Sean Gilligan is the Founder & CEO of a global company Webanywhere. He knew his sales team preferred to talk than type, but sending voice notes via WhatsApp on mobile apps seemed like the only way they could communicate while remote working. At work, his team used laptop computers and had to stay logged into a variety of systems and platforms as part of their daily routine. He wanted everything integrated into one place where he could easily communicate with all his employees, but couldn’t find anything that would allow him to do this effectively enough. Sean has offices in both the US and the UK, where he spends most of his time.

Connecting UK and US teams

As you might imagine, the need for real-time communication was a big challenge at Webanywhere. This was Sean’s first time working on such a large scale and he had no idea how to manage it all. Sean needed a different way of communicating with one another and sharing work across different platforms and locations.

Another challenge was making sure that everybody could access voice notes whenever they needed them. There were times when Sean would send voice notes via WhatsApp but then others would have trouble accessing them because they weren’t coming through on their computer or mobile device as expected. Sean knew that if he wanted everyone involved in voice note conversations, then he’d need something better than just using WhatsApp alone!

Sean knew his sales team preferred to talk than type

When Sean found out that his sales team preferred to talk than type, he knew his problem was a common one. He’d heard that WhatsApp voice notes were the answer to this problem—but when he tried them on mobile apps, it turned out that sending voice notes via WhatsApp on mobile apps didn’t work well at all.

Sending audio messages from your desktop computer with Sound Branch is so much better! You can easily send and receive voice notes from anywhere in the world without having to worry about switching devices or platforms. Plus, you can record up to 2 minutes of audio.

Voice Notes on Computers alongside Mobile Apps 

At work, his team was based in the UK and US. As part of their daily routine, they had to stay logged into a variety of systems and platforms as part of their daily routine. For example:

• Google Workspace – it was used for communication between teams around the world;
• CRM – this is where they kept all customer information and records;
• Jira – this provided support for employees using new applications or having trouble with existing software.

When you need to send or receive voice notes on desktop computers, use Sound Branch

If you’re using a desktop computer or laptop, Sound Branch is the best way to send and receive voice notes.

Sound Branch is an online platform that makes it easy to send voice notes from any device. You can also use Sound Branch on your desktop computer or laptop—no matter whether it’s Windows or Mac OS! Sound Branch has several advantages over other methods of sending audio files:

• It’s free to start with premium options
• It works across all major operating systems with web, mobile apps, Alexa and Google Assistant
• It’s fast and easy-to-use
• All voice notes are transcribed and can be searched

I hope that by hearing Sean’s story, you can see how Sound Branch can help your team achieve more. If you have any questions about this article or anything else in the world of Sales or Customer Service, don’t hesitate to Sign Up Free for Sound Branch for Business. 

Audio broadcasting has been around for decades, but the first podcast – an audio programme, usually part of a series, available to listen to or download over the internet – dates back to 2004. There are now thousands of podcasts available on every topic imaginable, from health and well-being to true crime, comedy and politics

As well as becoming one of the fastest-growing forms of digital entertainment, podcasts have also carved a niche for themselves as business marketing tools. So what are the benefits of podcasting for business, and how do you go about using podcasting to market your business? 

While we all watch videos or read blog posts, podcasts are often a much easier way of accessing information. After all, you can download podcasts to listen to offline, whenever and wherever you want – on your commute, at the gym, while you cook dinner or even in the bath!  As a result – and because we often listen to them through headphones – podcasts feel much more personal and intimate than other forms of digital media. This means there’s an instant connection between the presenter and the listener. Deliver interesting, engaging content week after week and your listeners will stay loyal to you. Podcasting is a unique opportunity for you to promote your brand, raise your profile, share your knowledge and develop long term relationships with prospective customers and influencers all around the world.

So how do you start a podcast for your business? There are four key steps.

Identify your audience and decide on the style and content

Who is your ideal listener? Once you know who your podcast is for, you can tailor the style and content to suit them. How many presenters will you have? Formal or informal? Will each episode focus on one key topic or will it be more magazine-like, with tips, Q&As and guest interviewees? Do you have existing content you can repurpose? 

