very similar to every other video conferencing platform out there. The other person that you’re going to be having the conversation with does not have to have the service. So from that perspective, I could send an invitation out right from my computer, right from the portal or video conferencing platform, send them the invitation and then they just click to join.

So how long, I mean I think you’ve got, I think I read this correctly, I could be wrong, but I believe you guys have over 10,000 plus users. How long have you been around at clarity voice? What’s sort of the, the, the story behind it? And please shamelessly name drop some of the big brands you work with because Z, I’m a name dropper. I, I don’t believe anything unless there’s a celebrity endorsing it, I will not, I will not go. Do it and see a movie. I won’t buy Gatorade unless there’s a celebrity. I’m not, I’m not gonna get headphones. The beats headphones without drays endorsement. Tell me some of the big companies you’ve worked with and then kind of the history.

Sure, absolutely. So we work in a lot of different verticals. As you know we did start within the franchising vertical and have really expanded from there. We work in everything from home services to quick serve, restaurants, retail consulting firms, pizza locations, restaurants, call centers. So you’ve named some of the clients that we work with already, but we also work with some name brands that everybody would probably know. Two men in a truck.

Oh really?

That we work with

Really?

Marco’s pizza, that’s another big, I’m just trying to think.

Oh, definitely. Dan dropping. This is great. This helps me because I’m the kind of guyZ , I’m the kind of guy. You’re a pack, you’re a pack follower, right? I mean, I need like Brett Farve. I need like fresh, I need two minutes in a truck. I need these sorts of copper bracelet things from Brett. Yes. Okay. I don’t have the ability to make my own decisions. I can’t just look at the features. I can’t do my own comparison. I am a namedrop or do we have anybody else we can we can name drop.

Sure. Absolutely. So another big, I’m just trying to think of like how people would know. We have Molly maid, we have a lot of medical like Medi weight loss centers that we do business with. In home health care. We’ve got Brightstar and comfort care, comfort keepers. I mean you name it. Right now we’re probably over a hundred plus franchise brands in general that we work with. Plus of course small to medium size business owners across the United States and Canada. Both. we are in the process of beginning a relationship with Keller Williams and from a dealership side of things too. We’re also looking at auto dealerships and have a few auto dealerships who are now onboarded. We’re kind of all over the board.

You’re a good attorney, a communist dictatorship.

You have a big Russian presence. Do you work with the North Koreans? Venezuelan. They need a Cuban Cuba. Cuba. It makes sense. It’s close. Yeah. I mean it makes more sense working with the Cubans.

We’re not actually, we are we, we can service the United States including Canada or Alaska and Hawaii and then also Canada.

Okay. Okay. Ken is like a state, we just don’t really read Canada. One of my clients, mr Sperl, he’s a Canadian CPA up there. We joke about it, but the Canadians continue, no disrespect to our Canadian listeners, but you know what I’m talking about. But to clients I’ve worked with for a very, very long time based in Canada, their government consistently does things that make capitalism hard to do. There’s either very you know, but they XE, the cool thing about being a Canadian is they get to borrow our military whenever they want safety first and we, and right back out, we get the Rocky mountains whenever we want or whenever we want because they don’t want it anymore. We want to Bieber and the Mounties and at Bryan Adams and maple syrup, I mean Atlanta is more silly coming to a casino trifecta. You really don’t need anything other than that. Now, Devin, you’ve had some, some clients that we’ve worked with that have called you and said, Hey, could you help me, you know, plug in the phone and set it up. How well, how hard is it to set up the phone system once they’re mailed to the business owner?

It’s, it’s really pretty simple to, to install. It’s as long as you have that wired internet connection to your router and to the internet, then it’s pretty simple to just plug in the phone and, and go and Heather’s team is fantastic

With walking you through the process and be honest with us.

It, it’s a plug and play system for the most part. And like I said, Heather’s team is fantastic at, at helping you get up, get up and go on with it.

I’m sorry, I had to yell at Devin with a megaphone, but

He didn’t have [inaudible]. It does require that. So has, I’ve got a hard hitting question. Are you at the headquarters? Are you, are you based out of the headquarters?

I am.

Oh, have you written the Chattanooga to chew? Because I really, do you know what that, do you know what that is? Are you too young to know what that is? Really? Yes. This is controversial. This is, this is, this is kind of Chattanooga choo choo choo. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll see if Heather can block out the sound as she tries to beat us. Honest with us. Cause she’s actually on a railroad right now while she’s doing the call here. She’s probably on the Chattanooga choo choo. What is the Chattanooga choo choo? You have me, you, the suspense is killing me. Well I was, I was other website just kind of, you know, doing, doing my homework after it was due. Of course. Yeah, sure. And I, and I noticed that they were in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And what does the Chattanooga choo, well, it’s an old song and it’s the only song I could think of what Chad. And so I thought for sure by me giving you that, that softball, you’d already have a cute up by now and you could play a little bit. The Chattanooga are usually accusing me of not having the Chattanooga truth right now and filibustering I don’t know. A better DJ in the world and it doesn’t take even that much.

