SBIR Phase II: AI for Enhanced Processing of Digital Conversations

Award ID: 2304322

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project lies in its potential to positively impact the sales process by enabling easier, faster, and better access to previous sales conversations and improving sales management oversight. These improvements, in turn, will lead to increased sales efficiency and customer acquisition and retention, and will enable companies to achieve a greater profit margin, while maximizing customer satisfaction. The insights gained in this project may also facilitate communication in other markets including interviews, counseling, etc. The project will diversify the technical workforce by engaging women and underrepresented minorities in research and development activities and will help increase tech-related employment and talent retention opportunities. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to significantly increase the productivity of sales representatives and their managers by providing them with advanced technology to streamline their sales processes. The platform developed in this project will significantly reduce the time it takes a sales agent to process or recall their sales conversations, decrease the sales training time through more effective management oversight, and facilitate the transition between sales agents. The platform will use a subscription-based Sofware as a Service (SaaS) business model that provides fast and centralized development and maintenance, while also allowing for a broad outreach. Specifically, this project will develop novel methods and tools to process and analyze sales conversations by: (1) producing summary notes; (2) extracting action items; (3) allowing for smart access to conversation content; and (4) measuring engagement metrics. The project will leverage the recent advances in natural language processing and a large database of proprietary sales conversations that will allow the platform to learn the intricacies of effective sales communication. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Peter Atherton