AI in the Viking Venture Portfolio: LeadDesk 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming industries worldwide, and Viking Venture’s portfolio companies continuously adapt to the shift. Therefore, this article series explores how our companies use AI for efficiency, customer experience, and market leadership. Here is how LeadDesk leverages AI. 

Header image: Miikka Haavisto, Director of Business Development, AI of LeadDesk

AI in LeadDesk  

LeadDesk is a cloud-based contact center for sales outreach and customer service, founded 15 years ago in Helsinki. The company aims to streamline the call center industry by helping agents close more deals and more cases from day one. LeadDesk have used AI for a decade and have now started to leverage AI across their product offering, continuously developing new value adding features.

AI Transcriber and Call Summary – Efficiency and Quality Improvements with AI 

LeadDesk leverages AI in many of their products. One of the features, the AI Transcriber, converts voice calls into text, simplifying quality assurance and analysis. The solution allows users to review transcriptions instead of listening to entire calls, saving significant time. The feature is particularly valuable for regulatory compliance and QA, helping identify key moments, such as booking confirmations or customer agreements, without needing full call reviews. From December 2024, LeadDesk, as the first Contact-Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) player in Europe, offers transcription service included in the service without additional fees.

Working alongside the transcriber, the AI Call Summary generates concise overviews of calls, highlighting critical elements like booking info and other important details. Moreover, this AI tool reduces the need to listen to entire calls by providing a clear summary of outcomes and reasoning. Call summaries can be directly saved into CRM, making the after-call work for agents faster and ensuring high-quality notes in CRM.

Together, these tools streamline quality assurance and support LeadDesk’s mission to enhance contact center efficiency through AI-driven innovations. 

Technology Used 

The AI Transcriber uses Whisper technology for transcription. LeadDesk utilizes its own GPUs for this service, allowing for greater flexibility and lower costs than cloud services. For other AI functionalities, LeadDesk primarily uses OpenAI’s models hosted on Azure, and DeepL for translation services, such as multilingual chat and chatbots. 

Future Improvements in AI

LeadDesk continuously improve existing AI products and is expanding its offering to new, exciting AI-powered products. Two highlights of future releases are: 

• AI Voice bot: Expanding LeadDesk’s Conversational AI offering to help contact centers deflect repetitive questions and enable 24/7 service in the most used communication channel.
  
• AI Insights: Providing valuable insights and trends from customer interactions, quality, and performance. It allows contact center managers to truly know what is happening in their contact centers.

Lessons Learned by LeadDesk

In general, LeadDesk has had a systematic approach to AI development. However, there are some general learnings they highlight: 

• Understanding Market Needs: Thorough research, active customer engagement, and competitor analysis are crucial for aligning AI features with market expectations and delivering real value. 

• Agile Development: Rapid prototyping and feedback-driven iterations help identify and prioritize AI features with the greatest commercial potential. 

– AI has become a core part of our product offering and improvements. It is in this space we will continue to invest time and our resources in the upcoming years, says Miikkaa, Director of Business Development, AI of LeadDesk 

See more of what LeadDesk offers at https://leaddesk.com/Products 

Summary 

To summarize, the integration of AI into business operations is essential for staying competitive in the fast-paced SaaS market. In our latest articles on the topic, two Viking Venture portfolio companies, Xait and LeadDesk, have elaborated on how AI can drive innovation and efficiency.  

As AI has evolved over the past few years, Viking Venture is committed to supporting its portfolio companies in leveraging these technologies for sustainable growth and success. The support includes hosting best practice sessions and making AI a key topic at our annual Viking Venture Day. At these events, our companies share their experiences and expertise. Read more about how we enable knowledge sharing across our portfolio here. Or sign up for our newsletter below for more updates and insights on the B2B software market.