Pardon me? There we go. There it is. Little old school. 29 while you’re on your rotary dial phone making a call. This is what it sounds like. Clarity voice. That’s it right there. That’s probably why their headquarters are there. That’s the owners. Probably a big trade. Know fishing. You know what I love, I love to listen to the rest of the song. I really wouldn’t. I don’t think standards and excellence prevent me from doing so. Well so let me ask you this. Here I w who’s the guy who started the company? Who’s the lady who started the company? What’s the history of clarity Voice. I need to know the history. I cannot have the history be a mystery and trust the company. Just because you work with thousands of clients and you have name brand name drops just because I use the service and just because it’s affordable. All that is crap unless I know the history.

Sure. Absolutely. So the company was actually founded in 2005 by an individual named Gary Gerkey. He actually started the company because at that time he was actually working for another company and was tasked with finding a voice over IP service for the company that he was done working for and found it very, very difficult to find any VoIP providers that would provide business service because at that time it was still a home based service. Being that he was in the technology realm, he started the company and very shortly after started partnering with with some individuals that were in the franchising industry and the company has just grown from there.

What I’m going to do right now is I’m going to play up my final game up today’s show because has to go do beautiful,

Incredible things. She, she cares a lot about our audience. But not so much about you and I, you know what I mean? We’re small, but I want to, I want to play a game and this, this, this game is called Ken. Dr Z. Guess where Heather Conley’s from? Can dr Z, guess where Heather, now I’m going to cue up the music Z and then I would like for you to just get yourself into a good place. You have three guesses. Okay. If you get it right, you win a mega 0.2 mega point. If you get it wrong, you lose all the makeup points and you have to ship a Heather, one of your mega mega points. Okay, so let me, let me,

Let me queue it up here. Let me get, let me get the audio level here. So, too loud. Let’s try to filter on my mic cause I’m hearing, I can hear me okay, here we go. Alright, here we go. And you can’t get any tips from the audience. Okay, so here we go. I don’t get three lifelines for three mega points you can get. I had a friend, you can use a megaphone to call across the studio to Devin if you want to hold the trigger down. Okay, so you get to guess what state do you believe that Heather [inaudible]. Here we go. Here you go. Based upon the, the vocal patterns. Okay. Heather, would you say hello? My name is Heather. Hello, my name is Heather. Oh, I got it. I got it. Okay. She’s Northeast. She’s from the state, Maryland, Maryland. Two more guesses. Okay. You’ve just lost a, an immediate portion. [inaudible] Coast, right? Or not? Probably California. Are we East coast or West coast? Gimme can I get, let me give you the Mississippi or West of the Mississippi. When she goes home to visit family, she might end statements by saying, Oh, don’t you know she’s around him too long. I think she might say, you bet ya soda. Are you from Minnesota? Nope. Oh gosh. Again, of course

You got it

Moment. That moment right there.

You buy bread are the winner of mega points, which are not redeemable, winter, winter. So

Good game took us to a dark place. I should’ve done my uncles from there. Could show know a couple of little Heather, thank you so much for putting up with us. This was my favorite hour of power we’ve had. I mean, seriously in weeks. This was great. So Heather, I’m I own a small, I’m out there listening to this podcast right now. The whole time I’m thinking, how do I get it? How do I get it? How do I get it? I want it. How do I get, how do I get to clarity? What, what do I do?

Yup. So it’s super simple. You can shoot me an email direct. It’s Heather [email protected] or you can call me direct at two four eight four three six three, four, three, five.

Can we repeat your email address and your phone number two more times each just to the listeners who are taking notes right now, w with a pin, they can write it down. Pull it over right now to dip. Do it?

Absolutely. Yep. My email again is Heather [email protected] and my direct line is two (484) 363-4350

Geez. I tell you what, this was, this was a great show. It’s exciting. I’m going to put this show on the record on the book. I’m not sure what record it is or what the book, what the books are, just putting it in the book. We’re gonna put it in the book and I’m, and in the records, well, I’m just, I don’t want to brag, but I think I’m pretty sure my mind guessing where she’s from is kind of a big deal. I just love to say it. Heather, thank you so much for, for putting up with us. We’re going to go see a counselor. You take care. Thank you, Heather. You’re awesome. Bye.

And as you know, we like to end each and every show with a boom. And so without any further, I do three, two, one

[Inaudible].

You can record your calls or your business will fall off a cliff called mediocrity. You’ve got to record your calls or your business will go off. Cliff called mediocrity. Now, what’s the company I recommend? I recommend clarity Voice. How do you get a good deal? Go to thrive time, show.com. Forward slash. Clarity, thrive time, show.com. Forward slash. Clarity. Tim you work in the call center. What’s your final justification and reason why you think all the business owners out there should record their calls? Yeah, if you you wanna make sure you actually have a good call and don’t sound like you’re having a panic attack while you’re talking to know the customer, probably be a good idea to record your calls. Daisy, what’s your final encouragement as a call center manager? How impossible would your job be without recording calls? What’s your final tip for the listeners out there as to why they should record their,

Well, I just look at Tim. He’s like my personal testimony. We literally called him the nervous bomb diffuser for the first six months. He worked with me and it’s like he went from nervous bomb diffuser to Brad Pitt over night,

And I used to be the fast talking confused guy, my first job, and then they played my calls and they’re like, wow, you talk fast and wow, you’re confused. And so we all have some sort of dysfunction that we can’t fix, right? So we can’t hear the, absolutely. If you’re out there today, again, go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know what they say? Go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know what they say? Go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know, they say quit. Quit saying that because I, I don’t know what they say, but I know that I say, go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know what they say? See a brawl to get at booty yak leg down, smack them. Yacko thanks. That clears it up. Wow.