Australian startup Icana.AI is rapidly gaining traction with its advanced conversation intelligence platform CallCoach, helping sales and customer service teams improve customer experiences, lift performance, ensure compliance and dramatically accelerate onboarding by 35%.
Icana.AI quietly launched in 2023 and is the brainchild of technologist and AI specialist Erik van Eekelen.
It brings a new approach to improving sales performance at scale and has already been adopted by recognised Australian brands including Open Universities Australia, Finance One, Academy Xi, Australian Institute of Management (AIM), Jacaranda Finance and Collarts with results demonstrating significant improvements.
Erik observed that traditional QA and training programs relied on manual reviews, limited coverage and delayed feedback, often analysing less than 2% of customer interactions.
Meanwhile, many AI tools focus narrowly on transcription and sentiment, missing the nuances of how conversations are delivered and offering little actionable coaching.
Icana.AI’s flagship CallCoach platform solves these challenges by analysing 100% of customer interactions, including calls, chats and emails, and delivers personalised insights around objection handling and closing to boost sales and help teams improve ongoing.
As a scaffolded solution, it is constantly calibrated by experts, users and five large language models that work in tandem.
This month, Icana.AI achieved finalist in two AI Innovator categories of the Australian AI Awards for Startup and Information Technology. This accolade further recognises its leadership in practical, real-world AI innovation.
“Salespeople are naturally motivated to perform at their best and achieve results. But to enable them to do this they expect clarity, objectivity and consistency in their feedback so they can continually improve,” said Erik van Eekelen, Founder & CEO of Icana.AI.
“CallCoach gives organisations complete visibility across their customer conversations and shows agents how to get better by providing specific, practical steps,”
“I believe that AI should empower people, not replace them, and that philosophy is deeply embedded in everything we build.” he said .
Capabilities That Set CallCoach Apart
CallCoach evaluates far more than keywords, it assesses empathy, pacing, tone, articulation and conversation structure, using up to five large language models per call and calibrated with human expertise.
It provides daily feedback to agents and weekly insights to team leaders, creating a continuous improvement loop that rapidly lifts performance. Agents and leaders can respond to and refine AI assessments. Their feedback helps tune each organisation’s CallCoach platform.
A standout capability is CallCoach’s ability to detect hardship cues, including subtle tone changes and indirect language often missed by humans. Icana.AI helps organisations meet regulatory requirements and better support vulnerable customers.
CallCoach Simulator allows agents to role-play realistic customer conversations in a safe environment which is useful for testing new techniques and practising common objections.
Scenarios mirror real calls and reflect each agent’s development areas, with full CallCoach analysis after every simulation.
A Company Built On AI From Day One
Erik founded Icana.AI after two decades in the tech industry building digital products for organisations within e-commerce, government, logistics and education sectors.
He has completed an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam and worked for one of Australia’s earliest AI companies.
He harnessed AI agents to help him scale and has mainly bootstrapped the business with one private investor, Andrew Blain, a serial founder and early stage investor, jumping on board earlier this year.
“I reached ten clients and a healthy revenue base as a solo entrepreneur, supported by AI systems running alongside me,” Erik said. “Now, with a small, exceptional human team and a powerful AI team, we’re ready to scale across Australia and internationally.”
A new standard for customer experience, compliance and team coaching
As organisations face increasing pressure to deliver consistent service, meet regulatory standards and onboard staff quickly, Icana.AI is positioning itself to best support sales teams and contact centres though AI driven sales and service enablement.
CallCoach is helping leaders to scale their coaching capacity, help their teams to close better, and provide elite customer service.
“Our mission is to make every conversation an opportunity to learn, improve and deliver better outcomes for customers. We’re excited to help more organisations transform their customer interactions with confidence.”
