The journey of Lukasz Niepolski - A Polish software engineer turning sales conversations into valuable data
The early days: Studies and hackathons
After completing his Bachelor of Computer Science degree at the University of Nottingham, Lukasz Niepolski went on to receive his Masters in Software Engineering from the prestigious Imperial College London. With a passion for technology and a drive to develop his skills as much as possible and as early as possible, he spent a lot of his free time in college participating in various hackathons.
Hackathons are an excellent way for young tech enthusiasts to network, innovate and collaborate. They bring together those with similar minds and interests, and allow them to share and exchange ideas and skills. During one exciting project, Lukasz helped to develop a system to localize a lost phone without using any network connection. Of course, many of the participants are also entrepreneurs in the making, so it is an great opportunity to build connections with others in the industry who could potentially be the perfect helping hand or open door in the future.
Jumping into the game without hesitation
Along with his good friend, Sebastian Jimenez Bienen, Lukasz launched his first business while he was still in college. The team was thrilled when their proposal was accepted to NYU’s Summer Launchpad – the nine-week award-winning immersive accelerator for scalable startups.
Their company, BallotBox, was originally built as a platform to collect and analyze data using digitized surveys and, after just a few months, the company was already serving huge distributors like Heineken and Molson Coors. Nowadays, the company’s mission has evolved to connect and mobilize people first online and then in the real world, where they can build meaningful communities that can help to influence and evolve society.
As CTO, Lukasz designed and developed all of the technical architecture as well as each component of the back-end system. It was an impressive start to his career, but Niepolski was already looking ahead to his next steps. He left BallotBox in August 2019 to focus his time and energy on his own independent venture.
Stepping it up with Rillavoice
At one point, the technology that Niepolski originally built for BallotBox was also being used by sales representatives in the field to collect data. It was not a particularly efficient process, as it required a lot of repetition in completing forms and surveys. Lukasz began to consider other approaches to data collection, and quickly realized just how few options were available – which brings us to Rillavoice.
In 2020, Rillavoice was accepted to the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA), a prestigious American seed accelerator. This is when Rilla truly gained momentum and support to become a startup with cutting-edge technology. Not only is it an excellent tool to replace surveys, but it also allows data capture from conversations that have never before been analyzed in this way.
Rilla delivers pioneer software for speech analytics of face-to-face conversations. On top of that, Rilla is also an omni channel solution allowing users to connect their dialers, as well as to record their online meetings. By recording conversations, Rilla facilitates the digitization of that data in order to provide precious insights. Furthermore, their proprietary machine learning algorithms process the conversations and help to provide tips and insights for improvement.
Rillavoice is beneficial for sales managers, newly hired sales representatives and even a company’s top performers. Managers save a great deal of time with the option of virtual ride-alongs. Furthermore, they can leave feedback for their reps and even share materials from conversations with others. Undeniably, this means a significant decrease in training time for new hires, as well as a reduction in overall expenses.
The app is easily installed on a user’s phone or tablet, and captures conversation in real time. Then, Rilla automatically transcribes and analyzes the conversation using proprietary AI technology. The company operates on a monthly subscription system. One license for a sales rep has a base cost of $100, with applicable discounts available based on contract length and number of licenses.
Recording conversations and respecting privacy
When considering conversation recording and sales data analytics, it is inevitable that the question of privacy will arise. Thankfully, Niepolski is a step ahead and shares that “we [at Rillavoice] pay a great deal of attention to privacy.”
The platform has implemented various systems to protect their user’s privacy, as well as the customer’s privacy. Users decide on their own when Rillavoice is recording them, so they don’t record their private conversations. Rilla also has the ability to filter-out certain conversations depending on the subject matter, for example, a conversation with a co-worker. In addition, Rilla can also change the customer’s voice to make sure that they cannot be recognized, or even completely eliminate their voice from the recording.
Next steps
Lukasz Niepolski is always looking for ways to improve his business. He has already established lucrative partnerships with leading companies, such as Top Rep. When asked about what he envisions for the future of the company, he shares: “[Looking forward, we plan to introduce] sales patterns/topics and real-time analysis.”
Both ideas are sure to bring great value to the company. By using AI technology to search for non-predefined patterns and topics that appear repeatedly in conversations, users will be able to easily identify what exactly leads to successful sales and, in turn, help their sales representatives to improve their numbers. In addition, with real-time analysis, users will instantly receive tips during their conversation, and immediate feedback on their performance to help improve their delivery and interactions with potential customers.
Although companies like Gong.ai and Chorus.ai also offer software for speech analytics, their product only analyzes online calls taken on Zoom or Google Meets. Rillavoice, on the other hand, offers an omni channel solution not only for offline meetings/conversations, but for online calls as well. Their product fundamentally stands alone, and has completely revolutionized the sales data analytics industry.
