Ribbit (News - Alert) Corporation, an Internet telephony (VoIP) company, is introducing a new service that merges with Salesforce’s on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) software in several ways.

 

The new service enables users to push voicemail from their cell phones into Salesforce, attaching that data to customer records or sharing it with colleagues. Voice messages are converted to text, a significant time-saver when compared to manually entering notes. The service also allows voicemails to be searched.

 

Ribbit’s new offering allows customers to use their regular cell phone numbers using the “conditional call forwarding” feature. This feature is offered free by some cell carriers. When customers make calls with their cell phone they get forwarded to Ribbit’s Web-based platform which diverts the data to Salesforce.

 

Within Salesforce, users are allowed to make software-based phone calls. The original cell numbers of customers are used as identifiers, but calls are routed over Ribbit’s network and not the carrier’s network.

 

“We’re targeting a different and important area like Salesforce Professional Edition or customers who have got a team of people relying on their cell phone to do their job,” said  Greg Goldfarb, general manager of software as a service at Ribbit , in a statement. “Such products are interdependent on having a certain type of infrastructure.”

Ribbit said about 70 companies were involved in private beta testing of the service and many have become paying customers. The service includes unlimited voice messaging, storage and inbound calls to the software-based phone, with five voice-to-text transcriptions. There is an additional fee for the voice-to-text service.

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“This move came down to pragmatism,” said Ted Griggs, CEO of Ribbit, in a statement. “It became daunting as a startup to think, how we are going to do all these integrations.”

 

Ribbit announced that more that 4,000 developers have already signed up for the service and it expects to derive income from revenue-sharing deals with developers who are successful in creating viable commercial applications. The company is preparing to launch a consumer-oriented phone and voicemail management service.