StoryCollector

The AI video interviewer · Product guide

Your video interviewer,
explained.

StoryCollector interviews your customers and team members for you. It records the conversation and prepares a video, transcript, highlights and written review for you to check and use.

You set the direction. Your interviewee brings the story.

Concept illustration, not a live recording or product screenshot.

No interviewee account requiredQuestions tailored to your businessPrivate recordings and transcriptsReview before sharing

01 / The workflow

How it works

Six steps, from setting up your business to reviewing the finished interview. Here is who does what at each stage.

  1. 01Business owner

    Set the context

    Add your business, services and audience. Choose an industry template or prepare your own questions, then personalize the interview with context and focus angles.

  2. 02Business owner

    Share an invitation

    Add or import interviewees and send a personal link. A reusable business link offers another entry point. Scheduling and reminders help people follow through.

  3. 03Interviewee

    Get comfortable

    Open the link without creating an account. Review the recording release, choose name and face permissions, and check the camera and microphone.

  4. 04Interviewee + AI

    Have the conversation

    The voice interviewer uses your chosen direction and asks adaptive follow-ups. Camera and microphone recording run alongside the conversation. Supported interrupted sessions can resume.

  5. 05StoryCollector

    Find the useful material

    Background processing prepares the private recording, speaker-attributed transcript, timestamped highlights and a written review grounded in the interview.

  6. 06Owner + interviewee

    Review, then share

    Watch, read, edit and download. Approval and sending are separate actions. The interviewee controls posting to Google; configured publishing destinations are optional.

02 / The deliverables

What you receive

Four outputs from the same conversation. They stay private in the owner workspace until an explicit sharing or publishing action.

01 / VIDEO

The original recording

Watch and download the interviewee’s camera recording. New recordings also prepare an editor-compatible download without replacing the original.

02 / TXT + JSON

The full transcript

Read both sides of the conversation with speaker attribution. Navigate by timestamp and download text or structured data.

03 / HIGHLIGHTS

The golden nuggets

Find useful moments with timestamps, review their context, and create downloadable clips when clip generation is available.

04 / WRITTEN REVIEW

The customer’s own words

New short customer reviews use exact interviewee transcript excerpts. People can edit and approve the draft before sending or posting.

The delivered video preserves the interviewee recording. Separate conversation audio supports transcription and analysis; the AI interviewer’s voice is not mixed back into that video.

03 / Feature catalogue

Everything you can do

Browse by product area, search for a feature, or filter by role. Open a section to see what each capability does.

Unlabelled features: documented implementationOptional Requires configurationLocal / preparation Not confirmed live
01Access & business setup
  • Public product and legal pages

    Explore the business offer, pricing application, terms and privacy information before requesting access.

  • Waitlist and invitation-only signup

    Apply for access, receive an administrator-approved invitation and create an owner account. A waitlist gate controls wider access.

  • Email authentication and account recovery

    Sign in with email and password, verify your mailbox, sign out and request a password-reset link when needed.

  • Guided, resumable onboarding

    Prepare business identity, services, sender information and real interview candidates. Save and resume; one fully valid candidate is the completion minimum. Completing setup does not send invitations.

  • Business identity and brand context

    Store company name, description, website, logo and industry so the interview and client-facing experience reflect the right business.

  • Sender identity and review destination

    Configure invitation sender details and the business’s Google review link for the post-interview handoff.

  • Post-interview account activation

    Optional

    When enabled, an interviewee can become an owner after the interview through a short-lived activation flow and mailbox verification.

  • Airtable-assisted provisioning

    Optional

    A configured intake integration can create an approved account and prefill known business information.

02Questions, templates & personalization
  • Industry template catalogue

    Preview ordered interview questions relevant to the selected industry and request more material when needed.

  • Custom story templates

    Create, edit and select your own interview question sets. Choose a default while keeping existing interviews and owner customization separate.