Record and edit your podcast

You probably have everything you need to record your podcast in your pocket – a smartphone! You can record your podcast directly to your phone’s voice memo app, export it and edit it using software like Audacity. However, editing takes a long time, so perhaps the easiest way is to use an app like Sound Branch, which enables you to record your podcast in short segments, delete and re-record any sections, and drag and drop them into a playlist ready to export. 

Publish and distribute your podcast

We listen to podcasts through Apple, Google and Spotify, but how do you get yours out there? Your podcast needs to be uploaded to a podcast hosting platform, who will publish it online and also distribute it to all the major podcasting directories. If you use the Sound Branch app, your podcast can be pushed out to Spotify, iTunes, and a whole host of other podcasting sites quickly and easily. 

Promote your podcast

Publishing your podcast is only the start: you now need to find an audience for it. Here are a few tips to make sure your podcast reaches the right listeners:

• Choose a strong title and create eye-catching imagery to make your podcast stand out 
• Stick to a regular schedule so listeners know when to expect new episodes
• Create engaging, interesting content to keep people coming back
• Share your podcast in your newsletter, on social media and by word of mouth
• Create a community of listeners you engage with and encourage them to tell their friends
• Invite guest speakers and ask them to promote the podcast to their followers 

So now you know why podcasting is such a valuable marketing tool for your business, what are you waiting for?

Download Sound Branch and you could have your first podcast ready to go in just a few minutes!

The benefits of recording and replying to voice notes

We all need to be respectful of people’s time – it is the most important commodity we have.

In business, the volume of time invested in phone calls is significant and missed calls, cancelled meetings and busy schedules can lead to frustration as well as longer lead times. This friction can be resolved by asking the question… do I actually need to schedule a traditional call?

If a topic is time-sensitive, people are still likely to ‘jump on a call’ for the fastest response. However, quite often, there are important conversations which are not as urgent. This is where asynchronous voice notes can help.

Save time

The key benefit of asynchronous messaging is the pause feature, which allows for preparation and ‘thinking time’. On a live call, a person might ask for a business metric and the reply will often be “I don’t know” or “can I come back to you?” When this happens it can be frustrating for both requester and recipient. In this scenario voice messaging allows for a quicker and more beneficial experience for both parties.

Check-in

Another business example is checking-in with staff. For instance, when a sales rep declares their best-case figures, in voice note form, not only can numbers be received with greater confidence but those who travel or work remotely can send handsfree voice notes ‘on the go’.

Get to the point

Although automated scheduling software undoubtedly reduces the organisation of phone calls/calendar management, you can still end up with 15 minutes to half an hour spent on a call that wasn’t really necessary. Voice notes offer a more efficient solution. You will be surprised how much can be said in 30 seconds! Furthermore, keeping conversations pointed and more thoughtful increases the quality of conversation.

Accountability

As participants are being recorded, you can playback and search archives of conversations – hugely improving understanding and accountability. How many times have you been in conversations where interruptions or high emotions get in the way of progress? When people are ‘on record’ they tend to keep their emotions more controlled, which ensures that real business gets done.

People all have their own preferred methods of communications and lots of people will still opt to use the traditional keyboard and telephone methods. However when people realise:

1. we can talk faster than we can type
2. that voice notes provide an audit trail and
3. there is no need to schedule a call

We believe voice notes will triumph over traditional calls, for a large proportion of non-urgent business communications.

Turn your voice notes into a podcast for internal communications.

As offices fragment into remote teams, work becomes more visual and social media makes us more comfortable on camera – it’s time for collaboration to go beyond text.

In a click, you can record yourself to get an idea across in a personal way. Instead of scheduling a video call, employees can asynchronously discuss projects or give “stand-up” updates without massive disruptions to their workflow.

We want to make it very easy to bring the humanity back in.

With more and more people working from home bridging the gap between the office and the home office can be achieved with voice messaging.

