BT launches Ribbit for Salesforce

Ribbit for Salesforce allows customers to link mobile voice comms with existing accounts

BT has unveiled Ribbit for Salesforce, a hosted telephony service designed to help reduce the latency of information travelling from field workers into the business.

The application enables all Salesforce.com CRM customers to link mobile voice communications with their existing accounts. Voice-to-text conversion allows field service agents, or any other user, to dictate notes and memos verbally on their mobile phones, which are converted into text and added into Salesforce CRM and the user's email inbox.

BT acquired Ribbit last year, and the launch signals the company's entry into the enterprise cloud services market.

"As the first supplier to integrate voice services with Salesforce CRM through a cloud computing platform, BT is providing its customers with a huge competitive edge in today's highly dynamic environment," said Chris Lindsay, general manager for BT Business applications.

"Helping to improve business processes, the application will help firms make the most of every customer opportunity during the recession, and put them in a strong position to thrive when it ends."

Lindsay added that, while it can be fairly easy to encourage adoption when rolling out a new application internally, it is very difficult to get mobile and remote workers to take up new applications and processes.

"The sales guys want to be out and about getting deals done, and most of them just set aside time on Friday afternoon to update systems with all the details from the meetings during the week, which can create delays and things can be forgotten, which can be very bad for business," he said.

Lindsay explained that Ribbit on Salesforce is essentially a virtual sales assistant, allowing sales personnel to call themselves up and leave a message about the meeting. The system is then populated with that information and converted to text, storing and organising voicemail as email, as well as categorising leads, contacts and in-progress deals.

Furthermore, all voice messages are delivered as SMS or email so that users can respond or forward them immediately without dialling into voicemail.

"Cloud computing applications help customers eliminate capital expenses and reduce operating costs," said Martin Moran, senior vice president of global alliances at Salesforce.

"Salesforce.com has been working closely with BT and Ribbit to drive sales rep productivity and customer success through cloud computing."

BT admitted that the speech-to-text conversion is not perfect, but describes it as good enough. The engine is licensed from SimulScribe and uses a combination of automatic and manual analysis.

Ribbit is currently available only on Salesforce, but BT has plans to expand its availability as well as to integrate the application into its other business services.

Ribbit for Salesforce is already available in the US and is being offered to all new and existing UK Salesforce CRM users through a free trial. It will be commercially available later this year on a monthly subscription basis starting at around £35 per user.