Salesforce adopts BT's Ribbit tech for CRM

BT and Salesforce.com have teamed up to bring voice-to-text technology to CRM via the Ribbit internet-telephony platform.

Ribbit for Salesforce allows sales reps to phone details of leads or meetings back to the office and automatically log them in their Salesforce.com CRM system.

The voice file is saved in a message folder in the CRM application and then converted into a text file in around 10 minutes for later use.

Users can also dictate emails over their mobile phone to their CRM system so they can be sent on their return to the office.

As voice to text is not yet 100 percent reliable, the voice message remains with the text file. General manager of BT Business applications, Chris Lindsay, said: "It's not a perfect transcription every time."

Ribbit, however, claims its voice-to-text technology is currently 80 to 90 percent accurate under normal conditions.

If the technology is unable to decipher a call it will forward it to a human to decipher before being returned to the CRM application.

The application will soon be commercially available on the Salesforce.com App Exchange.

This is the first time the Ribbit technology has been made available in the UK since BT acquired the Silicon Valley start-up in July 2008 for $105m (£70m).