  • FAQ templates

    Prepare question sets for expertise and frequently asked questions, separate from customer-story interviews.

  • AI-assisted question generator

    Start with account-prefilled activity, service, audience and context. Generate an editable draft, review it, then explicitly save it as a template. Generation alone saves no template and sends no invitation.

  • Person-centered question preparation

    A reusable authoring process, question-set template and fictional example help you ask about specific experiences, feelings and moments without inventing outcomes.

  • Business focus points

    Add the topics the conversation should explore, then manage their order and relevance to your business.

  • Per-person questions and context

    Add custom questions, background, bio context and focus angles for one interviewee without changing everyone’s template.

  • Longer interview context (5,000 characters)

    Give the interviewer up to 5,000 characters of background per interview, with a live character counter.

  • Personalised question sets from onboarding

    Onboarding answers, including the business audience, produce a draft question set tailored to the business. The team reviews it before use.

  • Legal practice-area question sets

    Ready-made question sets for law firms, organised by practice area.

  • Weekly question email

    Opted-in accounts receive a weekly question to answer. Choose the days, the time to the quarter hour and your time zone from a named list.

  • Invitation and follow-up email templates

    Customize the messages people receive before and after the interview, using the configured business identity.

  • Template lifecycle and duplicate grouping

    Local / preparation

    Local template management includes draft import, revisions, reversible deactivation and grouping of exact copies with matching lifecycle and revision. Individual records remain accessible.

03Invitations, links & scheduling
  • Individual and bulk interviewee creation

    Add one person with their contact details and interview context, or import multiple interviewees with validation.

  • Personal invitation links

    Send or resend a secure link tied to the intended person and business. Track invitation activity and delivery state.

  • Interviewee lifecycle management

    Follow progress from invitation through interview, processing and available deliverables, and remove unused interviewee records through the supported flow.

  • Reusable business links

    Share a business entry link with a daily cap. Visitors may leave name and email blank; without an email address, on-screen results remain available but email delivery and account activation do not.

  • Contact confirmation on open links

    Before an open-link interview starts, the person confirms their name and contact details.

  • Reusable service interview links

    Local / preparation

    Prepared service links connect entry to a particular owner-owned template. This separate flow preserves the selected service and its own contact-capture rules.

  • Scheduling and reminders

    Optional

    Offer scheduling and reminder workflows when enabled. Scheduled jobs support timely follow-up without requiring the owner to conduct the interview.

  • SMS invitations with opt-in

    Requires configuration

    Interviewees can opt in to SMS from the interview page or a public opt-in page. Every message carries an opt-out footer, and the privacy policy and terms cover SMS. Sending stays off until it is explicitly switched on.

04Team knowledge, bios & FAQs
  • Team member management

    Add and update the people whose professional experience or expertise you want to capture.

  • Dedicated bio interviews

    Invite a team member to a personal bio interview with a dedicated link; manage reinvitations and revocation.

  • Expertise and FAQ interviews

    Use a separate FAQ interview path and the selected question set to collect clear explanations from your team.

  • Shareable team links

    Copy the appropriate bio or FAQ link so each person reaches the intended interview.

  • Recurring team schedules

    Set weekly or monthly interview activity, inspect the next run, and pause schedules when needed.

05The interview experience
  • Account-free, secure entry

    Open a personal token-based link to reach the intended interview without creating an owner account. Invalid or expired entry is rejected.

  • Recording consent and identity choices

    Accept the recording release and choose use-name, show-face and anonymity preferences before the recording providers are provisioned.

  • Camera and microphone preparation

    Select devices, preview the camera, test and replay the microphone, and resolve browser permissions before starting. An eyeline guide helps people frame themselves naturally.

  • Pre-roll and confidence guidance

    Optional

    Configured pre-call guidance and setup checks help people understand what will happen and identify device problems.

  • Coaching before the first question

    The interviewer opens fully, then reminds people to answer in full sentences, say their name and start over whenever they want, before the first question.

  • Adaptive AI voice conversation

    Speak naturally while the interviewer follows the selected direction and adapts follow-up questions to the answers. Calls run on the latest Retell web call integration.

  • Video recording alongside the conversation

    The interviewee’s camera and microphone are recorded while the voice interview runs, producing the source video for later review.

  • Topic guidance and end controls

    Follow the current topic and use the interview’s end action when finished. Duration guidance is not a promise of a fixed call length.

  • Interruption detection and supported resume

    Disconnected sessions are detected and classified. A resume link and status support continuation where the session allows it.

  • Completion confirmation and rating

    See recording confirmation, give an experience rating and reach the available review or follow-up actions.

06Recordings, transcripts & highlights
  • Background processing and status

    The completed interview moves through media preparation, transcription and analysis. Visible status identifies ready results or work needing attention.

  • Private original video

    Play and download the original recording through authorized workspace access. Recording storage is private.

  • Editor-ready video downloads

    New recordings prepare a separate video file for editors, with a timed transcript and a questions subtitle file (SRT) alongside. A 16:9 landscape version without black side bars is also available. The original file is preserved.

  • Text and JSON transcript downloads

    Read the conversation as text or download structured transcript data for another workflow.

  • Speaker attribution and completeness checks

    Processing uses conversation evidence to distinguish speakers and checks for missing content or incomplete sessions.

  • Golden nugget discovery and review

    Review timestamped story moments in context, approve or reject them, and retry supported generation steps.

  • Clips and trimmed downloads

    Optional

    Generate or download clips and trimmed media where those outputs are available. These capabilities do not imply a full video-editing suite.

  • Completion notices

    The team receives one email when an interview completes, sent to its own recipient list that administrators manage. Configured messages notify the intended recipient when a review or video is ready.

07Written reviews & publishing
  • Transcript-grounded short reviews

    New generated short reviews select exact interviewee excerpts, with source and context checks. Unsupported drafts fail generation. Existing reviews are not automatically rewritten.

  • Owner editing and approval

    Edit, save, approve or skip a draft. Approval stores the current text; sending is a separate explicit action. Human edits and approved versions survive generation errors.

  • Delivery status and retry

    See sending, sent and error states, and use the controlled retry flow if a message fails.

  • Interviewee review control

    View, edit, save and approve the review before deciding to share it. The generated text is a starting point for the person’s decision.

  • Manual Google review handoff

    Copy the text and open the configured business review destination. The person posts on Google; copying or opening the link does not confirm publication.

  • Follow-up service requests

    Request posting help, a live interview, certification or a long-form story. A recorded request is a follow-up action, not an automatically completed service.

  • Approved story publication

    Optional

    Configured TackleBox / Authentic.Video workflows can publish approved stories to a separate destination. Long stories and summaries are separate from short verbatim reviews.

08Workspace, billing & referrals
  • Dashboard overview

    See totals and status summaries to understand interview activity and identify the next follow-up.

  • Recording workspace

    Browse completed sessions, play recordings, follow transcript timestamps and navigate directly to highlighted moments.

  • Hide and restore interviews

    Hide interviews you no longer want in your lists, and restore them at any time.

  • Correct an interviewee name

    Fix a misspelled name on an interview without altering the recording or transcript.

  • Customer lifecycle board

    Track people and sessions by stage so invitations, processing and ready deliverables are easier to manage.

  • Minutes balance and transaction history

    View minutes granted, reserved, consumed and reconciled. Failure-refund paths account for eligible processing failures.

  • Plans, top-ups and billing portal

    Optional

    Configured Stripe checkout supports plans and minute top-ups, including annual plans, with subscription management through the billing portal. Offers depend on account configuration.

  • Referral link sharing

    Eligible owners can copy or email a personal referral link after reaching the completed-story threshold.

  • Referral attribution and rewards

    Track eligible referred signups and award minutes under the referral rules, with self-referral prevention, duplicate protection and reward limits.

09Administration & support
  • Restricted administrator workspace

    Allowlisted administrators can use operational tools that are unavailable to ordinary owner accounts.

  • Waitlist review and client provisioning

    Review applications, invite clients, create approved accounts and prefill onboarding facts without sending candidate invitations. New client accounts start with 60 minutes.

  • Assisted client onboarding

    Enter an authorized client’s onboarding with a visible identity banner, time-limited server-side access and audited start/stop events. Return to the original administrator account afterward.

  • Administrator recording search

    Find any recording by interviewee name or email and inspect its deliverables.

  • Client link directory

    See every client’s interview links in one place, with admin contact fields, and open forwarded interview links.

  • Question-set import tool

    Import question sets with a dry run first, then apply and verify the exact planned change.

  • Usage, plans and balance controls

    Inspect usage and subscriptions, manage authorized plan or minutes changes, and send account reset links.

  • Stuck-session investigation

    Inspect sessions needing attention and use targeted reconciliation or recovery paths instead of restarting completed work.

  • Question library uploads

    Manage uploaded shared question sets through controlled validation and import workflows.

  • Feedback with screenshot annotation

    Report a bug or feature request with page context and an optional annotated screenshot.

  • GitHub feedback handoff

    Optional

    When configured, a feedback report can create a linked issue for the team to investigate.

10Privacy & operational reliability
  • Account-scoped private access

    Owner access is scoped to the intended business, people, recordings and reviews. Personal interview links grant access to their specific interview flow.

  • Stored consent choices

    Recording and identity preferences are saved before the interview starts so downstream handling can respect the recorded choices.

  • Verified provider events

    Recording and call events are checked for authentic signatures, freshness and duplicate delivery before advancing processing.

  • Retry and reconciliation workflows

    Background jobs use controlled retries and reconciliation to recover interrupted processing while protecting completed outputs.

  • Scheduled operations

    Recurring jobs support reminders, follow-up, missed-signal detection and configured provisioning tasks.

  • Logs and selected failure alerts

    Structured operational evidence and email alerts help administrators investigate failures and trace the affected session.

  • Voice provider credit alert

    The team is alerted when the voice provider runs out of credit, before interviews start failing.

04 / Frequently asked

Common questions

Does the owner need to attend the interview?

No. The owner prepares the context and questions, then shares a link. The AI voice interviewer conducts the conversation and the owner reviews the resulting material afterward.

Does an interviewee need an account?

Normally, no. They enter through a personal interview link or a business open link. Account activation after the interview is a separate, optional flow.

Is this just for customer testimonials?

No. Customer stories are a primary use case, but team bio interviews, expertise capture and FAQ interviews are also supported.

Does the AI invent the written review?

New short review generation is constrained to exact interviewee transcript excerpts, with deterministic source checks and a context audit. Human review still matters. People may deliberately edit the draft, and older reviews are not automatically regenerated.

Is anything automatically published to Google?

No. The interviewee can copy the review and open the business’s Google destination, then decide whether to post it. Owner approval, message delivery and public posting are separate actions.

What if the interview is interrupted?

The application detects disconnections and incomplete sessions. Supported sessions provide a resume path. Processing failures and stuck sessions have separate recovery workflows.

Can people participate without giving their name or email?

The general business open-link flow allows those fields to be blank. Without email, interview participation and on-screen review remain available, but email delivery and email-based activation do not. Other entry flows can have different requirements.

How does usage work?

Usage is tracked in minutes, with reservations, final reconciliation and eligible failure refunds. Available plans and top-ups depend on account and billing configuration; this guide does not quote prices.

Start with a story worth hearing

Prepare. Invite.
Listen. Review.

A good interview starts with relevant context and thoughtful questions. The platform carries the conversation through to material you can actually use.

Revisit the workflow ↑