Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Voice enabled CRM Apps

2 comments

For the longest time I've firmly believed that voice enablement will be key for CRM Apps of the future. Having worked on integrating products like Jott, Ribbit and Oracle's CCOD into the Siebel CRM/OnDemand application in the past, I can acknowledge the power they can bring to the table in simplifying a sales persons daily activities. Remember a large part of sales is ensuring that you're on top of all your activities and keep the ball rolling.


Also hooked onto the voice enabled search Google offers on iPhones. It's remarkable how in a relatively short duration Ive become so dependent on this service. 

Now imagine a road warrior or never in front of the machine sales rep (arent they all that way ;-)
who can get access to all their CRM data on their mobile device, but through voice.

Wouldnt it be awesome if you bring up your fav SFA app on the iPhone and "Speak" show me latest brief on "Hush Communications" and the newest content available in the 360 for Hush Communications just paints on your device.  You review the brief on "Hush" and walk into the meeting with them. 

Customer reminds you that you still havnt sent them the latest quote so you pop-up the phone and "Speak" - "Email Hush Quote to Mike Myers" and boom the quote you had previously created for them but forgotten to email appears in Mike's inbox.

You step out of the meeting and "Speak" - "Change - Hush Opportunity to Closed" and "Create Task - for Hush - Work on final order approval with Mgmt"

Then there's also the more traditional get all your voicemails and their transscripts in the app on the right record kind of scenarios as well.

Anyways most of these scenarios I've prototyped myself and they're very much in the relam of doable with services like Jott and Ribbit. So its only a matter of time till Sales Reps get hooked on these.

Then again voice enabled sales apps have been touted since 2001 we enabled Siebel. But I think were's getting closer.