‘Our software, DISA, is disruptive’: Brian Podolak, Co-Founder & CEO of Vocodia

“We can and want to go further, but for now, let’s just book some contact centers.”

Vocodia, an artificial intelligence company, provides solutions for sales utilizing the latest in AI technology. The company has created and deployed AI Sales Agents (DISA or Digital Intelligent Sales Agents) that can deliver effective presentations and close sales, in addition to managing full customer service operations, even in the most data interactive demand-based industries. Vocodia serves clients in Florida.

The Silicon Review reached out to Vocodia’s Florida headquarters and spoke with Brian Podolak, who serves as the company’s Chief Executive Officer. Below is an excerpt.

Head to Head with Brian Podolak

Q. What is next-gen conversational AI, and how is it better than lackluster customer service AI?

It’s fun, exciting, interactive, and allows salespeople to focus on the relationships of consumers of their business. The best part for the consumer is that they can get down to business going directly: talking with and reasoning with one person to another to accomplish goals related to human needs and comfort. Our AI reasons with customers and people like that. Confidence is supplied for proper business decisions, which mean more sales for our clients.

Q. Vocodia-built software, DISA, produces natural-sounding conversations through its native language process technology. Is it that good? And what can you tell us about this software?

Yes, it is disruptive. We are keeping to a strict code of basic sales conversational principles explained in the sales book: Control the Conversation. This way we stay on point and drive the mission for the client. However, there is no limit to the level, depth, and even rabbit holes we allow our DISAs to go down within each purposed conversation. For now, we are keeping it simple, and to the point. Over time and for expanded purposes we will let DISA off the chain a bit more, such as in education and medical case uses. That requires a different understanding of our existing technology and we don’t have the bandwidth in our current administration. When we make significant headway in that area, we will look to other areas of service, but I believe our shareholders will be happy and confident at that point to—expand our service areas. We can and want to go further, but for now, let’s just book some contact centers. 

Q. What does Vocodia intend to achieve by equipping the contact center industry with DISA?

Ultimately, we would like to be the primary service provider or the last mile of automated sales and customer service. There are a lot of tools to enhance the efficiency of salespeople and customer service reps with reporting tools such as CRMs, however, the people on the phone talking to customers is the business end of all of that and we are the automated tool for the business end. The only question is how many of those tools are necessary and what role they will play, by the percentage of the value, as companies migrate to our conversational AI technology. We are digital and all of our work is documented, recorded, and available for any level of audit. Sending that information to our clients at varying nodes with APIs may cut out other expenses designed to increase efficiency. We believe we are the ultimate in efficiency because our DISAs are always motivated and stay on the phone, bringing results in multiples and delivering those results to whomever, whenever, 24/7. 

Q. How responsive is Vocodia to the changing needs of its clients?

Extremely responsive and immediate! A DISA can be modified and put back out at scale within minutes, versus days. It’s like comparing an electric stove to a campfire; convenience, control, and compliance. It’s all there with agility no manager has ever experienced. Our own internal QA teams will listen to DISA calls and make adjustments within a few calls to tweak the performance of each DISA sales team. Oftentimes, just the response timing can make the difference between a low sales volume to a record-breaking campaign. Our system is responsive and was built that way because the needs of each client are truly different and those needs change in each campaign while they are ongoing. 

Q. Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how your solutions helped them overcome those challenges?

We have a large client that sells insurance. Their challenge is ramping up and training sales reps for campaigns during a time when all other competitors are doing the same. To reinforce their efforts, often their full-time, well-trained insurance reps get displaced in varying roles from, dialing for qualifications, and training, to babysitting, and losing potency in their efforts, like having a kicker stand in as a linebacker. It’s ugly and stressful. Our DISAs eliminate all of this and allow them to train and deploy their licensed agents to only deal with customers that are ready to execute their policy. This allows more policies to be closed and concluded, which means more revenue because of the calling and lower-level legwork our DISAs do for them. They love it and we are honored to make such an impact.

