Voice is now a staple of our everyday consumer lives. This isn’t surprising as voice is a natural, more efficient way to perform tasks.
And just as we’ve watched voice evolve as a mainstay in the consumer world, we’re now seeing how it transforms business. But the stakes are higher in an enterprise setting.
If a consumer voice assistant tells you the weather for the wrong city, the impact on your day is negligible. In business, the cost of an error is far greater. But with more complexity also comes more gain.
Voice is about to amplify business productivity in a big way.
Voice powers productivity
Missing data has historically been the Achilles heel of customer relationship management (CRM). Interactions and other data don’t get entered, or are only partially captured, which degrades the integrity of the entire system. Voice changes all that.
Business relies on communications and conversations. When you add a vocal or conversational layer on top of your CRM, you power an entirely new user experience that enables you to get more data in and more intelligence out — in a fast, natural, and real-time way. And with more data available for analysis, the better and more accurate your insights and predictions are.
It’s a push and pull dynamic that powers a productivity gain on a level that business users have never before experienced with CRM technology.
The push: put data and information in
Einstein Voice makes it easy and fast to enter data into your Salesforce, immediately following a customer interaction — no more missing data because someone forgot details or didn’t feel like entering data.
For example, sales reps can update account information in the car, right after meeting with a customer, rather than waiting until Friday to enter a week’s worth of updates. Service reps also benefit from using their voice to input data on-the-go. They can keep cases up to date without having to put down a tool, remove a glove, or anything else that takes their attention away from the task at hand.
The voice interface also simplifies users’ ability to enter richer and more granular data because it allows for a stream of consciousness conversation. When you’re not bound by a static, rectangular field defined by admins, you can speak free form. Like the “Tell us more” box at the end of the survey, the voice interface offers a blank page to capture what may be the most important context to best understand and serve your customers and guide the business.
Compared to merely noting they “had a meeting,” sales reps can speak conversationally to provide details about whom they met with, what they talked about, and any nuances related to next steps. Service reps can also provide more detailed feedback on their customer interactions, such as notes related to churn risk or upsell and cross-sell opportunities that set the stage for an ongoing, high-quality service experience.
The pull: get intelligence out
The push and pull dynamic powered by voice fundamentally changes how users interact with Salesforce. The more relevant, granular data coming in, the smarter the artificial intelligence (AI) solution becomes, and the more powerful insights you’ll be able to surface:
A sales rep can ask for the projected white space in their most important accounts and which accounts need more attention on a given day.
A sales manager can ask Einstein for updates on their region’s overall forecast; and run pipeline review meetings more smoothly by simply asking Einstein to bring up their pipeline dashboard, dive into a specific region, and identify their top local deals.
A marketer can ask for an overview of how the latest email campaign is performing within a specific region.
A service rep can ask for high-priority cases or a recommendation on how to resolve their latest case.
With more data and more insight also comes better predictions, such as churn risk. For example: “Be aware that Acme has a 78% churn risk, mostly driving by a recent decrease in activity.”
The next phase of your Salesforce journey
Salesforce has always been a trusted advisor in bringing the next generation of technology to your customers: first with the cloud, then with custom app development, and, most recently, with AI. Einstein makes it easy to get started with AI, empowering our Trailblazers to build AI apps without the need to bring in a completely new team of data scientists.
Voice is the next natural step — a new and simple way to access the intelligence you've already acquired in Salesforce, and generate better outcomes without losing all the experiences you’ve built.
No matter what you’ve been doing up until now to measure and improve your business with Salesforce, voice fits right in and augments those business processes. No training models. No going outside of your comfort zone.
Voice capitalises on all of the customisations you’ve already made into a new user experience, without skipping a beat.
Voice apps customised to your business
The Salesforce Customer 360 platform was designed to be flexible and adaptable to your business, and the introduction of voice upholds that commitment. As we’ve done in the past, we’re opening up our voice platform to provide developers and admins with the building blocks to build custom voice-powered apps tailored to any role or industry.
Without any knowledge of voice technology, you can use Einstein Voice Skills to build custom voice apps for every profile and role in your organisation.
For instance, maybe you want to build a custom skill for a field technician asking Einstein for an account’s service history on her way to the next customer. Or you can create a voice app to give service managers insight into critical business metrics like open service cases in top regions or guidance on their team’s CSAT performance. Now, any person in your organisation can utilise a voice app that is tailored to their specific role and that is customised to what they need to be more productive.
Voice intelligence for sales and service
Voice has been a largely untapped channel in business. Yet, it holds immense potential to capture new data to drive smarter and more productive service and sales experiences.
Take data from phone calls, for instance. A large number of conversations with customers happen over telephony channels. While conversations are often recorded and transcribed with the customer’s consent, it’s been difficult to surface valuable insight in an efficient and accessible way.
Once again, voice changes that.
In addition to Einstein Voice Skills, this year we’re introducing new voice intelligence solutions that apply natural language processing (NLP) to call transcriptions, enabling service and sales teams to better understand performance metrics and deliver more personalised customer engagement.
Service Cloud Voice — New Service Cloud capability that helps customer service agents better handle voice calls by serving up AI-powered recommended responses, knowledge articles, and next best actions.
Einstein Call Coaching — New Sales Cloud Capability that provides managers with visibility into conversational data, such as How are the best reps performing? What are they saying? What counter-arguments are they using? How are they handling a competitor mention?
Our default setting: trust and security
We’ve entered into a new age of voice technology. And as the shifts take place in the industry, and within your business, Salesforce will continue to work alongside you as your trusted advisor.
Just as we spent the last two decades ushering customers into the cloud in a secure and responsible way, now we’re doing the same to help you navigate the opportunities for voice technology.
We understand your needs. We understand voice technology. And with those clear priorities, we’re ready to help you usher in voice technology to help you get more relevant insight out of Salesforce more quickly than ever before.
Want to learn more about Voice? Take the Einstein Voice Trail.
