How Empion boosts appointment bookings by 150% with telli

About

Empion is developing the first automated headhunting system for the high-skilled labor market, matching talents and companies based on skills, values, and personality traits by using an AI-based Robo Advisor. Through a company culture analysis, Empion quantifies values and subsequently identifies suitable talents. Founded in early 2022, the startup has now grown to 50 employees, received $9 million in funding from Cavalry Ventures, Redstone VC, Basinghall Partners, as well as reputable angels from the HR-tech industry, and recently acquired the competitor Zalvus.

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Challenge

Accelerating outbound call volume to make more quality job placements

Empion’s AI-based headhunting solution is rapidly reinventing the German recruiting industry. Their highly personalized recruitment process combines AI assessment with human outreach, leading to better-fit, longer-lasting placements.

To ensure each applicant is the right match for a company, Empion requires them to complete an AI-generated cultural test before engaging them across two touchpoints: an initial scheduling call and a screening interview.

But as Empion took off and more job seekers submitted applications, Associate Director of Strategy Justus Kloth and his team were suddenly flooded with outbound calls to make. As a result, it wasn’t always feasible to reach every candidate as soon as they’d completed the AI vetting process.

Knowing that timely outreach is critical to making placements, Justus decided to outsource scheduling. This would also give Empion’s expert recruiters more breathing room to conduct productive interviews.

Justus initially experimented with a few self-service appointment booking tools. While these solutions reliably scheduled meetings, they didn’t move the needle enough to meet Empion’s ambitious outbound quotas.

So, Justus decided to seek out a like-minded partner leveraging AI in similarly innovative ways.

When he learned of an AI-powered call automation platform built by fellow alumni, he wanted to learn more. After demoing telli and hearing how natural its AI voice agents sounded, Justus knew he had to see what it could do for his team.

“If you want to drive placements, you have to get people on the phone. telli’s voice agents are booking meetings for us at record rates.”

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Solution

Natural-sounding voice agents book interviews with top talent at scale

With telli, Empion has a friendly team of AI voice agents to scale outbound and guide talented candidates through the hiring process.

Once a lead completes their assessment and qualifies for an interview, telli’s agents call them immediately instead of in the usual 24-48 hours. Because telli uses a smart dialing strategy that schedules calls based on historical reachability data, leads often pick up right away. But if they don’t, the voice agents continue to follow up at the optimal times, working around candidates’ busy schedules to get responses.

And with telli’s guided AI training process, these digital recruiters are equipped to navigate every conversation as smoothly and accurately as their human counterparts. During a typical call, the agent answers any questions the lead might have and then books an interview directly in a recruiter’s calendar.

Crucially, all this automation never comes at the expense of customer satisfaction, as Empion’s steadily rising NPS clearly demonstrates. “Candidates actually enjoy the novelty of talking to an AI voice agent,” Justus explains. “No one else in recruiting is using AI in this way yet.”

Since the agents are scheduling on their behalf, Empion’s recruiters can focus on making each interview as valuable as possible. And with telli’s call transcripts, AI summaries, and sentiment data, they can more easily prepare for each interview, too. Now that they have a full picture of every candidate, interviewers can quickly get up to speed and dive into the probing questions.

Throughout this agent adoption process, Empion has valued telli’s hands-on support team, who always jump in as needed to help fine-tune scripts, add in new agent functionalities, or answer any questions. Knowing expert help is only a Slack message away gives Justus the confidence to hand off even more work to telli’s voice agents.

“We use telli’s voice agents to eliminate logistical bottlenecks so our team can focus on more productive conversations with leads.”

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Results

Empion responds to talent 99% faster

telli helped Empion transform call outbound from a bottleneck into a lead response engine. With telli’s AI voice agents, Justus’ team gets back to top candidates faster, reclaims time for high-value work, and connects countless more job seekers with their dream companies.

The impact:

~150% increase in booking rate
~30% call pick-up rate
99% faster call response time

Justus knows telli’s booking agents are just stage one of a long-term partnership. His team is already working with telli to build two more customized voice agents and eventually plans to optimize the entire customer journey with telli touchpoints.