Technology

Zoho CRM Introduces Zia Voice, the First Conversational AI for Sales Teams, Along With Catalyst, a Hyper-Customization Platform for Enterprises

Zoho unveiled Zia Voice, the first conversational AI for sales teams that adds speech and chat capabilities to Zia, Zoho’s AI-powered sales assistant. Zia can now also predict deal closures and analyze email sentiment.

The company also introduced Catalyst, which helps businesses build and manage serverless applications and distribute them without having to worry about infrastructure or scaling. In addition, new features in Zoho CRM like Translations and Portals add to deepening their enterprise focus.

“We are delivering the first conversational AI for CRM, with Zia Voice,” said Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist, Zoho. “Zia’s enhanced AI capabilities will now help salespeople sell smarter, with contextual assistance and access to customer information through a powerful voice and chat interface.”

Zia can now talk to sales teams and help them do a lot more

Interactive voice and chat-bot: From answering questions on everyday CRM information like new leads created, average deal revenue, or even monthly forecasts to practical traffic status, Zia converses with salespeople via simple chat and voice messages.

Lead and Deal Prediction: Zia analyses interaction patterns and the progress of a lead or deal in the pipeline and suggests the probability of its closure. This helps salespeople spend their time on deals that are more likely to close.

Email sentiment analysis: Zia makes sense out of the scores of emails that a salesperson might receive every day. Every email is analyzed to discover the relevant positive or negative sentiment. This helps salespeople identify critical emails and address them first.

Alerts for the best time to contact: Zia gives salespeople real-time updates about when they are most likely to reach their prospects. This increases their chance of connecting with leads and reduces the time spent on unanswered calls.

“Customer relationship platforms are transitioning into the next phase. The advancements in AI mean that SaaS vendors can now power their applications with Invisible Interfaces and make them easier, more natural to use, and available without having to look at a screen,” said Sheryl Kingstone of 451 Research. “We see these advancements in AI and voice recognition leading the way into the next transformation of business applications. Our recent research shows that 45% of the surveyed digital leaders are looking forward to using voice interfaces in the next 24 months.”

Catalyst: The hyper-customization platform for Zoho CRM

Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK): Zoho CRM’s mobile SDK helps companies design and build custom mobile apps based on their own work roles or needs, helping them shape their own experience, their way.

Mobile Device Manager (MDM): Companies can distribute their custom apps built through Mobile and Web SDK internally through the MDM network, no matter if they run on iOS or Android.

Serverless computing: Enterprises can now use Zoho’s infrastructure to run code without having to worry about physical hardware or servers. Zoho CRM users can also integrate their account with third party services using serverless components, thereby saving money on managing web servers.

Widgets: Businesses can build custom UI components to provide contextual information from external sources and work in real time with Zoho CRM’s data.

Feature highlights of enterprise-ready Zoho CRM:

  • Portals: Helps customers, vendors, and partners play an important role in the sales process. Customers can have access to their sales, past purchases, cases, and invoices in one place.
  • Blueprint advancements: Blueprint now has SLA and checklist capabilities that can help managers optimize their sales processes.
  • Translations: Zoho CRM users can now view their CRM data in a language that’s most comfortable to them, keeping the local flavor of every business intact.

Pricing and Availability

Most features are available immediately on the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Zoho CRM. Some features are being rolled out to customers in a phased manner. Zoho CRM is available in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Edition ranging from $12 – $45 /user/month, and the Ultimate Edition, catering specifically to large businesses, at $100 /user/month. The Enterprise edition of Zoho CRM is also part of Zoho One, the company’s all-in-one suite of applications for running an entire business.