Yext, a popular local business search engine that for some reason managed to stay under the radar so far, is launching a new product dubbed Yext Calls at the TechCrunch50 event today that’s bound to raise some eyebrows.
Local businesses can use the Yext Calls software to process incoming phone calls and organize them based on semantic analysis of what was said during the conversation, providing them with an easy way of searching or browsing through them at any point. Based on keywords that occurred in the call, the software can detect that e.g. price estimates were requested for a car repair or which part of what type of vehicle the caller was having problems with exactly.
The program can even automatically detect if any appointments were made during the conversation, giving the local business owner or representative an easy way of scheduling their calendar based on relevant keywords that were used during the call.
Ultimately the analysis of the phone calls helps Yext make their flagship product, the local business search engine which they claim gets visited by over a million users a month, more detailed for visitors and at the same time more effective for listed companies. Basically the data that gets drawn from the phone calls analysis helps business owners get more qualified leads via the search engine. The way this works is that a local business owner can indicate that a call was relevant to his core business by giving it ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’, which in turn leads Yext to better decide if they want to show the company in the results when a specific keyword gets used in a search or not.
I personally think this is a great way for Yext to automate the improvement of their search engine’s accuracy while at the same time providing huge direct and indirect benefits for local business owners. It also helps that the service is basically free and listed customers only pay per call received.
Expert panel Q&A:
Q – Roelof Botha: who transcribes the phone call?
A: the answer is: we leverage several core platforms, totally automated. The business answers the phone calls.
Q – Roelof Botha: are you helping local business with their SEA/SEM campaigns too?
A: our partner network takes care of that side of the equation.
Q – Paul Graham: you already have an existing business that’s making a lot of money?
A: Yes, $20 million in revenue and growing fast. But we are a startup, expanding into a new territory: pay-per-action phone calls. We only charge for actions that are relevant to the local business owner.
Q – Roelof Botha: how do you convince business owners of your value proposition?
A: it’s an end-to-end solution for them to advertise smarter on the Web.
Q – Marc Andreessen: is there adverse selection? are the merchants who are most likely to want phone calls least likely to get the web to get them?
A: We found most merchants overall prefer to receive phone calls.
Q – Paul Graham: why local business, and not national ones?
A: Some are suited for that, but mostly if they work with local dealerships for example. We focused on Yellow Pages categories.
Q – Paul Graham: What’s the biggest of the 12 categories you support now?
A: Health and fitness.
Video:
Pictures:
Extra coverage:
TC50: Yext transcribes, searches phone calls for local businesses VentureBeat.
Yext(TM) Launches First Ever Pay-Per-Action Phone Call Service at TechCrunch50 Reuters.
Yext launches Yext Calls service at TechCrunch50 TelecomPaper.
This sounds amazing, just going to show how fast technology is moving. The fact that a call can sense if a sale or appointment is made is mind blowing. I would like to see tis sort of technology brought into the mainstream day to day business life. Infact I’d like to be the person selling it to all the Fortune 100’s. Very good idea and if this works out, the CEO will be a very rich person.
It’ll only be a matter of time before “Yexting” something becomes synonymous with generating traffic to local businesses. I’m really impressed with what they have put on the table during this conference!
and the room for growth is amazing. it’s rare for a new technology to be so easily translated to the masses. any mom and pop can understand that regardless of the technology used, phonecalls=customers=$ in their pocket. brilliant.
sounds better than it is. basic problem is getting people to visit yext.com. Why would they bother when the information is incomplete and very limited.
Yellowpages.com or Superpages.com has so much better traffic and data, why bother with this? Furthermore, the transcription is poor at best.
They drive traffic through SEM done directly by them or by affiliate sites. They don’t rely on people to type the yext.com URL directly.
they publish their merchants ads on those sites, if I am not mistaken.
Correct. Local search is fragmented. Yext will serve as a monetization engine for other local sites, not be a consumer brand itself. Though we do promote Yext.com, it is not critical to our growth or strategy.
Awesome product. They understand local merchants and what it takes to deliver value to them. Bringing business through the phone.
Thank you Dean!
Interested party – they said they distribute thier phone numbers through yellow pages and super pages already.
Impressive software, really like the Search feature
Very much impressed with it .. and it sounds amazing .. well .. technology works wonders!!!
Cheers,
Daina Thomas
The Voice Call recognition and transcription DOES NOT WORK. This is pipe dream stuff.
Also they raised $17 MILLION already! From Sutter Hill Ventures.
We didn’t raise $17 million from SHV.
Interesting denial. Please then announce how much you did raise. In my opinion having a company who raised $17MM in a secondary round in TC50 was not in the spirit of the show.
Any ideas if they are offering ways to resell their platform…? A great idea!
I know these Yext guys and their business model well and I’m blown away. They combine the technical skill with the marketing and business savy you need to get all the gears to mesh at the same time. This is just their latest and greatest. Keep an eye on them. Yext is going to be more than the “next yellow pages.” They are the next big thing.
Come on, it’s only yellow pages man
This will not work because they will not be able to acquire leads from across the web on an arbitrage basis (limited syndication). Google controls most search traffic; do you think they will change their pricing model to partner with Yext to sell their inventory on a pay-per-call basis? Bing? Yahoo?
They will not be able to support a direct salesforce without that inventory because packages will be too small.
The reporting is cool though. Somebody might by that from them…
Also, the speaker says they have 20,000 customers with a direct salesforce doing $20M per year… so the average customer is spending $80 per month? Something is fishy. How many “direct” sales people do they have to sell 20,000 customers? This is fishy…
How is that fishy? $80 is next to nothing for a few targeted calls, especially if they started with the high value add segments.
How did they acquire 20,000 customers? That would take a salesforce of 200 people a year selling 2 customers per week with 100% customer retention? They said they have a salesforce, right?