Smart Deal Assist Overview

Objective

The purpose of this article is to provide information about Smart deal Assist, a feature tailored to assist in identifying deal risks and opportunities, determining next steps, and gaining insights into recent activities.

Applies To

• Outreach User
• Outreach Admin

Notes 

• Smart Deal Assist currently utilizes the transcripts of the last 80 meetings/calls and the latest 500 emails for analysis. Please note that access to meeting data is contingent upon appropriate licensing enabling Kaia meeting capabilities for customers.
• Smart Deal Assist uses artificial intelligence to review and summarize Deal activities. Chats remain private to each user, and results can be verified using the ‘thumbs-down’ feedback button to let us know when a response misses the mark.

Overview

Smart Deal Assist offers an AI-generated summary of recent deal activities, along with answers to critical questions such as "What are the potential risks?" or "What are the next steps?" This tool empowers sales representatives and managers to proactively pinpoint deal risks and opportunities, determine the appropriate next steps, and gain insights into recent developments.

Much like the Smart Account Assist feature Smart Deal Assist operates at the deal level, providing comprehensive insights tailored to individual deal management needs.

Smart Deal Assist consists of two question types: Preset questions and free-form questions. 

Currently, responses to posted questions or the generation of summaries rely on data derived from the transcripts of the 80 most recent meetings/calls and the analysis of the latest 500 emails.

Note that access to meeting data is contingent upon the appropriate licensing that enables Kaia meeting capabilities for customers.

Q&A chat

The Q&A experience presents users with a curated list of 12 relevant questions tailored to a typical selling motion. Additionally, users have the option to pose 'free-form' questions, however initial quality will require further refinement.

Chat window assists users with Outreach defined preset questions which are most relevant to users engaging with deal-related tasks.

The following primary scenarios were taken into account for finalizing the preset questions:

• Identifying deal’s current state: quicker ability to identify risk factors or business challenges to determine the best next steps. 
• Prepare for the next meeting: Prep by reviewing and asking a few questions to remind key follow ups, action items/questions asked from the last meetings or emails
• 1:1 Rep/Manager deal review meeting: spend 1/1 more efficiently by getting key insights on the deal faster with ability to skim through the summary of the recent activities and ask clarifying questions
• Deal hand-off: a newly assigned rep can ramp up on the deal faster by getting quicker summaries and asking questions

12 preset questions:

1. What business outcomes is the buyer trying to achieve?
2. What challenge is the buyer trying to solve?
3. What alternative software solutions is the buyer considering/evaluating?
4. What factors is the buyer evaluating this solution against?
5. What factors will influence whether or not the buyer purchases?
6. What steps need to be taken to help the buyer make a decision?
7. What concerns does the customer have about moving forward with us?
8. What risks do you foresee in the deal?
9. What is the sentiment on incumbent competitors and renewal dates?
10. What does the buying process look like?
11. What does each person involved care about?
12. What timeline is the prospect working towards?

User flow

Users have two options for interacting with the chat window: they can either click on one of the question rows displayed, or they can type directly into the input area.

When a user clicks on a question row, the question is automatically sent into the chat window. 

Once sent, the user has asked their question, and they can expect the answer to appear in the chat window within 3-5 seconds. 

Deep links to Kaia meetings and emails

The system searches for the answer across past activities - currently the last 10 emails and 80 emails. Multiple meetings and emails may be analyzed and referenced before generating a smart response. To provide users with further context, deep links are offered under the "Links" section.

Deep Links to Kaia Meetings:

Clicking on a deep link to a Kaia meeting opens a new tab, directing users to the specific timestamps mentioned in the response. This feature not only allows managers to verify the answer but also provides additional context by allowing them to explore the discussion before and after the referenced point.

Deep Links to Email Threads:

Deep links to email threads enable users to view the referenced emails associated with the topic of the question. This allows users to gain a deeper understanding of the context surrounding the answer.

Vote to indicate helpfulness of the answer

Users have options to thumbs up or  thumbs down the response to indicate its helpfulness. These indications are collected  to refine Outreach’s ML model. 

Tips for Improve the Answer Quality of Free Form Questions

• Provide Detailed Context: Share specific details about the scenario you're dealing with. 
• Name All Relevant Parties: Clearly state the names of the customers, companies, products, or services involved in your question. Avoid vague terms like "the customer" or "the product."
• Use Specific Terms, Not Pronouns: Replace pronouns like "he," "she," or "they" with the actual names of people, products, or accounts you’re discussing.

Procedure

Users

To access the Smart Deal Assist feature, navigate to the Deal Overview page and locate the "Assist" button on the top toolbar.

Admins

Smart Deal Assist is initially disabled at both the organization and user levels. To activate this feature, admins must first enable it at the organization level. Once enabled at the org level, all users will gain access to Smart Deal Assist. Admins have the capability to manage individual user access through Governance Profiles. 

Note: when Smart Deal Assist is enabled for the org, Outreach will process and use only the last 3 months of activities, and then will continue to process new activities daily.

