New Interview with Wyem Dardouri, Product Evangelist at iovox

interview, call tracking, classifieds, directories, marketplaces, webconnect, 

Guy Kawasaki, a Silicon Valley icon, is well regarded as one of the pioneering “product evangelists” but what does a product evangelist do? And in the case of iovox, what does this new role look like that is being filled by long-time iovox leader, Wyem Dardouri? In this blog, we start with some background and then share some of the iovox ‘good news’ Wyem is bringing to customers and prospects all around the globe.

In a 2018 Huffington Post entry titled “What Does a Product Evangelist Do?”, Silicon Valley icon, Guy Kawasaki who served as Chief Evangelist for Apple, describes the role as someone who “brings good news about how a product or service improves people’s lives”. He goes on to point out that the evangelist’s job is have the other person’s best interests in mind vs. a financial motivation about closing a sale.

At iovox, co-founder and CEO, Ryan Gallagher recently made the decision to create a product evangelist role in the company, and to fill that role, he appointed long time employee and former director of account management, Wyem Dardouri.

According to Gallagher, “I want to see iovox improve the educational aspects of what we are doing with new products and how they can help our customers, without putting the pressure on someone to close a sale. With her years of experience and dedication, Wyem is the perfect fit.”

Wyem at Property Portal Watch Madrid

An 11-year veteran of iovox, Wyem Dardouri has perhaps been in front of more customers than anyone other than Ryan Gallagher himself, and she has a unique perspective from years of listening to the challenges customers are facing when it comes to maximizing the value of call data and other analytics inside enterprises.

“When Ryan talked to me about this new role, I was really excited about serving as a bridge between our product team and our customers. Now in my new role, I am working closely with our account management team to help educate our current customers about all the new tools we’re bringing to market.”

Recently, Dardouri was interviewed by Edmund Keith from Online Marketplaces where they discussed a range of topics including Wyem’s new role and some of the ‘good news’ she is bringing to the industry in the area of iovox call tracking.

The Evolution of Call Tracking for Classifieds, Directories, and Marketplaces

Prior to joining iovox, Wyem had never heard of call tracking at her previous companies or while in business school. Upon joining iovox, she was initially tasked with developing the French market where she learned first-hand the benefits of what call tracking technology can do for businesses of all types, but specifically for classifieds, directories, and marketplace companies.

This front-line learning directly with customers through her roles on the commercial team in sales and account management served as a great training ground for her new role as product evangelist.

Today in the classifieds and marketplace sector, iovox works with some of the most well known brands in the world, including Zoopla, Immobiliare.it, REA Group, AutoTrader UK, and Groupe LaCentrale to name a few.

The newest service – iovox WebConnect

Let’s pick up the recent interview between Wyem and Edmund with a question and demonstration of one of the newest products Wyem is excited to share; iovox WebConnect.

When asked about where iovox is seeing demand for services like WebConnect, Wyem highlights regions like Latin America and Asia where classified and directories companies have an interest in call tracking but local numbers to associate with each listing can be quite cost prohibitive. The iovox WebConnect solution eliminates that concern and enables full conversations through a simple web-browser.

Additionally, the added analytic insights from WebConnect are extremely useful for marketers. As Wyem points out, “when you have a private advertiser section in your portal, you have a lot of ads, but usually, like 80% of the time, the advertisers are non-paying customers, so they’re just on the website, they’re bringing a lot of traction to the website, but they’re not paying. It’s very strategic for a portal to use WebConnect to gain visibility on call activity but also to upsell to premium accounts. For example, the portal would have the information to tell a customer that if they drop their price by 10% you might sell your car 10 days before the planned date. You can really go far with the data.”

When asked whether iovox is seeing a decline in phone calls due to millennials not wanting to talk on the phone, Wyem indicated it was actually the opposite. Calls are increasing, saying “So of course, you will probably not make a phone call to buy small items, something which is not very expensive. But if it is to rent or buy a place, or if it is to buy a car, these are high value products. And usually, you don’t spend money on something like this without asking questions and making sure that’s the right choice for you. So people tend to call and we don’t see any decline in calls, we see quite the opposite.”

In a wrap up, Wyem was asked to address a topic raised earlier by iovox CEO Ryan Gallagher, in a blog post titled, “Is it the Beginning of the End of Telephone Numbers in the World?” Wyem made the case that due to covid and working from home, we’ve all become more accustomed to tapping a button to start a call on tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams vs. dialing digits on a keypad. The voice call still happens, but the method of connection is different. Anticipating more changes like this and the evolution of how voice calls are generated is a big part of the initiatives iovox is pursuing with products like WebConnect.

For a full replay of the interview between Edmund and Wyem, please find it here.

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