Introduction
ThoughtLDR takes a radically different approach to communications and public relations. Based in the UK and founded in 2019, the team works with technology companies of various sizes and sectors, primarily in the US and UK. With clients ranging from fast-growing startups to established enterprises, manufacturers (Mercedes), and prominent technology leaders (Twilio), ThoughtLDR focuses on their namesake: leaders with a great vision, team, and technology guiding their company in a groundbreaking new direction.
Time is a treasured resource amongst ThoughtLDR’s roster. Between calendars full of client calls, project and production management meetings, and administrative minutiae, the time to complete work across fast-moving objectives and high-pressure deadlines can be hard to carve out.
Problem
As an agency, ThoughtLDR’s team spends hours on calls, parsing project information from client companies and executives in order to better understand the clients’ products, platforms and technologies, and execute high-impact campaigns on their behalf. Crucial to ThoughtLDR’s work is understanding the scope of work, identifying next steps, and planning and agreeing with the client subsequent actions to take.
The mechanical and administrative tasks of recording notes, assigning tasks, and realising/delegating next steps are parts of agency work that, for the longest time, were accepted as a necessary and unavoidable hurdle before production and activation. If done manually, there is a risk that certain small but crucial pieces of information could be missed in the process. Missed steps don’t just create cost overruns and extra work; they would, if allowed to happen, undermine results and even the client relationship. Consequently, ThoughtLDR had extensive manual checks and balances in their process to prevent such human error, combined with a complex tech stack.
In the search for better automation of this arduous but crucial point in the client communication process, ThoughtLDR met with Cogram to create efficiencies where none previously existed. ThoughtLDR deployed Cogram and this not only streamlined client communications, it also allowed ThoughtLDR to refocus team resources on higher value client tasks such as strategy and campaign activation.
Solution
Cogram worked with ThoughtLDR to implement what Tamara Sword, Founder & MD of ThoughtLDR, later called “the AI equivalent of an account executive [on a meeting] with maybe two to three years experience”. By utilising Cogram’s platform, the agency was able to work even more efficiently.
Cogram’s best-in-class auto-transcription provides an accuracy rate that significantly outperforms other transcription services that were previously being used by ThoughtLDR. By automatically generating action items and next steps based on these transcripts, Cogram helped ThoughtLDR circumvent hours of manual work in seconds. From day one of implementing Cogram, client meetings now had actionable next steps spelled out by meetings end, saving hours per week.
After just a few weeks of using Cogram, ThoughtLDR revised the company’s hiring plan — and reallocated resources planned for more administrative account roles elsewhere in the business. “[Cogram] changed our hiring plan,” says Ms. Sword. “What is more transformative than that?"
“Cogram changed our hiring plan. What's more transformative than that?"
Cogram helps ThoughtLDR deliver and maintain the world-class client service the agency has built its reputation on. “We have always worked hard to turn around meeting notes and actions promptly. Now with Cogram we deliver meeting notes, actions and transcriptions almost instantly. We’re obsessed with tech at ThoughtLDR and we only work with tech companies - so it really helps set us apart as an agency when we can introduce our clients to innovative solutions like Cogram.”
Conclusion
After speaking with Tamara Sword and the ThoughtLDR team, the team at Cogram learned of the agency’s requests that would help further bolster their capabilities with Cogram. “I would like to have Cogram join all my Zoom meeting, automatically,” said Ms. Sword. [At the time. Cogram had to be manually invited on a per-meeting basis.] Cogram has recently enabled just that: auto-inviting Cogram to meetings is now as effortless as creating action items from those meetings – making Cogram a contributor that “just works” and helping future-forward companies like ThoughtLDR spend more time on creative work and company growth, putting meeting notetaking on trusted autopilot.