Enable Smart Deal Assist on org level:

1. Access the Outreach Platform. 
2. Go to Administration settings (gear icon in the bottom left corner of the navigation sidebar)
3. Click Org info under the Organization section in the Settings panel.
4. Click on the Gen AI tab in the Organization settings.
5. Enable Smart Deal Assist for the org using the toggle button.

Enable or disable Smart Deal Assist on user level (through Profiles):

1. In the Administration settings, click Profiles under the “Users and permissions” section in the Settings panel. 
2. Click the applicable profile.
3. Scroll down to the “GenAI features” section.
4. Check or uncheck the checkbox “Enable Smart Deal Assist”.

What’s New

A. Period filters with extended coverage

• Assist now supports up to 80 calls and 500 emails — this expanded scope ensures you never miss context when looking at long histories.
• Choose from preset filter options like Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days, Last 365 days, Last 7 days prior to last conversation, Last 30 days prior to last conversation, Last 90 days prior to last conversation, Last 365 days prior to last conversation with a Custom Range.
  • Default filter: All time (80 calls + 500 emails).
• Filters are sticky across all Assist screens (Home page, Account Assist, Deal Assist, Side Panel and Slide outs of Account/Prospects/Opportunity), so your selections persist when you return.
• Email and call timestamps will now be shown in both the Assist view and the citations email popup.

Impact:

• More data from up to 80 calls and 500 emails means less chance of missing key interactions.
• Time-filters let you narrow the view to a specific period.
• The same filter stays applied as you move across different screens, so you stay focused.
• Users can clearly see when each email or call happened in the Assist citations, which helps them judge how fresh or relevant the information is.

B. Seller vs Buyer Context

• Assist can now distinguish between seller and buyer in calls, meetings, and emails.
  • This ensures responses pull from what the customer (buyer) is saying, when the question is around the buyer’s perspective
• When users ask questions like “What factors influence the buyer’s decision to purchase?” or “What steps are necessary to assist the buyer in making a decision?”, Assist automatically focuses on buyer-tagged content.
• Even if the user doesn’t specify “buyer,” Assist will infer it from context for buyer/seller specific questions.

Impact:

• Enhanced ability to derive meaningful insights from the buyer’s perspective
• Improved relevance of responses to buyer/seller queries, by filtering out extraneous information

C. Assist available across multiple key surface areas

• Deal Assist is now available across multiple key surfaces: the Home page, Record detail view (in the side panels of Accounts/Prospects/Opportunity), Slide outs on the list view of Accounts/Prospects/Opportunity
• Users will be able to access Assist directly from the side panels of Accounts, Prospects and Opportunity.
• Context stays intact: no need to navigate away from your workflow to get insights.

Impact:

• Assist is more accessible now across the platform, so users spend less time switching screens.
• When users execute the tasks, they can choose to have prospect overview defaulted and use assist directly from there

General FAQ

1. What AI technology does the Smart Deal Assist feature use?

We are currently using Azure OpenAI services from Microsoft - to create embeddings based on Deal’s activity data that would help to generate responses to the questions using generative AI technology. With Azure OpenAI, customers get the security capabilities of Microsoft Azure while running the same models as OpenAI.

2. The Assist button does not show up on my Deal page

Make sure your Admin enabled this feature for you.

3. What data does Smart Deal Assist use to generate the responses?

Currently, the latest 80 meetings/calls transcripts and 500 emails are used to generate the responses to the posted questions or to generate summary. Customers without a Kaia meeting license will only have access to email data (up to 80 emails). No meetings — voice or video — will be used for Deal assist generation.

4. Is Smart Deal Assist available only in English?

Smart Deal Assist uses Large Language Models (LLMs) which are designed and tested to understand and generate text in English. The LLM models support other languages and will be able to generate results in different languages, however, the accuracy and quality of other languages is not guaranteed in the initial scope. 

Governance and Security FAQ

1. Is Smart Deal Assist optional to turn on?

Smart Deal Assist is optional to turn on. Only Admins will have control to turn it off/on on org level or user level (via governance profiles).

2. What data is shared and with whom (3rd party)?

Smart Deal Assist uses Azure OpenAI by Microsoft. Microsoft has no access to Outreach and Outreach's Customer data. Customer data is also not incorporated or used to train Azure OpenAI models. Smart Deal Assist calls Azure OpenAI Service for 1) creating embeddings based on activity data, 2) generate the response to the question based on embeddings

Outreach has opted out of (1) content filtering; (2) abuse monitoring, so Microsoft has no access to Outreach’s data. Customer data is not shared with other customers, nor is it incorporated/used to train the Azure OpenAI models. 

3. Where and how is the data stored?

Smart Deal Assist uses the same storage mechanism (Amazon Web Services) that is used for storing Prospects, Accounts, Emails, and other customer data. The same security and privacy measures apply to Smart Deal Assist data. Customer’s data is not stored in Microsoft Azure.

4. Can the data be deleted on customer request?

Yes. The data is stored in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and can be deleted upon request with the compliance service.