Patrick Burke: What's really cool is when you start seeing things like what we're doing with Gong Labs as an example, we found through analysis that cursing more on calls actually tends to help with deals because they feel the, the person that you're speaking to feels like you're a little bit more personable, um, and that type of thing.

So those are kind of like the insights that we're, those aren't the main insights that we're pulling, but those are kind of, sort of more the interesting ones that we're finding out just kind of through running this business and doing this, uh. This kind of expiration into, into ai.

Tom Arbuthnot: Hi, and welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. Really interesting conversation this week with Patrick Burke from Gong. Gong is a revenue AI platform. The tie in here is they pull data from meetings and calls. They use AI to then push that into CRM systems and they do a whole lot besides, and this is with Numonix who are the platform that are used to gather the teams' call data.

So Numonix have a TAS service where they use their compliance recording engine, but they using it to gather data for Microsoft Teams calls and meetings. To enable the capabilities in Gong so we get into all the details, what gong is, how that partnership works, and how they pull the data and what they do with it.

Thanks to Patrick for taking the time to jump on the podcast, and many thanks to Numonix for sponsoring the podcast. Really appreciate their support of everything we're doing. With the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. Got an interesting one this week. Uh, a lot of talk in our world around, uh, meetings and meeting insights and Copilot.

And, uh, today we're gonna look at a different option that's on the market. This has been like rocketing success as far as I've seen. I've got Patrick from Gong and Patrick, you just want to introduce yourself? 

Patrick Burke: Yeah, I'd love to. Uh, thanks Tom. So I run our go-to-market channel for our technology partnerships over at Go.

Awesome. I've been here for about three years. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Oh. Uh, I I bet that's been quite a ride so far. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's definitely been interesting going from single product to multi-platform and just especially where we, uh, kind of started in AI and now just seeing the proliferation of that. It's been, uh, it's been pretty incredible as you can imagine.

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So for those who are not familiar with Gong, can you just give us like the 62nd what it is? What's the business use case? 

Patrick Burke: Yeah, yeah, totally. So at, you know, at its very kind of base like Gong is a revenue AI platform that helps sales teams win more deals. Um, so we auto capture and analyze sales conversations, providing insights to improve sales performance and close more business.

Um. On top of that, it really just allows users across the org to identify trends, monitor progress of strategic initiatives, and manage sales pipeline really from any level. So be that individual contributor to CRO, to CEO, all across the hierarchy of an org. Um, and we really just empower sales teams to make data-driven decisions coach more effectively and collaborate across, uh, across the org.

Tom Arbuthnot: Uh, I love this space 'cause it's like the most measurable space in the world of like, is your tool doing its job? It's like you can literally see it in the, in the, you know, the sales and the numbers and, and the, the people using the tool, I guess. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. Yeah. That's the interesting part about being in, uh, rev Tech, is that, you know, with any tech, you really have to justify ROI, but ours is very, very clear and tied to direct revenue.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, you're selling to sellers as well, so I reckon that's like the toughest audience. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely interesting. It's tough, but, but fair I'd say because they, they understand the, the sales process and they just want to be more effective in what they're doing. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. So, uh, talk us through the product in a little more detail.

How's that work? Obviously there's a teams integration we're gonna talk about and, and how you do that, but I kind of wanna know where did it, where did it start and did it start with the concept of pulling data from meetings or did it start from. Female or CRM where this, uh, 

Patrick Burke: yeah. Yeah. Great question. So our founder, Amit Benoff, um, was originally actually a CEO at a, at a different company.

And I. Everything was going pretty swimmingly or so he thought until he essentially had a quarter from hell. Uh, they were totally missing on, uh, their projections, on their forecast, and he had no idea why. And so he, you know, in kind of conversations with people, he met his co-founder Elon. Um. And they were essentially like, how do we miss this?

And how can we make sure that we never miss this again? And so that's kind of how the, the genesis of Gong came about, is that understanding what was actually happening in each of those deals would've made sure that they could have actually aligned on, uh, a predictable forecast. And so, as probably a lot of people here are aware, um, CRM is great.

And it's a very, very impactful data layer, but going from a conversation with a prospect or a customer and then taking everything that was in. That conversation and inputting that into CRM manually. Uh, I think the, the data is there's, you know, 5,000 words said on that conversation, and Abra on average, maybe 50, make it back into the CRM.

