A voice assistant now calls participants for the export fair in Africa

Starting point

A company organising export trade fairs in Africa ran participant acquisition with an eight-person team. Identifying prospective exhibitors, calling them one by one and persuading them to take part: all three steps depended on human effort.

For an export fair, finding participants is the heart of the business; a fair only makes sense with enough exhibiting companies. In this model, reach is capped by the number of people on the phones: reaching a wider audience means more staff, higher fixed costs and longer days of calling. The only way to grow reach is to grow the team.

What the assistant does

Today the same operation, from finding participants to booking appointments, is run by AvaritCall's voice assistant. It works as an outbound calling campaign: it calls Turkish business owners, presents the fair and books the participation appointment.

• Calls Turkish business owners in turn.
• Explains the fair and the export opportunity.
• Books a participation appointment for anyone who is interested.
• Call transcripts are logged in the panel and can be followed via push notifications in the iOS app; calendar and CRM integrations are connected per setup.

What lands on the team's desk is not a call list but booked appointments.

Outcome

The cost of the eight-person team is now below the cost of a single employee. The same work is done with far wider reach: how many business owners get called no longer depends on how many people are on the phones. The picture has two sides: on one, a cost that replaces an eight-person team and stays below a single employee; on the other, a far larger pool of prospective participants than before.

Cost goes down while reach grows, both at once. The two are not traded off against each other: reaching more people no longer requires building a bigger team. Human time can then go into conversations with interested prospects rather than into calling lists.

What people still do

The assistant takes on calling, presenting the fair and booking appointments. The commercial and operational side of organising the fair, the work that needs judgement and relationships, stays with the team:

• Settling the stand and package choice, and closing the participation contract.
• After the appointment, planning the participant's stand placement, travel and logistics.
• One-to-one conversations with hesitant prospects.

In short, the assistant knocks on the door and turns interest into an appointment; closing is the team's job. As in every case, pricing negotiations and complaint handling stay with the team.