The collaboration space is becoming much deeper than just email plus documents. Voice plus documents makes collaboration a little more interesting.

Why wait on email?

Sound Branch is your platform for team communication. Post important voice messages, podcast your news and tell stories to connect remote teams.

Your team can listen to and comment on voice notes in the app, or directly from the web.

Your team wakes up to a daily flash briefing of what’s important. This curated audio makes it easy to get caught up fast and helps remote teams.

With Sound Branch, you know who listened to your update.

See which voice messages create energy and engagement, and which ones aren’t getting through!

Learn more at:

https://soundbranch.com

PS Save time with fewer emails and meetings needed.

It’s harder to get into Y Combinator than it is to enrol at Stanford or Harvard. Further to that, only 10% of startups survive and only 5% of startups truly scale having graduated from the Y Combinator accelerator in Silicon Valley. Most startups fail or become zombie businesses because they don’t find product market fit. Product market fit is where you solved a massive problem, sometimes deemed “The Hair on Fire Problem”.

You’ll know when your startup has found product market fit because there will be queues for your product round the block, a flood of orders will cause your bank balance to grow significantly. At Y Combinator startups are encouraged to get a user growth of 5% per week. Growth of 1% and 2% per week is acceptable but 5% is the goal.

The mentors and partners at Y Commentator encourage startups to build final viable products (MVPs). It’s less about the technology and more about the problem you are trying to solve for customers. Only when you have found product market fit should you start scaling the technology. The problem lots of startups make is they start building the technology too soon and end up having to iterate their software through pivots. There is nothing wrong with pivots but building the technology too soon may lead to a startup running out of cash. If investors have given you some seed funding and you run out of cash, why should they fund you again?

A winning team and a massive market with a significant problem are what you are looking for. Once you have found these you then need to continuously speak to users to get to the product market fit. You can be speaking to users face to face but with global user bases, this won’t always be possible.

Sound Branch now offer developers and software houses the ability to embed in their apps and web based applications an audio record to get the customer’s voice. You will have seen mobile apps and websites’ pop ups which ask you to rate the site and post a review. These reviews are done with text so including the voice gives start ups a new dimension. The voice gives you emotion, sentiment and intent and therefore a richer data set of user feedback to work with.

In conclusion, the more feedback you get and the richer that feedback the more likely your startup is going to become the next unicorn. If you want to reach an IPO and shoot for the stars after you have established a winning team and a large enough market, all that matters is the voice of the customer. Voice feedback allows you to co-create with your customers. It doesn’t mean you’ll be the next unicorn, it just significantly increases your chances. Good luck in trying to find product market fit, you will need patience and perspective.

You can try Sound Branch out for free. Create your own account below:

https://www.soundbranch.com

Sound Branch a platform which re-imagines voicemail launches. Sound Branch can be accessed on any platform and any device including the web, mobile apps and smart speakers. Powerful voice search of voice messages is available.

Sean Gilligan founder of Sound Branch stated “Alongside short form voice messages which are transcribed into text sentiment analysis allows you to view the emotions of conversations which is a real game changer. Too often in the workplace people are glued to their email inboxes and send countless text messages. What Sound Branch offers is a richer form of communication and brings voicemail into the 21st-century.”

Having attended the Voice Summit in Newark New Jersey, ConverCon at Microsoft HQ in Dublin and having hosted a voice conference in London Sean feels that there is nothing like Sound Branch in the marketplace that offers a multimodal conversational experience.

Sean Gilligan went on to say “Our vision for Sound Branch is to allow every business to have its very own branded voice site and voice notes apps. This will allow brands and businesses to have deeper conversations with their customers, partners and employees. Companies need to wake up to the benefits of VoiceFirst technology which is frictionless and the fact that 50% of all internet search will be via the voice by 2020.”

The productivity gains using voice are obvious with all of us being able to speak four times faster than we can type. For business people on the go travelling all day voice messaging with hands-free access can remove dead time spent in cars to productive hours. Generally what happens when people use Sound Branch is conversations happen that wouldn’t otherwise occur. Voice messaging enables the transfer of knowledge between employees but also for smarter decision-making through conversational analytics.

