An artificial intelligence program couldn’t conduct a sales call or close a deal, but the technology can go a long way toward easing such tasks for humans.

That’s the proposition put forth by Gong.io Ltd., which today announced it has secured $20 million in funding to apply the power of machine learning to customer acquisition. The two-year-old startup offers a service that can listen in on a sales call, create a recording and analyze the transcript to identify useful patterns. They’re then displayed in a visual dashboard that enables users to look for ways in which lead conversion could be improved.

A sales manager looking to improve the productivity of their team, for instance, could use Gong.io to check what calls conducted by the top performers have in common. If the platform shows that they typically throw in questions more frequently than their peers, then departmental guidelines could be revised to place a bigger emphasis on bidirectional interactions.

Gong.io provides a similar level of insight into the contents of calls. Users can search transcripts for words or phrases with outsized impact on the success of a pitch, like the name of a rival company, to check how often they’re brought up. Gong.io said the information provided by its platform useful not only for managers looking to understand high-level trends but also representatives who wish to learn from their own calls.

It’s the same basic concept that Chorus.ai Ltd. is working to commercialize. The startup, which recently secured a $16 million investment, offers a competing call analytics platform that likewise aims to help sales team draw more lessons from customer conversations.

Today’s funding is intended to put Gong.io in a better position to set itself apart. The round was jointly led by Norwest Venture Partners and Shlomo Kramer, a co-founder of cybersecurity giant Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. The startup plans to hire “dozens” of new staffers using the capital in a bid to speed up its growth plans.

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