The Compelling Reasons Expert.ai Switched to Cognism

Expert.ai, the well-established enterprise AI natural language solution, uses Cognism’s B2B data to:

• Access a larger pool of contacts within our target accounts compared to their previous provider (ZoomInfo), resulting in increased prospects for targeting and enhanced multithreading opportunities.
• Seamlessly integrate with Salesforce CRM and Salesloft with one click.
• Build target lists for Fortune 500 companies in finance, insurance and banking.
• Increase connect rates.

Website: www.expert.ai
Number of employees: 300
Industry: Software 
HQ: Boston, MA
Teams using: Sales & Marketing

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The company

Expert.ai is a global player in the software industry. It serves large corporations across various sectors, including finance, insurance, banking, life sciences, publishing, and media. 

With a workforce of approximately 300 employees spread across different regions, the organisation has a significant presence in North America and Europe.

The challenge

We interviewed Mauro Visentin, Global Head of Inside Sales at Expert.ai, about his experience with Cognism. 

What prompted Expert.ai to explore a sales intelligence tool like Cognism? 

“We did an audit on our tech stack for sales and marketing, and we realised that we had an opportunity for consolidating tools and getting the sales and marketing organisation working in unison from a tool and process standpoint.”

“We didn’t have any major complaints about our previous data provider, but wanted to explore the market to try to find the best solution and implement it across the board.”

“This is when Cognism came up. We contacted your team and ran a comparative analysis on data between a few providers.”

Mauro explained how Cognism performed against competitors:

“We compared Cognism to its competitors. The results showed that in both the EMEA and North America markets, which are our two key focus markets, Cognism had better results in every dimension. Most importantly giving us more contacts and the correct information of those contacts in our target accounts.” 

“So, this is when we decided to consolidate everything under Cognism. We started with a small number of employees in EMEA as we still had a contract with our previous data provider in North America. We took this as an opportunity to explore how well the platform performed from a data provision standpoint for EMEA.”

“The outcome was positive from every standpoint, from user interface, ease of use and data accuracy to your support team. We had a couple of engagements with the customer success manager, which led us to switch to Cognism for North America, too.”

The solution

Who is Expert.ai’s target market?

“Our target market comprises Fortune 500 companies across North America, including Canada, but also Italy, the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.”

Mauro told us more about their ICP:

“We engage directly with C-suite decision-making roles in key sectors like finance, insurance, banking, and life sciences.” 

“Specifically, we focus on large corporations, typically multibillion-dollar enterprises, as the scale of deploying our AI-based solutions requires substantial capabilities that smaller companies often lack.”

How do Expert.ai use Cognism?

“Our Sales and Marketing teams use the Prospector function for outreach.”

“When we have a target company, the sales team uses Cognism to search for company information like titles, seniority. They use the details of those target prospects to start a conversation.”

“So, we’ll use it for activities like target list building for cadences and prospecting.”

Mauro explains the importance of having a good tech stack in place:

“We don’t use Cognism in isolation; rather, it’s a part of our tech stack.” 

“That’s why Cognism’s seamless integrations with our Salesforce CRM and Salesloft is key here. We use Salesloft as a tool for doing the outreach itself, and so Cognism minimises the need for manual data transfers between the two tools. It makes it as simple as a single click.”

How was the onboarding process?

“It was a smooth and reasonably quick process, which we appreciated.”

“Our dedicated Customer Success and Onboarding Manager was incredibly helpful and supportive, going above and beyond by making himself available outside of scheduled meetings.”

“What’s noteworthy is the fast responses we receive from the customer success manager whenever we have any issues. He’s highly responsive to the team’s questions.”

Was it easy to get to grips with the system?

“Yes, the user-friendly interface undoubtedly streamlined the onboarding process for our organisation meaning we could start seeing value quickly.”

He added:

“Our teams are happy with Cognism’s data quality, accuracy, and user interface.”

The results

“Cognism helps us in many ways.” 

“The first is giving us a view of our target leads so we can assess the contacts we can potentially reach out to in any given company in our target market. That’s a clear benefit and very necessary for us.” 

“Cognism also provides us with up-to-date company news, like what the company is currently working on or any changes they might be going through, even recent funding. We use this information to create a more personalised engagement with prospects, resulting in higher response rates.”

Mauro added:

“Our internal analysis found that Cognism provides a higher number of contacts in our target accounts than previously, meaning more prospects to target and more opportunities to multithread.”

“Cognism’s data accuracy is better than what we previously had; having more relevant contacts within our target audience with better contact information has improved our connect rates, and our bounce rates are at 5% which is a huge improvement.”

He told us more about switching to Cognism:

“The transition from one data vendor to another was very smooth. There was no business disruption.”

“We’ve had such a good experience with Cognism. I’d really recommend it to anyone looking for a ‘Yellow Page-like’ platform that is more immediate and more accurate.”

The top reasons why Expert.ai would recommend Cognism

1. Exceptional data quality and quantity

“The data richness and data accuracy are the top reasons I’d recommend Cognism.”

 “It’s also about how we can action the data we find. Cognism gives us the ability to be more targeted, more efficient and more productive in our results.”

2. Customer support

“It’s remarkable. Anytime we need something, we receive an immediate response from our Customer Success Manager.”

3. User-friendly interface

“Cognism’s interface is very user-friendly; that makes the onboarding process much smoother and faster for the organisation.”

“In most cases, our teams didn’t need any extra training beyond the onboarding with Cognism’s Customer Success Managers. Everything was very intuitive and they jumped into it immediately.”