BT Business has become the only UK supplier of a system that will automatically convert voice to text to channel transcripts of mobile calls and email messages directly into the Salesforce CRM application, so that saleforce personnel can read voicemail or dictate email on the go.
The company said the application is the first UK service to use the Ribbit communications technology it acquired last year, and signals the company’s entry into the enterprise cloud services market.
BT bought Silicon Valley based Ribbit for $105 million in cash last July.
The start-up used to compete against Skype and Google’s GrandCentral with its platform for creating voice-based applications over the internet.
At its core, Ribbit is a telephone soft switch which works just like a switch made by Lucent or Nortel, except that it is software running on hosted Linux servers. Ribbit’s soft switch can send calls to regular phones, mobiles, Voice-over-IP, Voice-over-IM, and web pages. It supports all the main voice protocols of SIP, Skype, Google Talk’s XMPP
The system will not only let sales people make calls to prospects directly from the browser-based CRM application, but will also log the call.
Users can now also record portions of a call at a click of the button and transcribe it using the inbuilt speech-to-text technology that stems from PhoneTag.
BT said that Ribbit for Salesforce simplifies sales management by storing and organising voicemail as email in the CRM systems, categorising leads, contacts and in-progress deals.
In addition, all voice messages are delivered as SMS or email so users can respond or forward immediately without dialling into voicemail.
It is available to existing UK Salesforce CRM users through a free trial now and will be commercially available later this year.
