Vendor Radar: Voiceform – Harnessing AI for Intelligent Data Collection and Insights

Overview of the Company

Voiceform’s core offering is a research platform designed to enhance data collection by integrating voice and AI-driven moderation into survey processes. The company positions its solution as the survey platform of the future, enabling users to capture deeper qualitative insights more efficiently through spoken, natural language responses. When combined with traditional surveys, this approach has been shown to increase insights gained per minute. That is, by allowing respondents to talk through their responses, additional pertinent information is captured.

The platform allows researchers to build surveys with standard quantitative question types (matrix tables, multiple choice, etc.) and augment them with voice-based questions that utilise AI for probing and moderation. This AI probing feature is a key differentiator, facilitating scaled qualitative data collection without the logistical demands of traditional one-on-one interviews. Respondents can verbally respond to open-ended questions, leading to significantly more detailed feedback than typed open-ended questions. This capability shows how AI-enabled data solutions can creatively address the challenge of uncovering dark data – specifically, the rich, unstructured insights in voice responses.

Independent analysis of using voice responses in data collection suggests that it provides twice as much qualitative information as text input. A study by independent research firm Emporia found higher participation rates and more in-depth responses when comparing voice and text responses. Voice responses were, on average, 105 per cent longer than text responses: 82 words versus 40 words, respectively. This additional information led to deeper insights and analysis.

A significant component of Voiceform’s offering is Nova, an AI analysis tool designed to summarise, extract themes, and create charts from the collected voice data, effectively acting as an AI research assistant. This addresses a common challenge in qualitative research: the time-consuming nature of analysing large volumes of unstructured data. As detailed in the IBRS paper, “Impact of AI on Business Intelligence – Trends & Capabilities to Watch,” this type of analytics assistant will become increasingly common. In the case of Voiceform, it is essential, as the platform not only captures highly structured data but also has the potential to extract additional, sometimes unexpected data from semi-structured (guided) conversational questions.

Another demonstration of how AI will be increasingly used in data analytics is Voiceforms’ translation and localisation features, allowing surveys to be deployed in over 50 languages, with responses translated into English.

Voiceform also acknowledges that many organisations have established survey platforms such as Qualtrics, Decipher, Alchemy, and Confirmit. Consequently, their solution is designed to integrate with these tools, allowing clients to embed Voiceform’s voice capture capabilities into their existing quantitative survey workflows. This aligns with the trend of integrating generative AI (GenAI) into existing enterprise software tools to enhance user interaction and data comprehension, effectively acting as embedded software within an existing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution.

Customer Profile

Voiceform identifies two primary customer segments: research agencies and consultancies, as well as enterprises.

1. Research Agencies/Consultancies: this segment includes VPs of research, research teams, and insights teams. These clients use Voiceform to enhance their service offerings by delivering deeper insights to their own clients, often at a lower cost and in a shorter timeframe. They typically integrate Voiceform into existing survey tools or use the platform holistically.
2. Enterprises: within enterprises, the primary users are consumer insights teams, including Directors of Consumer Insights and Consumer Insights Managers. Common use cases include concept testing, advertising testing, and exploratory research. An emerging use case is in contact centres for customer experience (CX) applications, such as customer satisfaction measurement.

The ideal customer for Voiceforms typically already utilises survey tools, making Voiceform’s integration capabilities or its potential as a replacement an attractive proposition. While Voiceform’s strongest markets are North America and Europe, it has a growing presence in the Oceania region.

Voiceform is most suited for organisations looking to move beyond surface-level survey responses and understand the why behind customer opinions and behaviours. The platform’s ability to capture extensive, open-ended responses makes it valuable for clients seeking nuanced feedback without the intensive resources required for numerous individual interviews. This resonates with the AI trend of enabling more agile, real-time analysis at scale, allowing businesses to process and act on data more swiftly, as detailed in the IBRS paper, “Impact of AI on Business Intelligence – Trends & Capabilities to Watch.”

IBRS recommends that prospective Voiceform clients start small with voice-enabled surveys and data collection, generally leveraging it for internal projects to demonstrate its value before scaling to larger, external research initiatives. This internal first approach enables data teams to develop expertise in structuring conversational surveys, thereby providing confidence in the technology. Gaining experience in applying AI to enhance existing survey methodologies, rather than replacing them entirely, is vital to success with a product like Voiceforms.

Growth Strategy

Voiceform’s growth strategy appears to focus on several key areas:

1. Pioneering Conversational Quant: continuously developing and promoting the integration of rich, voice-based qualitative data capture within quantitative survey frameworks. This remains a new concept for most organisations, but one that is likely to gain traction over the next three years as it can be shown to increase the density of insights gained in survey work.
2. Enhancing AI Capabilities: further development of its AI tools, like Nova for analysis and AI probing for data collection, is central to its value proposition. This includes improving summarisation, theme extraction, and potentially other analytical functions to reduce researchers’ workloads. The integration of AI assistants for data explanation and visualisation, as highlighted in broader AI trends, is an area where Voiceform’s Nova tool aligns.
3. Platform Integration: strengthening and expanding integrations with existing major survey platforms, reflecting the trend of AI capabilities becoming embedded in existing workflows.
4. Market Expansion: while strong in North America and Europe, further penetration into these markets and continued growth in Oceania, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are strong targets. The platform’s built-in translation capabilities support the vendor’s global ambition.

Disclaimer

IBRS Radar papers are not endorsements. They are part of our commitment to raising the capability of the domestic ICT industry.

The IBRS Radar series provides high-level snapshots of local Australian technology vendors and service providers. The goal of these snapshots is to raise awareness of local firms that may be overlooked by the large international advisory firms, or that may lack the marketing budget of the industry giants.

IBRS selects these vendors based on their progress within, and relevance to, trends in the Australian ICT landscape. These snapshots are not paid engagements. In most cases, the organisations selected for IBRS Radar come to IBRS’s attention during conversations with their clients, and during our regular conversations with senior local ICT executives and their teams.

Information presented in these snapshots is gathered through interviews with the vendor’s senior executives (Philip Brook, CEO and Co-founder of Voiceform) and, when possible, validated by discussions with their clients.

If you wish to explore the relevance of a vendor to your own projects, you can submit an inquiry to IBRS.