The Challenge: Full engagement in conversations and detailed meeting notes
Andy Gardner, Head of the Customer Success and Program Team at Brightmile encountered a challenge that most client-facing teams know all too well — taking good notes and documenting key meeting outcomes takes hours every week. At the same time, fully focussing on the conversation in meetings and ensuring that no critical details are missed in notes is no easy task. Says Andy:
"Being focused on the meeting rather than scribbling down notes was probably my big bugbear… Imagine you're on a call with someone and all they are doing is constantly looking down at the paper in front of them."
– and creating comprehensive notes and follow-ups is near impossible on a meeting-heavy schedule:
"There's so much we ask our customers in 30 minutes - small things that tell us about what sort of localization or config they want in place. It's just really difficult to keep track of everything. And if I have a first meeting at 7 AM in the morning and I don't write notes immediately - which I often can't do [with back to back meetings] - I'm going to forget some of the key points from that meeting."
Why are notes so important in customer success? After meetings, the Customer Success (CS) team at Brightmile update their CRM with meeting notes and key insights that they use to calculate customer health scores. Those health scores are used to evaluate how customers engage with the Brightmile product and track every touchpoint they had with Brightmile’s CS team. High-quality meeting notes are therefore critical for the team to assess if customers are experiencing the value of their product, which affects retention and the bottom line.
Solution: Automating meeting notes with AI
Faced with this challenge, Andy turned to Cogram. Among other tools Andy tested, Cogram stood out for its minimal learning curve, ease of use, and, therefore, fast ROI.
When Andy meets with a client, Cogram transcribes and then drafts a high-quality summary, bullet-point notes, and identifies action items. Andy describes the value that Cogram provides as:
"For me, it's the efficiency and time saving as the key. Well, actually, there's more than that. It's the time saving, efficiency, and the third one is comprehensiveness — the little points that I'd forget or wouldn't quite extract from the meetings otherwise."
So Cogram not only reclaims valuable time and focus for Brightmile — the main pain point — but also ensures that no critical details are missed in important conversations. Andy also uses Cogram when preparing client narratives or success stories, where capturing details and quotes in meetings is especially useful.
The fast turnaround of Cogram’s notes was another aspect that Andy prioritized. Cogram completes notes almost instantly after meetings and shares them with the user by email–contrast that with the slow process of waiting for and then watching a meeting recording to recap key points from a call.
With Cogram, Andy is able to follow up with clients or update a CRM entry within minutes after meetings. That can make the difference between no follow-ups and great, responsive client interactions.
Impact: Saving time and ensuring customer success
The impact is clear. In Andy’s words:
"I would say Cogram, for me, probably saves about three to four hours per week writing notes very easily. If I extrapolate that across the team, it will be days saved in terms of admin time."
In addition to these significant time savings, the ability to fully engage in meetings and ensure consistent note-taking has been transformative for Brightmile’s CS operations. For Andy, Cogram has become an essential tool:
"If I was to ever move to another business, I definitely would be saying that this is a tool that I would need to use again going forward."
To see how Cogram can help your team, schedule a live product demo.
