The Ribbit Launches Voice Capabilities for Salesforce

Once upon a time, in a career far, far away, I worked in marketing communications for a Fortune 500 company. CRM software, such as it was then, consisted mainly of managing your business cards and taking some notes, so it’s an industry I’ve stayed interested in as it’s grown and evolved.

The host of the Blogtropol.us Lounge at Web 2.0 Expo was The Conversation Group, and I got to meet their Director, Integrated Media Campaigns, Denise Vardakas, who filled me on a company she was working with: Ribbit. Intrigued, I asked to be put on their demo list, and today I got a chance to talk to Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs as well as Greg Goldfarb, GM of Enterprise Applications.

They describe Ribbit as Silicon Valley’s first phone company, a phone company re-invented from the ground up to make telephony open so that people can take it into the workflow of their apps to create better value using voice. Using an analogy of Google Maps functionality added to other applications, Ribbit allows developers to move voice services into their app, giving the end-user a simple and seamless way to use it within the app.

Ribbit for Salesforce is the first app to show this functionality off, and demonstrate to developers how easy it is to use this platform to build voice functionality into their own apps, incorporating voice automation into an on-demand SaaS-type workflow. Ribbit for Salesforce was written using an Open API by a Salesforce developer in San Jose who had no previous telecomm experience, using the three things Ribbit is providing for developers:

a team of developers at Ribbit who know both Internet and telecomm and can assist with integrating the functionality;
the Multi-Protocol SmartSwitch™ which handles integrated telephony/communcation gateways: PSTN, VoIP VoIM (GTalk, Skype), and any browser with Flash installed; and
an Open API.
The browser functionality is the most important; with over 750 million browsers already having Flash installed, there is an enormous embedded base for developers to leverage Ribbit with.

Ribbit’s functionality is hosted in the cloud, which means that anyone can use it with nothing to download. The platform was launched in closed beta last December, with. Today, the full functionality of Ribbit for Salesforce will be available to all Salesforce customers using Professional Edition or above.

Ribbit feels that the beta for Salesforce has been a success, with over 300 customers in the beta, and most converting into users. Revenue is actually AHEAD of schedule (how often do we hear that from a Web 2.0 company?), with users signing up for 1-3 year contracts.

Ribbit for Salesforce is AppExchange Certified, and starts at $25 per user per month on top of Salesforce subscriptions for basic features, which include 10 outbound calls, unlimited voice messaging and storage, unlimited voice memos, unlimited inbound calls to the online cell, unlimited email & SMS notifications, full Salesforce integration, and five text transcriptions per month. Upgrades include Voice to Text services for an additional $10 per user per month, and unlimited outbound calling for an additional $15 per user per month.

Ribbit for Salesforce has some really cool features that allow users easy message access, as well as the ability to call into and leave notes in CRM, use your existing mobile number within the app, place messages into designated parts of the workflow, voice memo updates, and voice mail converted to text. Ribbit essentially provides a complete backup of your cell that runs right in Salesforce, allowing you to still take advantage of mobile capabilities when cell out of range, overseas, etc., with everything looking like it’s coming right from your cell phone. It logs calls, allows you to use a landline in addition to web and cell for conferences, and archives all voice interactions for a contact.

After viewing the demo, I had a few questions for Ted and Greg:

Cyndy: How accurate is voice recognition?

The Voice to Text feature is done with Simulscribe (now called PhoneTag) with a process using machine transcription then brought to a call center if the results don’t make sense. Using this process makes the transcriptions very accurate.

For lack of a better phrase, how idiot proof is it to get people up and running with Ribbit for Salesforce?

During the beta testing, we actually made the initial set-up easier, and it’s now about a 15-minute set-up. We discovered that people want to dive right in, not read a lot of text before they start using something, so we use wizards to walk people through set-up. User surveys show that we are now exceeding expectations in terms of ease-of-use. We focused on app design to make it as seamless as possible with Salesforce as well as make it easy AND robust.

Are all mobile operating systems supported?

All phones are supported, as well as most carriers, but conditional call forwarding is required to use Ribbit for Salesforce. Right now, the only major cell carrier that doesn’t support that is Sprint.

In addition to Ribbit for Salesforce, Ribbit has over 4000 developers signed up to develop on the platform, working on custom apps and mash-ups. Beyond Salesforce, there are other CRM and SaaS players, emerging PaaS companies, and OpSource customer base integrations to move toward. In June, Amphibian will launch, a Ribbit application for consumers and based on what I saw in the demo today, I can’t wait.

Ribbit Launches Voice Capabilities for Salesforce
Posted by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira