Can AI score a sales call for how well the rep listened?

Yes. AI software can score a recorded sales call from what was actually said on it: how the rep listened, the empathy they showed, and how they stayed with the buyer through a hard moment. No score can tell you what the buyer felt, so I sell it for coaching a rep and never for rating one.

By Michael Cinquino, Founder and Facilitator  ·  November 12, 2026

Why would a sales leader want this? Feeling heard is not the yes, and research ties it to what comes before one: trust, openness and willingness to keep talking. In a survey of new-car buyers, buyers who felt their salesperson listened trusted that salesperson more (Ramsey and Sohi, 1997).

Here's why a score helps where a ride-along does not. People are poor judges of their own listening. In a study of 140 licensed addiction professionals, how skilled they said they were was unrelated, the authors' word, to the skill coders heard on their tapes (Miller and others, 2004). That study was not of salespeople, and I have no reason to think salespeople are the exception.

If you are looking at software that scores listening on calls, I would ask four things.

Does it score what was said, on the same measures every time? A number you cannot trace to the call is an opinion with a decimal point.

Does the rep choose which calls are scored? Heard scores the calls you choose.

Is it built for coaching? A score used to rank people teaches them to perform for the score.

Have you checked the recording consent rules where you and your buyer sit? They differ by state.

Heard for Meetings™ is the software I built for this at The Communication Dynamics Lab. It scores listening, empathy and the hard moments, and managers see the whole team on one page, so they know whom to coach next. It is $495 a seat a year, with one report a week, or $59 a seat a month, with four reports a month. Start with one seat.

If you want to see what a report looks like, book a free discovery call at cdlab.io/book.

See how your team communicates.

Listening, empathy and the hard moments, scored on a real call. Book a call, or start with one seat.