Conversational data can be overlaid with CRM and financial data allowing executives to make better informed decisions. For example, when the board is reviewing the management accounts commentary can be given with voice messages.

Sean Gilligan explained where he thinks the market is going: “I think people are getting sick of email and text messages which don’t convey emotion therefore I think there will be a resurgence of voicemail in this new digital age. Once people realise that voicemail and voice messaging is simpler, quicker and faster they will start to switch. Already in China and places like Argentina voice messaging is very popular and I think this will come to the UK in the not so distant future.“

To learn more about Sound Branch simply visit soundbranch.com on the web. You can also visit the Apple App Store and Google play to download the Sound Branch mobile apps. Finally, Sound Branch is available via Alexa and Google assistant.

Sound Branch is part of Ventures Anywhere which is Sean Gilligan’s start-up vehicle exploring new innovations and new technologies. Sean Gilligan is an international tech entrepreneur based in Leeds in the UK with business interests in the United States of America and in Poland.

Web link:

www.soundbranch.com

We have all been there in meetings where one person dominates the conversations. Now it is fit and proper that someone should chair a meeting and ask the difficult questions. Indeed it’s important to have debates in meetings otherwise perhaps we are not trying hard enough. There are however sometimes more junior members of staff or staff who prefer to just listen when they have a part to play.

You see the problem is how do you break the habit of a lifetime. We are all programmed differently and some people like myself like to talk. In fact I would say I talk as I think. This can often mean other people don’t get a word in. There is a saying that too many cooks spoil the broth but in a democratic society listening to everyone’s voice counts. This diversity and inclusion leads to new thinking, better ideas and ensures that all angles are covered.

How do you break this habit and tame the charismatic leaders who perhaps need to talk less and listen more? One thing you can do is change the environment and this is where technology comes in. Online meetings scheduled in diaries with links to live video are common place in the business world. Some online meeting software allows controls on who can speak and who can just listen. What they don’t control is the duration that everyone speaks. Online meeting software also doesn’t deal with interruptions when people are cut off mid sentence.

What I want to talk about is a different approach to conducting a meeting. This is a halfway house between the prevalent email chains and the face to face meetings which sometimes overrun, never start on time and often lack meeting minutes. The idea is just in time meetings using voice messaging.

Voicemail use to be popular back in the day and I can foresee a resurgence of the use of voicemail. The distinct advantages are that you get a person’s emotions transmitted and you don’t have to schedule a meeting.

Now the important board meetings and certain types of conversations have to and must always be held face to face. There is however a longtail of meetings where the first question “Do we really need a meeting?” needs to be addressed. In these instances where a meeting is not necessary yet, real discussions and opinions need to be gathered. Voice messaging can win the day.

Starting with the exit in mind we want productive, high quality conversations that make a difference. Voice messaging allows everyone to be listened to and to have their voice heard.

We have just launched Sound Branch as an Alexa skill. This means you can now access Sound Branch on your Amazon Dot and Amazon Echo devices. You can enable the Sound Branch skill by loading your Alexa App, going to the skills section and searching for Sound Branch. You must then enable the skill and sign in to Sound Branch using your credentials on the Alexa App. Once your have done this you have linked Alexa and Sound Branch and you are ready to play all your voice notes on Sound Branch.

You can now ask Alexa:

“Alexa ask Sound Branch to play my inbox.”

This plays all your messages both public, in groups and in private chat. The most recent messages are played first.

“Alexa ask Sound Branch to play my timeline.”

This plays all the public messages of people you follow on Sound Branch.

“Alexa ask Sound Branch search New York.”

This plays all voice notes which have the words New York in them.

Please note if you don’t have a smartspeaker such as the Echo or Dot you can download the Alexa App on your mobile phone. Once you have the Alexa App, your phone acts just as a smartspeaker would and you can ask all of the above questions getting an identical audio experience.