How Placetel’s sales team saves 1 to 2 hours per employee every day and uncovers the "story behind the numbers"

With massive time savings on CRM maintenance and automated AI coaching, Placetel’s 20+ users spend less time on documentation, have accelerated new hire onboarding by 25%, and are turning gut feelings into hard data.

Challenges

• Hundreds of new customers per month led to a lack of transparency in a massive pipeline (the CRM showed only raw numbers, not the conversations behind them).
• Manual, time-consuming, and often inconsistent documentation process after customer meetings in HubSpot.
• Forecasting and assessments were heavily based on the gut feeling and daily mood of individual sales reps.
• No standardized coaching opportunities; previously, listening in on calls required cumbersome Y-cables.
• Lack of data-driven insights into what customers are actually demanding in the market (feature requests, objections, etc.).

Usage

Placetel currently uses Kickscale with over 20 users in Strategic Sales and is increasingly expanding its use to the Customer Success team. During customer meetings (via Webex), the Kickscale notetaker runs in the background and automatically prepares key information—such as pain points, needs, and timelines—for the HubSpot CRM.

A special use case at Placetel: Through the API integration, every sales rep automatically receives a Webex message immediately after a call with feedback, 3 things that went well, and 3 concrete suggestions for improvement. This has even led to an internal team competition for the best "Kickscale Score." Furthermore, Placetel uses Kickscale’s insights feature across departments to analyze hundreds of calls and provide precise data to the product and marketing teams (e.g., "42% of customers are asking for this specific integration").

“Kickscale is the story behind the numbers. The black holes have been pushed back, and now we’re using a bright, blue Kickscale flashlight to illuminate the points everywhere.” – Matthias Berchtold, Head of Key Account Management at Placetel

‍ Impact

• Massive time savings: 1 to 2 hours per day per sales rep by eliminating manual follow-up. With over 20 users, that’s 30 to 40 hours gained daily for active customer support.
• Fast ROI: The investment paid for itself within just a few weeks and months.
• Accelerated onboarding: The ramp-up phase for new sales employees was shortened by approx. 25%. New reps now learn asynchronously from the best-practice recordings of top performers.
• Increased CRM data quality: Consistent, deep insights and structured handovers in every deal.
• Cross-team intelligence: Moving from pure gut feeling to a true "Voice of the Customer," allowing product decisions to be made based on data.

Why Kickscale

• Data protection & works council: As a European company with strict GDPR requirements, local hosting was crucial. Kickscale actively helped with the appropriate arguments and documentation for smooth approval by the works council.
• More than just a notetaker: When evaluating against competitors like Gong, Kickscale won over the team with its deep focus on conversational intelligence and real added value for the CRM.
• Human fit: Direct, uncomplicated access to support and a similar mindset.
• Transparent pricing: No hidden setup fees. Placetel was able to download a license and get started immediately.

‍ Features used

• AI Call Recording & Summary: Automatic extraction of customer needs for the HubSpot CRM.
• AI Sales Coaching: Automated feedback (Top 3 & Flop 3) via messenger after every meeting.
• Customer Insights & Trends: Aggregation and analysis of feature requests across hundreds of conversations.
• CRM Integration: Seamless connection to HubSpot.

“To anyone still hesitating, I would say: Try it out, and you’ll become a customer.” – Matthias Berchtold