There has been a lot of activity in the world of AI powered virtual agents. A use case where these next generations chatbots (for lack of a better term) can make an immediate impact is across the sales development lifecycle. AI powered virtual sales development agents can simply handle a higher volume of interactions, work 24/7/365 for round the clock coverage, turn a single BDR team into one with global coverage, etc.
Qualified has been quietly building out “Piper,” its own AI BDR for a little while now. And today, the company added new capabilities to the virtual agent, and its supporting platform. The main addition to Piper is new email capabilities that broaden the agent’s scope from simply being a web chat based virtual agent. The new AI email means Piper will send “timely, contextual emails that are automatically generated at optimal touch points in the buyer journey. SDRs no longer need to manually follow up with and nurture each buyer in their sales queue because Piper will do it for them instantly,” according to Qualified.
The notion is to reduce the pressure on human BDRs in terms of sending follow up and other email communications at the right time, with the right contextual message. This could include scenarios like meeting scheduling, event followup, free trail or demo followups, as well as content nurture emails. As Constellation recently published an AI SDR Virtual Agent ShortList, Qualified had yet to qualify for the list - but would today with the addition of these new functions.
New additions to the Qualified Pipeline AI Platform enable the new email capabilities. These additions include Qualified Lead 360 and Account 360 - giving users the ability to better unify contact and lead data from various sources into a single version of truth. Also, new tools called AI Email Campaign Builder and AI Email Sequence Simulator are impressive tools that require little configuration to start building complex drip and other email cadence flows to support solid nurture and followup communications.
For potential buyers and existing users, this can be a strong tool for expanding the reach and knowledge of SDR teams. The issue will be ensuring that Piper is monitored closely upon initial rollout so that it is sending the right messages at the right times, as well as protecting sensitive data. Of course, quality of Qualified, CRM and other data sets will affect performance. Beta customers of Piper in a recent Qualified virtual event did note there was a strong ease of configuration, and that the tool was quick to learn and adapt.
