Software-as-a-service provider Zoho Corp. today rolled out a major update to its customer relationship management software that adds new speech and chat capabilities to its artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant Zia.

In addition, the CRM platform also gains new features that make it easier for customers to build and deploy serverless business software applications. First up is Zia Voice, which enables Zia, an AI-powered assistant for sales teams, to talk to users and help them achieve more, the company said.

“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,” said Zoho Chief Evangelist Raju Vegesna.

With Zia Voice, Zia now can talk to users, providing immediate answers via chat or voice to everyday questions such as the number of new leads created or monthly forecasts. Zia also gains new analytics capabilities, so for example, it can predict how new sales leads are likely to pan out, and analyze email sentiment.

The idea is that salespeople can use Zia to identify those leads that are most likely to culminate in a sale, so they can spend more of their time on those opportunities. The email analysis capabilities, meanwhile, could be used to help companies identify negative or positive sentiment and quickly address those that are most pertinent.

Lastly, Zia now has the ability to alert users when specific sales prospects are most likely to be reachable. This gives salespeople a better chance of connecting with their prospects on the phone, increasing the chances of closing a sale.

On the development side, Zoho is making it easier for businesses to build, manage and distribute serverless applications, which are apps that run on managed infrastructure. The new capabilities come via Catalyst, which Zoho describes as a “hypercustomization platform” for its CRM suite.

Catalyst is a kind of serverless computing platform for business applications. It allows Zoho CRM users to run their apps on Zoho’s infrastructure, so they don’t have to worry about managing the underlying servers and other hardware. Catalyst comes with a mobile software development kit that lets CRM users quickly design and build mobile apps for specific business functions, the company said. Catalyst also provides a mobile device manager network that enables the easy distribution of these new apps on both Android and iOS platforms.

Zoho said most of the new features are available now on the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of its CRM platform, while others will be rolled out in a phased manner.

Image: Zoho