LETHABO MOTSOALEDI, H’21
Building contact center software that bridges trust between companies and customers
Lethabo Motsoaledi, H’21 is a Bachelor of Science: Geomatics graduate from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. In 2015, Motsoaledi and her co-founder, Matthew Westaway, both UCT Engineering graduates, were sharing their frustrations about poor interactions they’d had with retail contact centers. They concluded that this was due to large companies simply not caring about their customers and decided to start a User Experience agency to help companies understand their customers better. While running the agency, they encountered the pain of manually listening to and analyzing recorded interviews. They thought that a solution to automatically analyze conversations and highlight key themes would exist. Failing to find one, they created the first version of Voyc for themselves. They realized that the technology they were building could give contact centers the capacity to monitor 100% of their calls while also understanding their customers better.
“Voyc has an obligation to train world-class African engineers that will go on to solve even more complex problems.”
Changing the world by helping companies to understand their customers better
THE CHALLENGE: The regulatory landscape has changed dramatically over the last 10 years, with the pressure to build trust among customers stronger than ever. The Financial Times reported that financial institutions spend $270bn annually on compliance while Bloomberg reported that more than $300bn has been paid in fines by banks since 2008. KPMG predicts that Regulation Technology (RegTech) spending will reach levels of $76bn by 2022. The reality is that many companies fail to monitor more than 5% of their customer interactions. Customers use various channels to engage with companies and with the existing inefficient analysis practices, it can take up to 60 minutes to analyze a 30-minute customer call. There is also the risk that customer complaints could lead to regulatory fines and brand damage. The high cost of human capital and limited capacity results in companies settling with just a “tip of the iceberg approach” to quality assurance. Motsoaledi saw an opportunity to help company contact centers to identify risks, improve agent performance and ultimately ensure that companies and their customers are treated fairly. She envisions a future where every interaction is monitored by Voyc giving customers peace of mind that the companies they engage with are treating them fairly and will listen to their concerns.
THE PROCESS: After making it into the prestigious Techstars SAP.iO accelerator in Berlin, the two co-founders interviewed hundreds of customers, investors and industry experts. Through this process, their perception of customer service changed. They realized that contact center staff did care about their customers, but they didn’t have the time or capacity to manage every interaction consistently. Furthermore, the contact centers’ quality assurance processes designed to deliver insights and improve operations were manual and inefficient, such as listening to randomly sampled calls and checking for compliance using Excel scoresheets. The Voyc journey started by building a semi-functional prototype, which they shared with potential customers for feedback. They ran six paid Concierge Service pilots to test their assumptions followed by the building of an MVP to start generating revenue. They also ran growth marketing experiments (emails and landing pages) to learn more about who their market was and how they made purchasing decisions. During their quest to find product-market fit, they discovered the true size of the problem in the call center industry. Insurers were employing dozens of people all with the task of listening to and analyzing customer calls. They felt that their solution would perfectly meet these company’s needs to understand their customers better.
THE RESULTS: Voyc’s business model is software as a service where they charge the companies they monitor a monthly fee per agent. Voyc provides speech analytics and automated quality management software to banks and insurers, enabling them to monitor 100% of calls with 80% less staff. By applying AI to monitor interactions and flag non-compliant calls, Voyc sends instant notifications to team leads and managers to enable them to resolve issues before they escalate. Voyc’s solution helps QA Assessors to evaluate calls ten times faster, risk and compliance teams can ensure that every interaction complies with regulations and COO’s can increase capacity and reduce costs at the same time. Voyc has been revenue positive from day one. They currently generate more than $38 000 per month and are on track to reaching $50,000 per month. They are operational in five banks and insurers and will be running proof of concepts with seven more insurers. Within their current client base, they are in discussions to expand to other departments. They have raised more than $720 000 dollars from world-class investors (Techstars and angel investors). To date, Voyc has monitored over 2 million minutes of calls from four companies. In October 2020, Voyc reached a monthly record of 25 000 calls monitored. Voyc currently monitors over 150 agents every month. Their quality assurance assessors have validated that using Voyc makes them 75% faster. Quality assurance teams are able to spend less time listening to calls and more time training agents. Voyc aims to monitor the calls of 200 million end customers and make sure that they feel ‘cared for’ whenever engaging with a company that runs Voyc. Motsoaledi believes that Voyc can be the gold standard for customer experience in the call center market.
LEARN MORE ABOUT VOYC
Voyc is an AI software solution that monitors and improves call center quality assurance and agent performance.
Deeply passionate about solving problems in Africa
ABOUT LETHABO MOTSOALEDI
Motsoaledi is a BSc Geomatics graduate from the University of Cape Town. She is a Mandela Rhodes Foundation Fellow and a Fellow of Allan Gray Orbis Foundation. She co-founded Voyc in 2018 where she is also the CTO. In 2017, she was named one of 50 inspiring women in technology in South Africa as part of the Dutch Consulate’s NPO Inspiring Fifty initiative to identify role models to attract more female champions to technology-related fields. She was also recognised as one of the Mail and Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans in 2017, showcasing South Africa’s brightest up and coming stars across various disciplines.
I AM A HARAMBEAN
Lethabo Motsoaledi was inspired to become a Harambean because of the like-mindedness of Harambeans and to inspire other Africans to unlock their potential.
“South Africans believe in the spirit of Ubuntu, which means I am because you are. When like-minded people engage, their individual vision and mission combine into a powerful movement where one individual’s success can contribute to and build on the success of others.”