What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Gong is to deep dive into the calls that I do with my leads. After every call that I do, I record through Gong and check all the most important information that I have from the lead. I use it to do follow-ups, create emails, and help me structure the next steps.
For example, I had a call two weeks ago before Christmas, and it was a crowded week with a lot of calls, so I didn't have much time to check lead per lead. I basically used the generated follow-up feature that Gong has inside to help me give speed to the process. I could do the follow-ups with those leads that I spoke to.
I also go back to the transcript of the calls after I have the calls to make sure all the information that I spoke with them was accurate. One of the things that I use after the call is the 'ask anything about this call' field in Gong, asking one specific question. For example, I ask how the client responded when I said that the fee of our service was X percent.
I also like to see if I'm spending more time speaking than the person that is speaking with me. Gong has a couple of bars that show the percentage of time that you spend speaking and the time that the person speaking with you spent in the call. I track that to see if I'm speaking too much. We try to maintain a 70% and 30% split with the client.
What is most valuable?
The best features Gong offers include the 'ask anything about this call,' which is an AI feature that allows me to ask something and it delivers interesting information and summarizes it. The generated follow-up email is also a really nice tool to use. We have used the scoring and feedback features in the past, where my manager would watch my calls and point out all the things that I had to improve throughout the call. I didn't have to see the whole call; he could point to specific times in the call where I had these improvement points. He could also give feedback and a score, from one to five stars, on how good the call that I had was.
Out of those features, the one I find myself using the most day-to-day is the generated follow-up email, which is really nice because it sums up all the things that we spoke about in the call. It's really helpful. We used to have other insights in Gong, but I think they changed our subscription, so we don't have that anymore. Insights was a really nice tool that we used to have because it crossed the information not only from the calls that I had been doing but the calls from the other teammates too, creating comparisons so everyone in the team could work from each other's jobs. It was a really nice tool to use.
I think now we don't have access to that anymore, but I would say the follow-up email is my go-to. Specifically for me in Brazil, I think the information that it gets from the internet about the deal and the company is not that accurate. Sometimes they don't have much information about that, so I think that's an improvement point. If it had more information about the companies that I spoke about here in Brazil, it would be helpful to generate more insights about the lead.
What needs improvement?
One of the things that I mentioned is the information that Gong has here in Brazil. I think there are other generative AIs that have good information, providing good information about the companies. Gong in this field is a bit not ahead. It has to improve more. One point that I would like to see in Gong in the future would be to have more information about Brazilian companies that could help our life in sales. Gong should be more updated and be more full of information about our specific market.
The points that I already mentioned, which are the updates and the information updates that are not really updated, are why it wouldn't be a 10. Another point of not being a 10 is the training that we have from Gong. I've never seen a person from Gong talking with us, giving us training or providing videos or training specific for sales in Gong. It depends on us to navigate in Gong, but we don't have much information and training that I think would be nice for us to have.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Gong since 2024, so it's been approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Gong is totally stable in my experience. I think it is a really nice tool, and I really enjoy using it. Right now, it's a really important tool for my work and for my colleagues' work too. However, I think we should use it more. We should train more about Gong and use more of the tools available.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think Gong is pretty scalable. For example, when we started using it, we did a test only with a couple of employees and had only eight people using it. After a couple of months, we saw all the power and impact of the software, so we increased it to all the employees, making it a mandatory tool in our process and calls. Gong was really scalable. However, the training and all the scoring and feedbacks, I don't think that was too scalable, and I think that's why we kind of stopped using it. We still use it to record, transcribe, and create the follow-ups, which is pretty scalable. For a couple of things, it's really scalable, and for others, it's not that scalable. I'm not sure if it's totally Gong's fault; maybe it's our fault too.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used to have Google Meet for all the calls that we do, and we used to use the transcript from Google Meet, but it wasn't that accurate two years ago, so we kind of stopped using it. Gong was the first one that we actually hired, so it's the only experience that I have.
What was our ROI?
I don't have too many other details to share because I only use it right now; I'm not involved in purchasing, so I don't know how much it costs for the subscription. I would like to have the other tools in Gong that we used to have in the past, but I don't know why they decided to change the subscription type that we have today. It's not really an improvement for Gong, but maybe for my company, in terms of why did they decide to downgrade our plan.
Unfortunately, I don't have that information because I don't work with the purchase of the software, so I don't have the ROI information that you asked about. Probably there's a team that has all this information, but as I'm just a user, I use it on my daily basis.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The team responsible for purchasing this type of software searched for other options, but in my mind, we only had Gong as an option for video recordings and transcription software to use.
What other advice do I have?
I think faster follow-ups is a really nice point. As I mentioned in the example before, in this month, we had a huge amount of leads, so we had a lot of things going on and didn't have much time to develop the follow-ups. Gong impacted really positively because it basically made the process faster with the follow-ups. I think with the close rates, there wasn't that improvement that I expected because it's more a follow-up tool. After that, you have to use other tools to help you with the follow-ups, basically other tools with more insights about the company, which I think Gong doesn't have. Better coaching is absolutely another point. When we used to do the scoring and the feedback, it was a really nice initiative. Everyone would learn from it, and we could see all the calls and exchange a lot of expertise in the field. I think better coaching is also another point really helpful in our metrics.
I would rate Gong a seven on a scale of one to ten.
I think the first thing for the company to see Gong as a tool is to evaluate how advanced your internal processes are. It's a really nice tool to have, but you need to have a good structured process in sales to use it in the best way. For example, we started with the biggest tool that Gong has with all its features, but we couldn't use it, so it wasn't really helpful. We kind of went back to the basics, which is also a really good tool to use. I think the first perspective for the company would be to see how advanced the processes are internally so you can bring another tool to help with that. Otherwise, it would just be another tool that is misused and therefore not really helpful and costly.