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.

Can Your CRM Software Revive Dead Leads?

It's getting pretty close to Halloween, so it's natural for us to start thinking about things that rise from the dead.

While nobody's asking for zombie customers, David Taber's compelling piece in CIO asks whether your CRM software can help sales teams recover business from forgotten leads. Taber notes that as many as 80% of leads written off as "cold" in their first two months go on to make a purchase in the following year. A sales team working in a place of urgency might be so focused on converting fresh prospects that they consider aging leads a waste of time.

The right CRM software can help sales leaders make subtle adjustments to company culture that result in higher closing rates over longer periods of time. Instead of simply measuring close cycles over a week or a month, the latest CRM applications can chart the average life cycle of a typical customer. Some sales pros may want to focus on making that average cycle time shorter. However, by understanding the organic nature of a customer's purchasing cycle, teams can use CRM software to more accurately position buying opportunities through strategic follow-up.

Some of Taber's suggestions for CRM software tweaks that can refresh old leads include:

• Transitioning "dead" leads to other marketing avenues, such as direct mail.
• Implementing a "remarketing" tool within your CRM software that reintroduces customers to the sales cycle after a few months.
• Using CRM software to measure interest in alternative sales avenues, such as seminars or other live events.

Using CRM software to log a customer's urgent purchasing periods, like the end-of-year tax season or at the close of a fiscal year, can also help sales teams pick up unexpected deals. Over time, a team can manage these clients more effectively, instead of worrying about queues forming in the voicemail graveyard.

Are Soviet-Era CRM Applications Holding Your Company Back?

I thought I was being clever when I described a major retailer's point-of-sale and CRM system as being "Soviet-era" on my personal blog. It sounds like the term is creeping up on the collective subconscious, since Phil Wainewright just used it as the headline for his interview with Bob Warfield from HelpStream, a vendor of CRM applications.

Warfield responds to Wainewright's use of the phrase by suggesting older CRM software forces a "central planning" philosophy on both customers and agents. In larger institutions, once considered early adopters by investing in this kind of technology, the system starts to wield control over both processes and people. It's an apt term to playfully describe what can happen when companies let their CRM systems dictate interactions instead of allowing customers and team members to engage in real problem-solving.

The growth of the Internet in the past decade has fueled the need for CRM systems that respond to customer needs, rather than attempt to force those needs into silos. Some examples of CRM applications that break the "Soviet" mold include:

• Health club CRM applications that allow trainers and membership coordinators to understand the specific needs and preferences of their members.
• Grocery store CRM applications that customize coupon and special offer delivery based on a customer's entire purchase history, not just the order on the conveyor belt.
• Unified CRM applications that allow agents to pick up conversations and interactions with customers, eliminating the need to restart relationships with each contact.

"The CRM software doesn't let me do it" is no longer a good enough answer for customer service professionals in a marketplace connected by Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. IT directors willing to embark on their own version of Glasnost can prepare their companies for a new kind of customer relationship.

Critical Questions for Hosted CRM Users

In my last post, I offered a quick view of the recent Danger/Sidekick data loss. It's an event that has hosted CRM users worried for good reason. After all, this kind of data loss can bring Perez Hilton's business to a halt, so what could it do to you if you lost all of your leads and contacts?

For CIOs and other technology leaders, this list of questions can offer peace of mind:

• Where are hosted CRM records stored? "The Cloud" isn't good enough. Careful CIOs should know the location of a vendor's primary data center, along with the security provisions in place to protect data from theft, fire, flood, or other disaster.

• How often are backups of CRM records made, and where are backups stored? CIOs should listen for "at least daily" and "offsite." A backhoe driving into the data backbone of your primary data center shouldn't cause your CRM applications to become inaccessible.

• How quickly can a hosted CRM system be restored from a backup? User error at the data center caused the total erasure of Danger/Microsoft's entire user library. With a solid backup plan in place, users could have been restored within hours.

• How can records be exported from a hosted CRM system, if necessary? Record export isn't just a CRM software feature that lets you migrate platforms. It's an essential tool that allows your team convert raw data into actionable spreadsheets or local databases in the event of a dire emergency at the server farm.

Of course, these are all questions you should ask, even if you intend for your CRM software to be hosted within your own facility. Treat data the same, whether your "cloud" is in your own building or out at a mystery data facility. Otherwise, you could end up like a frustrated Sidekick user.

Danger in the Cloud for CRM Software Users?

I just got back from a week out of the office, and I mostly relied on my smartphone to take care of client requests and to keep on top of the news. Sure enough, the week that I was away from my desk, one of the biggest tech stories of the year broke out:

Danger, the company that created the popular Sidekick smartphone, notified users that all of the data on their servers was mistakenly wiped out, during what should have been a routine system upgrade. Accusations are flying:

• T-Mobile, the U.S. carrier supporting the Sidekick, has offered service credits for customers who choose not to defect. They blame Danger for poor data handling procedures.
• Danger representatives have told users that they blame the vendor hired to manage their storage.
• The storage vendor claims that Danger is their first client that didn't have a comprehensive backup plan for critical user data.

Sidekicks aren't very common in the business world these days, unless you're a celebrity blogger. The hardware, revolutionary when it was released a few years ago, doesn't hold a candle to today's modern smartphones with loads of internal memory. The phones' lack of storage is why so much user data was on a central server in the first place.

However, CRM software users have been shaking in their boots over these events for a few specific reasons:

• Danger was purchased, a few years ago, by Microsoft. Essentially, Microsoft employees are now on record as having failed to back up critical customer data. Microsoft has been trying (and failing) to reposition Danger as a distant subsidiary instead of as a core business unit.
• Many CIOs now wonder whether Microsoft hosted CRM services can be trusted, since a "simple" service like the Sidekick could be so easily purged.
• And just about every CIO wonders how easily this could happen at the hosting provider for their own CRM applications. After all, "if it can happen at Microsoft..."

In my next post, I'll walk through some of the reasons CIOs might use this news to revisit the debate between hosted CRM and locally-installed CRM software...

(Follow this link to Part Two...)