So there's, I reckon so much, 

Tom Arbuthnot: even 50 doing well in some of the companies I've worked in. Yeah. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. That's, that's a, uh, that's a, a, a good sales rep. Right. Um. But the, the idea here is that there's, there's so much Conte context that we're missing on those calls that should just be automatically pushed into a CRM or pushed into, or as insights for the sales team to actually, you know, have a predictable revenue engine.

Um, and so that's kind of how it came about. It started off with what we would call conversational intelligence. Um, we have since moved from that singular product of conversational intelligence into both of more of like truly forecasting. And also sales engagement. So now we are a full platform with Gong Enable, which is that more of revenue intelligence or Compensational Intelligence product Gong Engage, which is our sales engagement platform.

And then Gong Forecast, which obviously is, is more of like a deal board forecasting capabilities. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And was the, was Gong kind of born with AI in mind or was it like, it came very quickly after and it was like, oh, this is just a perfect marriage of technology and kind of opportunity? 

Patrick Burke: Yeah, absolutely.

Like, uh, you'll, you'll definitely hear that in when, with the current conversations around AI is that we really were born with ai. Um, we kind of had to given that to transcribe and understand context of each of those individual conversations. Uh, we weren't manually doing that, right? We had to have some sort of large language bottles, um, created and articulated around those calls.

And so I believe we have a around 40 of our own native LLMs. Um, but I can double check on that number. But, uh, yes, it's, uh, we were born in and with ai. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. And then the key thing as, as you've talked about there, is pulling data from calls and meetings, summarizing that in the correct way and pushing that into the, the, the CRMI guess, and that's what, what platforms are you supporting there?

Patrick Burke: Yeah, so the main ones that we natively integrate with are of course dynamics, uh, Salesforce, and then HubSpot. Um, in terms of kind of the, the other players in the space, right? Those are really the three dominant ones that we see. Um. We can, obviously we have the ability to kind of build, uh, custom integrations for those as well, but it's really those main three.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Awesome. And then on the uc side, what platforms can you work with on that side? 

Patrick Burke: Yeah, yeah. So, uh, teams Zoom and Google Meet are really the three, three main ones that we're, we're leveraging. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And, uh, uh, now I wanna get into the team specifically and how that works. And, um, Numonix who put us together obviously are some of the technology behind that, so that'd be good.

Get into, but when you pull the data, I guess there's a lot of these like meeting summary platforms now, right? There's like, I was having this conversation the other day. There's done like a dozen pros, humor ones, there's the platforms each have their own, what, what's the secret source? You are kind of, you, you are bringing to that party.

Patrick Burke: Yeah. Yeah. So, um. I think what you're referring to, and we've seen it across a lot of these, uh, these more point solutions. It's just the commodification of certain types of tech and I'd say call recording and transcribing of those calls. That's pretty commoditized at at this point. Um, for us though, it's really the agent layer that we actually just recently released that can now analyze those calls and pull out insights both.

Um, out of the box and custom based on what you wanna actually pull out those calls. So yes, the call recording is great. Yes, the transcription is fantastic. Probably if I'm, I'm biased, probably better than most of our other competitors. But on top of that, it's really that agentic AI that we have now that's going to allow you to essentially query across, whether it be an account.

Um, a number of account, uh, a single call with an account, a number of calls with the, with an account or like the entirety of activity with and to that account. Querying that and understanding the true context and insights that you can pull outta that is much more powerful than I'd say, what you see with just kind of a, a regular call risk order and transcription tool.

Really just a note taker at that point. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Yeah. So is that bit like, if we assume that roughly a bunch of things can get a recording and a transcript and there we can definitely argue over one, slightly better than the other, but then what you do with that information, how you summarize it, and what, like if it was a, a medical conversation that's very different to a, you know, an HR conversation is very difficult to a sales conversation.

So I'm guessing, and keep me honest here, I'm guessing you are, you have specific training and specific models for like, here's the bits we think are pertinent to this scenario. 

Patrick Burke: Totally. Absolutely. And like, just to drill down on a another point that you made, like it really is at this point all about the data and how you can then leverage that data, right?

And so if you look really at Gong's history, when we were mainly a conversational intelligence tool, uh, we really focused on. To sales leaders, obviously, but then also the sales enablement buyer. Um, since then again, because coaching was really a, a super strong use case for us. Since then, while we do still definitely support that use case, once we've kind of come out with these other products, these sales engagement tools and these forecasting tools, we've shifted more and more towards articulating ourselves around.

