Meet Kaia: The complete guide to Outreach's conversation intelligence

Conversation intelligence isn't a new concept anymore. Most sales teams have already sat through a demo, tried a call recorder, or lived with a tool that transcribes meetings and calls it done, sometimes taking action and sometimes not. But what teams are missing is a CI tool that can actually act, not just give a suggestion.  

In this guide, we won’t introduce you to the idea of CI. We’re going to answer the question that actually matters now: what does a conversation intelligence layer need to do to be worth more than a transcript? Outreach’s Conversation Intelligence and Insights tool, Kaia™, was built around that question, and increasingly, the more interesting answer isn't what it does in the call — it's everything it makes possible after it.

What is Kaia?

Kaia™ is Outreach's AI-powered conversation intelligence assistant that joins sales calls and meetings, coaches reps in real time, transcribes conversations, and surfaces the key moments managers need for coaching.

Kaia shows up across the deal in a few concrete ways:  

• Coach Cards that score meetings against your team's own criteria
• Topics and Smart Topics that track what's coming up in conversations across the business ‍
• Kaia Chat for collaborating on calls without leaving Outreach
• ‍Smart Meeting & Call Assist for asking questions about a meeting after the fact, one-sided call recording for compliance-conscious teams ‍
• Kaia for Mobile and Kaia Translations for reps working outside a desk or a single language

Plus, Kaia's conversation data also flows into Outreach Omni, so when someone asks Omni a question in chat about a deal or account, part of that answer is coming from what Kaia picked up on the call.

A new architecture for Kaia

Kaia hasn't just added features over time — it's been rebuilt on Outreach's AI Revenue Workflow architecture, the same foundation running Omni, Deal Agent, Research Agent, and Personalization Agent. That matters more than it sounds like it should: it means Kaia isn't a bolted-on call recorder with an AI label. It's reading from, and contributing to, the same connected pool of revenue data as every other agent in the platform.

A standalone conversation intelligence tool can tell you what was said. Kaia can tell you what was said, connect it to everything else that's true about that deal, and hand that context to the agents doing the next piece of work.

What Kaia fuels — and what that means for you

This is the part that's easy to miss if you've only ever thought of Kaia as "the thing that records calls."

Kaia fuels Omni. When someone asks Omni a question about a deal, an account, or how a rep is performing, part of what makes that answer useful instead of generic is that Kaia's conversation signals are in the mix. Ask Omni to summarize where a deal stands, and the answer reflects what was actually discussed on the last call — not just what's logged in a field.

Kaia fuels Deal Agent. After every meeting, call insights flow straight into CRM field updates and deal summaries. Deal data ends up reflecting what was actually said in the room, not what a rep remembered to type in later — which is a quieter but arguably bigger win than the coaching use case most people think of first.

Kaia enriches Account Plans and Research Agent. Conversation history and topic trends become context that Research and Personalization Agents draw on for the next touchpoint. A rep's follow-up can reflect what the buyer actually raised last time, instead of reading like a template with a name swapped in.

Put together: the reason Kaia's in-call coaching feels specific to your deal instead of boilerplate is the same reason the rest of Outreach's agents do too. It's one connected data layer, not a stitched-together stack of point solutions each working off a partial picture.

GRWM: Getting ready for (and through) a sales call with Kaia

Sales call coaching used to mean a manager reviewing a recording days later. With Kaia, there are three distinct, real-time moments for action— before, during, and after the call. What does that mean for coaches? You can coach close enough to the conversation to actually change the next one.

Before the call

Before a rep ever joins the meeting, Kaia's already done some of the prep work. Because conversation history from past calls on that account feeds into Outreach's connected data, a rep can walk in seeing what's already been discussed, instead of from a blank slate on a deal someone else worked last quarter. On top of that, Kaia Playlists let managers compile best-in-class recordings so reps walk in already knowing what "good" sounds like — handling a specific objection, answering a competitive question, structuring a discovery call.

During the call

Real-time Content Cards and Coach Cards surface answers reps can lean on mid-conversation, so they're not caught flat-footed by a pricing question or a competitor mention. Real-time call analytics track talk-time balance, so reps can see in the moment whether they're guiding the conversation or getting talked at.

After the call

After the call is where the real magic happens. Smart Kaia Coach automatically scores Coach Cards against your team's own meeting criteria, so feedback doesn't have to wait on a manager's calendar. Kaia Chat lets the account team comment, tag each other, and follow up without leaving Outreach. Action items get detected automatically and synced to the meeting transcript and to Outreach tasks, and everything feeds back into CRM sync.

