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An internal review of sales department

Incorporating speech recognition to fast-track CRM requirements

The facts

The customer
Speech Processing Solutions Asia Pacific, Sydney, Australia
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Philips Dictation is forever evolving and adapting its products and services to the stringent requirements of the needs and wants of its customers. We pride ourselves on being leaders in voice technology, keeping pace with advancing consumer trends and rapid adoption of new capabilities by professionals. We listen to customer feedback, apply learnings and evolve our technology into a sophisticated and reliable source of truth when it comes to making life easier with speech to text solutions.

Our most successful cloud-dictation solution, SpeechLive, has recently announced its latest innovation in addition to the smartphone app allowing our customers to turn their voice into text from anywhere, anytime. Thanks to the new desktop app, users can now dictate directly into any third-party application including web forms, CRM platforms, word documents and emails. This new SpeechLive enhancement allows for more user friendly and convenient work habits, saving our customers even more time and avoiding unnecessary delays.

In order to develop new learnings and understandings about our products and services, Philips engages in professional feedback session not only from our external professionals, but also our internal staff. To get an insider’s perspective, we recently interviewed two members from our Australian sales department Homer Usares and Tom Curran to understand how they are utilising SpeechLive’s voice recognition feature in their work settings.

I’m not too bad a typer but in terms of speed, it actually is so much better using my voice.

Tom Curran
Business Development Manager

Saving time in documenting customer records

Homer Usares, Business Development Manager, has been with Speech Processing Solutions Asia Pacific for the last six years. He joined just after SpeechLive was introduced in Australia. As a Business Development Manager he is responsible for a large chunk of customers as well as a number of Philips Certified Partners. Record keeping is a must for any organisation and for Sales CRM tool is key to keep track of customer lifecycle. So far Homer has relied on the traditional method of typing as the central means for his documentation and emailing requirements. He recently has transitioned to dictation during the release of SpeechLive to test how it could improve his work efficiency and he has not looked back since then. He has incorporated the speech to text functionality using his Philips SpeechOne Wireless Headset to dictate conversations with customers on Salesforce as well as respond to endless emails during his work day. Homer mentioned, “With the recent development of the SpeechLive Desktop App, I’m using it now to write my notes on our CRM tool Salesforce. After a call or a meeting with a customer, I try to capture all the information verbally and let our technology do the conversion from voice to text in real time for me. Before it was the usual flow of grabbing your note book, writing your thoughts and notes and manually typing information into the customer’s profile. Comparing the two different ways of working I would say I save at least an hour a day which I can use for more sales activities. Another benefit is capturing as much information as possible about my customer calls and meetings. When I or one of my colleagues picks up the conversation with the customer again, all information is available."
Homer finds this method easier to analyse and assess conversations for improved sales script and training requirements. He finds this way of recording and storing customer information an invaluable time saver as it allows him to focus more on customer engagement and lead generation rather than admin tasks.

Tom Curran, also Business Development Manager, has recently joined the APAC team from a completely different work background. For him, although he is quite tech-savvy, he had never used voice technology before in a professional setting. Like Homer, he also has his own clientele base that he needs to work with and using voice technology in a Sales setting has been a complete game changer. “I’m pretty foreign to the whole using your voice technology in a work sense. To understand it and actually see where it can be applied — not just the email but searches on the computer or writing up a word document or preparing meeting notes — it makes it so much easier than typing. I’m not too bad a typer but in terms of speed, it actually is so much better using my voice. I’m someone that can probably get distracted pretty easy but when you are using voice, you really are focused in on that. I really do apply it to my everyday work.”, Tom elaborated.

Homer Usares, Business Development Manager

Mobile working made easy

Since joining Tom has worked closely with our sales team and has been key in educating our partners and end-to-end customers on our new SpeechLive functionalities via webinars. For Tom, voice recognition technology has played a vital role for him whilst working from home, enabling him the flexibility to dictate anywhere, anytime. Tom said, “The purpose of using SpeechLive for me is it can be a centralised space for information to be collated so I can upload it to our client solution for anyone else in the office. As I work remote from home, so any information that I need to relay to the team, by literally pressing the button I can send it everyone no matter where they are in the world for that matter.”
Homer also added, “Sometimes I use SpeechLive after hours when I am at home and some thought about work just pops in and I want to quickly capture that moment. I just open my SpeechLive app and record whatever comes to mind and send it to speech recognition within SpeechLive and I have that transcribed instantly and send to my email so I am all prepared for the next day. I have also used SpeechLive to do customer interviews that we use as success stories for the Marketing team. Instead of having to listen to the recorded interview, the recording is sent to our transcription team via SpeechLive and have the transcript made available within 48 hours. It makes lives a lot easier when you don’t have to spend a lot of time typing.”

Adopting voice technology – the new normal

Due to the differences in demographic and age backgrounds, Homer and Tom have opposing views when it comes to using voice technology in their private spaces. Homer prefers to keep his private space gadget free as much as possible, even though most of his days is consumed with educating different industry professionals on the benefits of using voice technology to improve efficiency, agility and productivity. He explained, “I know I can use voice technology at home but I prefer not. You will not find any smart device at my place, but I will use SpeechLive at home when something work related comes up. Relying in voice technology is becoming a must nowadays, so I don’t see much conflict using voice technology at home and at work as it’s dependent on individual’s preferences. In my case things might change but at the moment I’d like to keep it separate.”
Tom on the other hand is all about keeping himself updated with new gadgets and gears. Even though using voice technology in work setting was a new thing, it was a natural progression for him to pick it up as he finds it convenient to use voice command in his day to day life. “I really do use it and have embraced automated voice commands around the home for things like controlling sensors, alarm clock, lights and few other gadgets. To be able to use your turn the lights off in the kitchen without getting up is really cool and convenient. It can be controlled from your devices anywhere, so it comes back to that efficiency. So, applying SpeechLive and voice technology at work was a natural progression for me”, detailed Tom.

More satisfied customers

“This mobile way of working can be efficiently handled with the Philips SpeechExec Enterprise solution. The site managers dictate on the construction sites and the documents are transferred online. This makes us much faster than before and makes it easier for us to prioritize customer requests.“

Marco Strittmatter, Master Plasterer and Site Manager, Soyez Stuckateur GmbH

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“The evolution to SpeechLive has been extremely smooth, and accomplished with very minimal training.“

Gale Kicinski, Records Administrative Supervisor, Port Huron Police Department

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“The main objective for our firm has always been to simplify the way solicitors produce documentation or instructions and remove any administrative overhead.“

Michelle Zenere, General Manager at Mullane & Lindsay Solicitors

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“Would we recommend Philips SpeechLive? Rather not—otherwise, our competitors would be as well organized as we are.“

Dr. Michael Bergmann, Partner at Raue Law Firm in Berlin

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