Thanks to our good friend Apple’s Siri, millions of people speak to their devices like they are a person, and expect to be understood. This thing called “voice recognition,” what Siri uses, has been around for the last few decades in an “almost ready” state – not quite accurate and with limited vocabularies. Since 2000, though, voice recognition has become more accurate and accepted with the dawn of the smartphone.
Not only is voice recognition more accurate, it is significantly faster than we humans are at entering information on a miniature keyboard (unless you are a teenager). Don’t get us wrong, texting is still exponentially faster than typing on a computer (the old fashioned way). As a matter of fact, according to eWeek, 80% of people are currently using texting for business. With texting more widely adopted, voice recognition/natural language processing is still the wave of the future; but it is a wave to keep a close eye on.
A recent study shows that the input rate with natural language processing is 3x faster, with over 20% less errors, than the same information entered on a smartphone keyboard.
“Humanity was never designed to communicate by using our fingers to poke at a tiny little keyboard on a mobile phone. Speech has always been a much more natural way for humans to communicate with each other.” [1] Chief Scientist, Andrew Ng
How is this a thing of beauty for the sales rep? Whether on the road, or at the desk, having the ability to ask Salesforce a question, get an answer, and update data, is a huge timesaver (and headache preventer). For the sales manager in the office, that time savings translates into real dollars as sales people get to spend more time selling and less time updating. And think about how much more accurate the CRM sales data will be when hours haven’t passed between a meeting and getting to a computer to enter the said data.
According to Markets and Markets June 2016 report, the voice and speech recognition market is expected to grow from $4.17 billion in 2015 to $11.96 billion in 2022. To stay competitive, smart businesses are already taking advantage of voice-activated apps to help make their employees more efficient, lessen stress, and increase data accuracy. Rollio harnesses this growing technology with its Intelligent Sales Assistant, powered by Natural Language Processing and coupled with Salesforce to better apply your sales organization’s time and effort. Learn more about how we do that here. And, by the way, thank you for making it mainstream, Siri.
[1] Source: FlatlandKC.org: Voice Recognition Software Finally Beats Humans at Typing, Study Finds