Kaia in action: a sales leader's coaching workflow

Paul Rosen, Director of Sales, uses Kaia to coach his team day in and day out. In this video, he walks through what it actually looks like to coach at scale with Kaia — filtering the call library by meeting type, topic, or account so you're not scrolling through everything; using AI-suggested answers on MEDDPICC coaching cards to evaluate a call faster; and the two-way feedback loop that lets reps request coaching instead of just receiving it whenever a manager gets around to it.

Kaia vs. traditional call recording

A call recorder gives you a copy of what happened. Kaia gives you a read on it with sentiment, topic context, and coaching flag. Plus, you get the automation that comes from that understanding: auto-updated fields, auto-generated summaries, and action items that don't require someone to go back and re-listen. Traditional recording is documentation after the fact. Kaia is active intelligence while the deal is still moving.

Inside Kaia: search, AI Assist, and content cards

Senior Director of Sales Greg Baumann's walkthrough is the day-to-day view: searching transcripts for a specific topic or keyword across thousands of calls instead of remembering which call had the relevant moment, using AI Assist to ask natural-language questions about a call and get a cited answer back, and the coaching-card review time drop — from roughly 90 minutes down to under 20 — that comes from not having to rewatch full recordings to review a rep.

The business impact of Kaia

Where does Kaia actually move the needle? The numbers below are based on a September 2026 analysis of closed New Logo opportunities over the trailing 24 months.

Win rate: the consistent signal

Deals where Kaia joined a meeting won 31% of the time, vs. 24% for otherwise-similar deals without Kaia . That’s a 7.2-point lift:

• That gap widens in the mid-market: +11.5 points on $10K–$50K deals, +11.8 points on $50K–$100K deals
• It's consistent, not a one-time blip: over the past three fiscal years, win rates on Kaia-supported deals held steady in the 31–33% range, even as win rates on non-Kaia deals slid from 29% down to 21%

Cycle time: it depends on deal size

Under $10K deals: Kaia-supported opportunities closed about 24 days faster on average:

• Over $100K deals: Kaia-touched opportunities actually ran about 24 days longer — most likely because these are the deals sales teams already treat as strategic and work more deliberately, not because Kaia adds friction
• Mid-size bands ($10K–$100K): the day-count effect isn't meaningfully different either way

The takeaway: Kaia's speed advantage is real and concentrated in smaller, faster-moving deals; its win-rate advantage holds up across every deal size.

Data note: Kaia was present in only about 1.4% of qualifying opportunities in this dataset, and reps generally choose to bring Kaia into deals they're already prioritizing. So some of this lift reflects which deals get the Kaia treatment as much as what Kaia itself changes. These are directional numbers, not a controlled experiment.

Getting started with Kaia

At this stage in AI adoption, conversation intelligence isn't really the differentiator — what you connect it to is. Kaia's value comes from being part of the same system as other AI agents like Omni, Deal Agent, and Research Agent, so every call makes the rest of your revenue workflow a little smarter, not just the coaching review.  

Kaia is available as part of Outreach's Amplify Plus tier, alongside Meet. If your team is already running sales engagement through Outreach, the fastest way to see what changes is to sit in on a live coaching review, and we'll walk through it on a real deal.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How does Kaia record calls?  

Kaia joins as a silent participant on phone calls and captures audio/video on connected conferencing platforms. Consent messaging is configured at the admin level, not left to individual reps to manage.

Can my reps turn Kaia off?  

Recording is an org-level setting, not a rep-level choice. Sensitive call flags exist for specific situations, but they don't disable recording outright.

Does Kaia store call data inside Outreach or externally?  

Inside Outreach. Everything lives in the same data cloud that feeds the rest of the platform's AI — no separate point-solution silo to manage or reconcile.

How long are calls retained?  

Retention is admin-configurable and typically aligned to your CRM's retention policy. Transcripts can be kept longer than raw recordings if that's what your team needs.

Can Kaia coach reps on different methodologies (MEDDPICC, SPICED, etc.)?  

Yes. Your org sets the standard methodology and Kaia coaches to it, with room to vary by team if different segments run different playbooks.

Does Kaia work with calls outside Outreach?

Kaia covers Outreach's native dialer plus connected video platforms — Zoom, Teams, Google Meet. Calls outside those channels aren't captured; there's no workaround for that today.

How is Kaia different from other conversation intelligence tools?  

The short version: a standalone tool analyzes the call. Kaia's analysis feeds — and is fed by — the same connected data powering Omni, Deal Agent, and Research Agent, so insights don't stop at a transcript. That's the "what Kaia fuels" story from earlier in this guide, not a separate claim.

What about privacy and compliance?  

Kaia is built on Outreach's enterprise trust foundation — SOC 2 Type II, consent logging, regional compliance controls, and call data kept isolated from public LLMs.