Still sales leaders still enable them, but really this rev ops persona who cares so much more about data and how to actually leverage that data to close more deals, build more pipeline, et cetera. Um, and so again, it's, it's just been really cool to see that evolution going from okay, really just kind of extracting the data to now actually doing really cool things with it to help our customers get more deals.

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. I love that concept of like, uh, obviously you couldn't help an individual person, but if you're pulling data across the, the, the whole sales team, the whole deal engagement, I, I imagine you can start to pull some really interesting insights of like, well, I. This, this team are doing better than this team.

How are they working? What are they doing? This, this is working, this is not working. Is that the kind of thing you can do from a top down perspective? 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so one of the, that's kind of one of the main things that we, we track is like, or one of the main selling points, um, is understanding what strategic initiatives are winning and what strategic initiatives are losing.

Um, and so understanding, okay, the messages getting that is currently resonating with this buyer is X, Y, z based on. These, these reps actually leveraging it effectively and, you know, progressing their deal versus the reps who haven't been using that, that, um, that kind of talk track and are thus losing.

Right. Um, that's kind of more of like a, a standard use case, but what's really cool is when you start seeing things like gong, like what we're doing with Gong Labs and just as, um, as an example, and this is kind of an old example, but uh, it was one that was really pushed by a lot of people. It's just that like.

We found through analysis that cursing more on calls actually tends to help with deals because they feel the, the person that you're speaking to feels like you're a little bit more personable, um, and that type of thing. So those are kind of like the insights that we're, those aren't the main insights that we're pulling, but those are kind of, sort of more the interesting ones that we're finding out.

Um, just kind of through running this business and doing this, uh, this kind of exploration into, into ai. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, super. Like I, I, it must be fascinating. I think it must be really interesting as well. 'cause a lot of that's gonna come down to like particular sub-vertical and culture and country and all sorts of things.

I'm guessing, again, keep me honest, you can start to understand, well like actually it works different in, you know, this country that does this country or this, this vertical that does this vertical. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think, um, you know, we are now. International, we just, uh, opened up an APAC office and I think there's, there's definitely some learnings from when our team in the US was selling to that market that they probably learned pretty quickly that now of course the, the team there can, will probably already knew, but can certainly leverage, excuse me.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. That's awesome. So let's get into the tech a little bit. So with teams, obviously you've got like, you know, big, big UCAS platform. Like I imagine a lot of, particularly your enterprise customers are probably teams related. We've got the desktop clients, the web clients, the mobile clients. So pre presumably you needed to find a way to capture any team scenario.

Patrick Burke: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like I'd say. I mean, you know it better than I do, but over the past five years it's been just an explosion in terms of team usage. Um, I actually looked at kind of the, just like a real quick gut check that we do over here is just kind of typing in a certain con concept and seeing how many times it has been mentioned quarter over quarter, month over month, et cetera.

And it's fully up and to the right with teams. Yeah. And of course this quarter, now being the most times that it's been mentioned. So it's, uh, it's been pretty great to see. Um, and super glad that we obviously have Numonix as a partner. Um, and really just to kind of get into that, that partnership, right, and really why we're, why we're partnering with them.

Um, at the most basic level. Numonix really allows us to. Deliver on the outcomes that I mentioned or earlier, which is helping teams close more deals, helping people understand their forecast, those sorts of things. Um, because it's really just allows the basic functionality between Gong and teams. So without it, we'd be, uh, we would definitely be doing a disservice, I'd say, to our enterprise customers.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. And so people in our community will know Numonix for compliance call recording. Probably in, in this scenario, you're using their TAS service, which is essentially where you're taking their media capture engine and using that to capture, which means you're using like a certified approach on the team side because Numonix is certified and, uh, secure getting all the data from any team scenario so the rep can be using.

Mobile web, it doesn't matter because it's essentially using the same engine that we use for compliance recording. 

Patrick Burke: Right, exactly. So like if, um, if our team, or if IA team is calling out from teams and they're talking to a, a champion, we are actually able to record that now. Um, we're actually able to coach based on any team call that's recorded in teams.

And then of course, I think really huge for this, um, uh, for this audience, as you mentioned, like. It, it alleviates the need to kind of scrutinize compliance. Because Numonix is obviously already compliant, so we kind of, uh, cross the check for across. Yeah, that's a big one. In our space there 

Tom Arbuthnot: are lots of tools 'cause there are APIs to do this yourself.

And obviously you've got a smart team over there, right? Like conceptually you, you could find a way to pull media, but unless you're on that certified kind of inner circle with Microsoft, they keep changing things, they update things, they move things around and it's kind of a, well, I mean, you can. You can do it with our APIs if you like, but if something goes wrong, you've got nobody to turn to because you're not certified.

