Quality maintained,
for 25% of the cost
A pharmaceutical cleint developed a system to score sales conversations against 25 KPIs. The first build calculated each KPI independently. That meant sending the same 30–60 minute transcript 25 times, and paying for it 25 times. We grouped the KPIs that were semantically related and calculated them together. Six requests then did the work of 25. Quality stayed the same, and the client could add new KPIs without scaling the cost.
Paying for the same transcript 25 times over
The 25 measures come in two kinds. Some are simple: did the rep set out an objective before the call? Others need judgement: did they spot a chance to grow the account? The obvious way to build this is to ask the model each question on its own. But every one of those questions needs the whole transcript to answer it. So a single conversation gets sent, and charged for, 25 times.
Each transcript is a 30–60 minute conversation, and the system was meant for every rep in the United States. The bill grows with the number of measures, the length of the call and the size of the sales force, all at once. Most of that money is spent on the model re-reading words it has already read. The obvious build treats 25 related questions as 25 unrelated ones, then repeats that waste on every call in the country.