Q. What strategies are in place to encourage innovation in your company?

Innovation is a big deal for us. We constantly have meetings and summits to promote open communication and have a high tolerance of opinions because we never know where a good idea is going to come from. Informing other departments of what other departments are doing is something we have noticed helps our innovation. Our newest employee has direct communication in internal forums with the founders. If there is one thing we have learned from conversational AI, it is the value of conversations internally. We often see companies we are looking at for acquisition, merger, or resell and try to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Most often the solution to their weaknesses is so close to them but because they are focused on their lane they simply don’t see it. It is amazing what a simple fresh point of view does for innovation and we strive to look at ourselves from everyone’s point of view. It is often how we start meetings, and we always allow for that last-minute thought. That’s where a lot of really good things come from.

Q. How do you plan to counter challenges that you think Vocodia might face in the next five years?

Currently, our focus is on migration adoption from the whole company. It’s the biggest issue we face. Sales reps are always excited because they no longer need to cold call or qualify and just spend time on the phone all day with new clients. However, some customer service reps and always HR gives us a problem because we hear this all the time: “Am I going to lose my job”? Our answer is yes for some and others, the job will change. This is a disruption that is as unstoppable as the internet was in 1992 through 1995. It’s an unknown disruption for those stuck in their lanes. We are overcoming that obviously through owners and shareholders but have already had some interesting battles with this.

Q. About the future, where do you see Vocodia a couple of years from now?

As big as salesforce in terms of attraction to the enterprise market, however, we would like to be fair and open our technology up to small and medium-sized businesses as well. The playing field will look a lot different when small companies can compete in market share with reach and scale equivalent to enterprise capability. The efficiencies our technology offers today are an unfair advantage to early adopters because the non-adaptors cannot compete with costs and scale. Those with the market capability are going to experience new levels of earnings. In truth, we turn business down in hopes of being able to offer a better opportunity because small businesses are a cornerstone of America and where innovation comes from. Until we are in a financial position ourselves to get the message out to small businesses and provide the on-ramp, we must stay the course because our survival and thriving is necessary to achieve our goals.

Q. What is your final message to The Silicon Review readers; your current and future clients and partners?

Thank you for your interest and time. Our technology was invented to achieve scale and preserve time to spend it on the things most important to us: family, friends, community, and health. If you have ever sacrificed health to achieve business goals then or taken investment risks to scale to achieve market share, this is why we exist. People want to be served and the companies want to serve them. It is the reason we create this symbiosis. Let’s do this together now so we can all enjoy life more, or enjoy more life. Either way, we win when we deploy software that sells.

Brian Podolak | In His Own Words

I started on the tech side as an engineer which I am happy about because I discovered a real knack for understanding technology in terms of hardware and software relationships. I switched from electrical engineering in school to computer networking against my professor’s advice that there would never be any money in that field. I just simply got it. I was so fast at my first real job as a network engineer solving customer issues on-site, that the company had to create a special service-charge model just for me. They would charge more per hour because I could do the same work others would in record time. That move by the company opened my mind to teaching me my value compared to others and that pricing could be dynamic. It was like discovering fire, entrepreneurial fire. This led me to marketing and sales as a necessity, serving the call center industry. Then I discovered I could apply those same principles with my gift of speed and have always just seemed to cut large swaths in the revenue side of the jungle out there. Later, I owned and operated call centers for a medium and large enterprise with the same dynamic speed to market I discovered in my early days. I also had a lot of small special missions and challenges to achieve success, namely ROI for our customers, which I loved. A good friend of mine always makes me laugh when says “Brian you are the one guy that swings for the fences and cracks that ball when it’s necessary. Keep swinging big!” I think we are taking a big swing with Vocodia.

“Ultimately, we would like to be the primary service provider or the last mile of automated sales and customer service.”

“We believe we are the ultimate in efficiency because our DISAs are always motivated and stay on the phone, bringing results in multiples and delivering those results to whomever, whenever, 24/7.”