So the fact you can leverage a certified integration, I think makes a lot of sense. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah, I mean, just seconding that, right? Like there's, uh, I wouldn't say hoop jump like hoops you have to, to jump through, but there, there's certainly a lot of. Different things that you kind of have to meet or standards that you have to meet, um, that we figured it was just much easier to go through a certified partner who has already done the work and who's also willing to work with us than, uh, go down that road alone.

I. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome and I'd love to get your perspective, Patrick, on like just broadening out to kind of the AI and data insights space. Like, well, what's coming down the road for you in terms of gong and what do you think is really interesting in like that, that space? 'cause it's a real hot topic at the moment of how we use this data.

Patrick Burke: Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. So I think, um. What will be coming down the chain or what could be coming down the chain is just more and more integrations and compatibility between things like Gong and I'd say things like, you know, the chat JBTs of the world. Um, and yeah, just seeing more and more how kind of different solutions fit into like the model context, protocol framework is gonna be really, really interesting.

I think. You know, I'm obviously very biased, but, um, gong to me, we're at a very interesting place because we obviously, we have our own, we serve both as like the server and the host in that model. Mm-hmm. Which allows us to kind of, I'd say, um, both be a hub and a spoke in these sort of conversations with different AI tools.

So I'm super excited just to understand a, or just to see more how like. These new and evolving integrations work with some of our current technology partners and probably partners that we haven't even been thinking about that now through like this AI explosion are able to extract data and push it into Gong's, uh, platform and vice versa.

So it's long-winded, but that's kind of what I'm most excited for. No, I think that's 

Tom Arbuthnot: super interesting and it's like the MCP thing. You're right, as you say that, like theoretically gong can be the interface two. Like dynamics is, you know, a beast. Salesforce is a beast. In some org, like, like I, I, I want to access that information via chat, via gong, and then the same, the other way round, I'm using chat, GPT or Copilot or Gemini or whatever it might be.

Like that, that agent scenario. Now you are serving data into that interface. So theoretically you could, you could be going in all sorts of directions. Now that feels like what end users kind of want, they want like an interface to get to all their data. They don't really want to go to. Where we are at the moment is I go to the.

Tool for the job mostly. And that MCP stuff seems to be the, the on the cusp of changing that a little bit. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. And like by no means is that a, a forward-looking statement on our, on our roadmap, product roadmap. But wouldn't it be cool? Yeah, it's interesting to 

Tom Arbuthnot: see your personal perspective on, uh, on the space and you're, you're obviously right on it.

'cause it MCP stuff is like just exploded in the last kind of even few weeks, hasn't it? So it's, uh, really interesting. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. And it like, wouldn't it be cool if like, um. There was almo, like yeah, if there was just a, a kind of like a sales oriented, true like interface like we have with chat GPT or like we clawed that was really kind of just built on, um, or built mainly on sales data.

Obviously that's, we do a little bit of that, but like. Just focusing on that can be 

Tom Arbuthnot: really cool. Also, the speech stuff is really interesting. Like I've been experimenting with that a lot and like it's getting really good. So you can definitely see a point where like, particularly with a lot of salespeople, they're on the move on the road, like being able to say what was the latest on this account or that account as it kind of mimics the, if you're at the very upper echelons of these games, you know, you probably have an EA or a PA or a team or an like helping you out.

Like in some ways the AI can give everybody that kind of power. I. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah, actually, um, I'm smiling because, uh, I work with a gentleman at this shout out to Francis Rero from Mad Kudu. He's the CPO and founder, but, uh, he got myself and my boss here at Gong, uh, Rob Moyer on essentially having these, towards having fully coaching conversations live with chat GBT, essentially talking to it and, you know, having full conversations, but leveraging that to coach yourself and become a better professional.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's, it's, it's people listening to the pod haven't experimented with it yet. It's really worth playing with. And again, definitely we're, we're still relatively early in this cycle, so it's only gonna get better and better. 

Patrick Burke: Yeah. Couldn't agree more. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Patrick, thanks for joining the pod. Really appreciate, uh, the insights into what you're doing at Gong Link's really exciting and the Numonix partnership.

Nice to hear how that all hangs together. And, uh, good luck with the future. I'm sure a lot of good stuff will be coming. 

Patrick Burke: Thank you Tom and uh, thank you to Numonix for putting us together. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Cheers.