CRM Software Call Transcription Features Becoming More Popular

One of the most daunting tasks for sales teams involves entering leads, quotes, sales, and follow-up details into CRM applications. Some CRM software developers hope to speed up or even eliminate the tedious task of manual data entry by integrating call transcription technology directly into users' desktops.

While text-to-speech modules for CRM applications are far from perfect, developers have made significant advances in refining on-the-fly transcription services in the past few years. Some text-to-speech systems even integrate human reviewers, either outsourced through a service or tasked to administrative support staff within an organization, who can verify the accuracy of key phrases and proper names.

CRM applications, when connected to automatic speech recognition tools, can perform some critical tasks, including:

• Entering a text transcript of a phone call or an in-person meeting into the CRM application's database for easy, Google-like searching.
• Measuring the frequency of certain key words or phrases in a voicemail, to measure the urgency or importance of an incoming call.
• Allowing administrative professionals to quickly scan text transcripts of calls to a general inquiries line.
• Ensuring compliance with government or industry guidelines by storing transcripts of each call.

Keep in mind that relying too much on an automated process can take the human element away from the sales cycle, sending your prospects running to a competitor who can provide more direct interaction. However, for situations where sifting through existing voicemail or meeting minutes for CRM application data be exhausting, transcription services for CRM systems offer tremendous competitive opportunities.