60% of small businessess in the US still don’t have an online booking system set up and yesterday Google CEO Sundar Pichai showed that they might never have to.
The tech world is buzzing! And so are we in the commercial world, because we intuitively understand how this will dramatically change the way transactions are conducted for Commercial B2B organisations and Sales & Marketing Enablement Teams
Watch the short video, demonstrating Google Duplex here.
At Google I/O 18 in Mountainview California, Sundar Pichai gave a demonstration of the Google Assistant calling up a local hairdresser to book an appointment and a local restaurant to make a reservation. You can watch the calls in the video above, it’s quite cool.
In the first instance the appointment is booked no problem and in the second instance the assistant impressively maneuvers a complex and at times difficult to understand, conversation. Well done Google.
Its a clear demonstration that we are moving closer towards interacting with technology in ways that are more human to us. Instead of going online and booking in a system, you can soon aks your assistant to make the booking for you and it will make the reservation.
If you are a small business, thinking about investing in an online booking system, maybe hold off on that investment?
NB: For Commercial Leaders interested in learning more, connect with me on Linekedin and I’ll share with you a 100-page document made, with own research on the Virtual Sales Assistant.
Maybe we can get our heads out of the screens?
A year back I did a Podcast episode with Dona Sakar & James Whittaker from Microsoft (Check it out here), where we discussed virtual assistants. One of they key points of the conversation was that we were (finally) moving towards not having to interact with our devices in these unnatural ways. Staring into a screen for hours, operating in complex systems that mirror the technical architecture more than an ideal user experience and typing on a little keyboard to get our messages across (where my voice enabled digital assistant for writing on this Wednesday morning???!!!).
Voice enabled software was the thing of the future (Think Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana etc.). Like you would interact with an actual assistant (could you afford one in real life).
What does it mean for B2B sales & marketing?
It means that we need to allocate resources to look into voice enabled solutions, especially for our sales people!
Initially, Commercial Leadership should help sales reps get their heads out of their computers, phones and CRM systems and spend more time interacting with clients instead. Solutions like X.ai is a step in that direction, and coupled with voice enablement it’s gonna be DEADLY!
Gartner Hype cycle for CRM puts Virtual Digital Assistants at the very early stages. Maybe it just took a great jump forward?
Very soon, you might not have to only imagine this…
Imagine if you didn’t have to manually put in data into the CRM system, but your phone just asked you some questions, you answered and the data was there?
Imagine if you didn’t have to sit down after sales meetings and write a follow-up mail from scratch, but your phone just asked you some questions, you answered and the email was drafted?
Imagine if you didn’t have to arrange the details and logistics of the follow-up sales meeting, but your phone just asked you some questions, you answered and the meeting was arranged and booked with the relevant people?
Google showed that pretty soon we won’t have to imagine it.
