SANTA BARBARA, CA., October 4, 2022 – During its 8th annual Invoca Summit, the premier conversation intelligence conference for marketing, contact center, and customer experience professionals, Invoca, the cloud leader in AI-powered conversation intelligence, announced its 2022 Invoca Summit Award winners. Each year, these awards recognize extraordinary B2C customer brands and partner teams for their use of conversation intelligence to achieve outstanding business results. 

“Our customers and partners raise the bar each year with some of the most innovative use cases in conversation intelligence,” said Jennifer Lovette, SVP of Customer Success at Invoca. “The most rewarding part of the work we do is helping our customers drive revenue and achieve their goals through conversation intelligence. The Invoca Summit Awards recognize excellence in 10 categories spanning hard-charging new customers, sophisticated power users, vocal advocates, and results-driven partners. Congratulations to all of the 2022 finalists and winners!” 

This year's Invoca Summit winners are:

Rookie of the Year 

Winner: Pearson Education

Finalists: Alpaca Audiology, Atria Senior Living, UW Health 

The Rookie of the Year is a customer who has been using Invoca for less than one year and has demonstrated outstanding dedication to getting it up and running quickly, embraced conversation intelligence with passion and has seen meaningful impact within months of going live. Pearson Education wins this year’s award for its rapid expansion as they rolled out both Invoca for Marketing and Invoca for Contact Center across an entire division. They leveraged Invoca to better understand their customers' needs and pathways. By importing Invoca data into bidding tools, they are also optimizing spend to spot trends at a macro AND micro level which provides insights and guidance across the organization.

Visionary of the Year 

Winner: Robert Half

Finalists: Renewal by Andersen, RingCentral, Starkey Hearing Technologies

The Visionary of the Year is a customer who makes the most of their conversation intelligence through a strong vision — and executing on that vision — to fully use the technology in innovative ways to meet business objectives. Robert Half wins for using Invoca’s IVR and extensive lookup tables to improve caller experience in a visionary way. They have implemented multiple integrations allowing them to measure the value of their calls for campaign optimization and budget allocation to truly understand the value of their marketing efforts. 

“[Robert Half] is really focused on providing an excellent user experience and driving innovation and platforms like Invoca really allow this to happen,” said Regan Sweeney, Sr. Director, Global MarComm Analytics, Robert Half. 

Thought Leader of the Year 

Winner: Chris Pace from Banner Health

Finalists: Mark Roblez (MoneySolver), Jeff Arduino (Spectrum Retirement), Tim Mogler (Mutual of Omaha)

The Thought Leader of the Year is a customer who eagerly and publicly shares their industry expertise and the innovative ways they use conversation intelligence to drive business value. Chris Pace, Chief Digital Marketing Officer at Banner Health, was one of the first customers to upgrade from DialogTech to Invoca. The organization has fully embraced Invoca, and as a thought leader, Pace has extended himself as a true partner to Invoca by participating in multiple webinars. Not only has he been a tremendous resource in the healthcare space, he also helps other customers upgrade from DialogTech to Invoca. 

“Clearly awards like this don’t come by one individual alone, they do require a team and I am so fortunate to work with some of the best in the business on the Banner Health side, but equally, I am excited that I’ve been able to collaborate and connect one of the team members at Invoca– Jennifer Bassik, who has really side by side in helping us ideate content for different audiences and getting that thought leadership that we partner with together in front of many different people” said Chris Pace, Chief Digital Marketing Officer, Banner Health. “So I am just so grateful; so thankful. Cheers to all the nominees and finalists that made it this far. It is truly a challenge, and especially with our remote environment to get thought leadership scaled out so congrats to everybody.

Best Use of Conversation Intelligence in a Contact Center 

Winner: Kinetic by Windstream

Finalists: Bay Alarm Medical, Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking, MoneySolver

The winner for Best Use of Conversation Intelligence (CI) in a Contact Center maximized their use of CI with the Invoca for Contact Center solution to not only improve operational efficiencies, but also the customer and employee experience. Kinetic by Windstream wins for being able to increase overall sales call quality and agent performance to continuously improve and personalize their customer’s experience. This has led to a 40% increase in average revenue per sales call, 27% decrease in calls where the agent failed to overcome caller hesitation, and a 5% increase in script and sales process adherence. 

“You know our competitive nature has no bounds and we want to win at everything that we do. Having Invoca’s AI platform in our tech stack really enables us to win across the telecommunications industry and we plan to win for the foreseeable future, so thank you for this wonderful award and we appreciate the partnership,” said Lorenzo Clark, Vice President National Sales Consumer/Business Digital Sales, Kinetic by Windstream. 

Best Cross-Channel Customer Experience Strategy 

Winner: DIRECTV

Finalists: Aspen Dental, BBQGuys, Spectrum Retirement 

The winner of Best Cross-Channel Customer Experience (CX) Strategy is a customer who uses insights uncovered with Invoca to significantly improve their customers' experience and collaborates across channels to do so. By getting an omnichannel view into the buying journey with Invoca, DIRECTV wins for being able to detect and correct issues early on. Utilizing a dynamic IVR, they have improved the customer experience for over 250k callers each month by effectively routing calls and arming agents in advance with valuable information about the caller. This not only reduces call times, but also improves agent close rates. In addition, DIRECTV is tracking offline media through their main brand 800 number and can now correlate call volume to offline placements for the first time ever.

“Invoca has become a critical part of our tech stack because it’s enabled us to take a holistic approach to customer experience, said Mark Loovis, Senior Director – Marketing Technology, DIRECTV. “It’s given us full visibility into the call channel and significantly reduced our cost per acquisition. And we’re just scratching the surface of what it can do.”

Best Upgrade of the Year 

Winner: ATI Physical Therapy

Finalists: Banner Health, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Sentry Insurance

The winner for Best Upgrade of the Year recognizes a customer who has moved to Invoca from DialogTech, and seen a swift and meaningful impact within months of upgrading. ATI Physical Therapy wins for seeing rapid adoption of Invoca after upgrading from DialogTech for visibility and attribution and has found a way to deliver customer journey insights to continuously improve experience across their 900 clinic locations. They are also able to better understand demand and staffing requirements for each location.

“Most healthcare organizations would say staffing is an issue,” said Dennis Haupt, Digital Marketing Manager, ATI Physical Therapy. “So as staffing ebbs and flows, we’re able to pivot in and out of hubs or centralize or take it all on your own. And with the Invoca system, it’s great because nothing changes, we don’t need to reconfigure anything. We can go in and say you know we want to sort by hub, I want to sort by district or I want to sort by clinic.” 

Performance Marketer of the Year

Winner: Infinity Sales Group

Finalists: Apollo Interactive, Intelsio, ThomasARTS

The Performance Marketer of the Year is a partner or agency who has introduced a new turnkey integration that delivers incredible value, using out of the box thinking to find new ways to use Invoca data to drive results. Infinity Sales Group wins for driving full-funnel acquisition traffic, getting complete visibility into the sales calls their marketing campaigns drive, and tracking call conversions to optimize media spend for their clients. This resulted in an 80% reduction in wasted ad spend and a 50% increase in total revenue and order volume from non-branded paid search keywords. By using integrations with key marketing activation platforms like Google and Microsoft Advertising, Infinity Sales Group is able to track calls and conversions and use these call outcomes as an input to their optimization strategies.  

“Invoca has been a valued partner and imperative in our marketing toolbox,” said Jason Hazlewood, Director, Online Experience & Usability at Infinity Sales Group. “We look forward to the future of what new features and functionality Invoca continues to bring to the table, allowing us to continue pushing the boundaries in data analysis and call to conversion optimization. Thank you.” 

Breakthrough Partner of the Year 

Winner: Shift Digital

Finalists: Neustar, Optimizely, Quantum Metric

The Breakthrough Partner of the Year is a partner or agency who has introduced a new turnkey integration that delivers incredible value, using out of the box thinking to find new ways to use Invoca data to drive results. Shift Digital, an expert in the automotive industry, provides comprehensive technology solutions to shared clients with Invoca collaborating with Invoca on new digital marketing and sales programs. Together, Invoca and Shift Digital collaborate on new digital marketing and sales programs. Their joint services integrate across multiple digital marketing and sales programs to measure, manage, and improve shared customers’ performance.

Partner Collaboration Award 

Winner: Google

Finalists: Impact, Rise Interactive, Tealium

The Partner Collaboration Award recognizes a technology or agency partner who consistently demonstrates a strong commitment to supporting opportunities through collaboration on events, webinars, lunch and learns, and other promotional activities to drive visibility, awareness, and business opportunities with new customers. Google wins for being an outstanding partner to Invoca, driving a significant amount of shared business and continued collaboration between our account teams across various sectors and verticals. They are also a regular speaker at Invoca Summits over the last four years, including this year’s Summit, and also include Invoca in the events and webinars that they host. This relationship goes beyond a robust integration, to the continuous collaboration and support of joint clients, ensuring full support of their KPIs, strategies and special projects. 

“We’ve been working a lot with Invoca the last couple of years,” said Derek Tucker, Measurement Lead, Home and Consumer Services at Google. “I think it’s been an amazing opportunity to partner with all of your various team members over at Invoca. When we’re working with [them], we know we have a really smooth implementation path and that the integrations that we do with [Invoca] are going to ultimately help advance our customers measurement strategies. So thank you to the Invoca team and congrats to all of the other winners at the Invoca Summit today.”

Partner Innovation Award 

Winner: Five9

Finalists: Contentsquare, Mercury Healthcare, Salesforce

The Partner Innovation Award is given to the technology or agency partner who consistently delivers the most creative use cases or integrations that help bring cutting-edge solutions to the market. Five9 continues to innovate and enhance their integration for the contact center with Invoca. As a result, the integration enables every contact center to optimize the combination of high-value agent capacity and automation.

“This past year has been phenomenal and filled with a tremendous amount of momentum and success with Invoca,” said Stacey Cole, Global Partner Marketing, Five9. “Our success has been based on the fact that we align, we amplify and we accelerate better together. Thank you very much to Gregg [Johson], Ben [Sullivan], Grant [Burchfield], Scott [Sprowls], Jennifer [Bassik], Cathie [Frazzini] and the entire team at Invoca for acknowledging all of our teamwork and our hard work with this phenomenal innovation award. We are looking forward to tremendous success with you in the future years.”

Keep the Conversations Going Through Invoca Summit and Beyond

Invoca Summit welcomed hundreds of customers, partners, prospects, and dozens of industry-leading speakers. The two-day event featured informative sessions from Auto Genius, Banner Health, Christian Brothers Automotive, DIRECTV, Five9, Google, MoneySolver, Mutual of Omaha, Ochsner Health, Yext and more, in addition to a keynote from an internationally recognized expert on conversation and communication, Celeste Headlee. Those interested in learning more about Invoca’s industry-leading conversation intelligence can watch Invoca Summit on-demand or attend an upcoming in-person roadshow event. 

• Watch Invoca Summit on-demand: https://www.invoca.com/summit
• Celebrate the Invoca Summit Awards winners: https://www.invoca.com/summit/awards
• Attend a Summit roadshow event: https://www.invoca.com/summit-on-the-road
• See the results you can get with Invoca: https://www.invoca.com/customers 
• Attend an Invoca Academy session: https://www.invoca.com/academy