Zoho introduces Zia Voice along with the launch of Catalyst, a hyper-customization platform for enterprises

Zoho has unveiled Zia Voice, a conversational AI for sales teams that adds speech and chat capabilities to Zia, Zoho's AI-powered sales assistant. Zia can now also predict deal closures and analyze email sentiment.

The company has also introduced Catalyst – a set of capabilities that allow larger and complex businesses to build their own mobile and web apps and additions to Zoho CRM, on existing Zoho infrastructure, to serve their own businesses uniquely. In addition, new features in Zoho CRM like Translations and Portals add to deepening their enterprise focus.

"We are delivering the first conversational AI for CRM, with Zia Voice," said Mani Vembu, COO, Zoho Corp. "Zia's enhanced AI capabilities will now help salespeople sell smarter, with contextual assistance and access customer information through a powerful voice and chat interface."

Zia can now talk to sales teams, and help them do a lot more.

Interactive voice and chatbot: From answering questions on everyday CRM information like new leads created, average deal revenue, or even monthly forecasts to practical traffic status, Zia converses with salespeople via simple chat and voice messages.

Lead and Deal Prediction: Zia analyzes interaction patterns and the progress of a lead or deal in the pipeline, and suggests the probability of its closure. This helps salespeople spend their time on deals that are more likely to close.

Email sentiment analysis: Zia makes sense out of the scores of emails that a salesperson might receive every day. Every email is analyzed to discover the relevant positive or negative sentiment. This helps salespeople identify critical emails and address them first.

Alerts for the best time to contact: Zia gives salespeople real-time updates about when they are most likely to reach their prospects. This increases their chance of connecting with leads and reduces the time spent on unanswered calls.

Catalyst: Hyper-customization platform for Zoho CRM

Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK): Zoho CRM's mobile SDK helps companies design and build custom mobile apps based on their own work roles or needs, helping them shape their own experience, their way.

Mobile Device Manager (MDM): Companies can distribute their custom apps built through Mobile and Web SDK internally through the MDM network, no matter if they run on iOS or Android.

Serverless Computing: Enterprises can now use Zoho's infrastructure to run code without having to worry about physical hardware or servers. Zoho CRM users can also integrate their account with third-party services using serverless components and save up on managing web servers.

Widgets: Businesses can build custom UI components to provide contextual information from external sources and work in real time with Zoho CRM's data.

Job opportunities for Indian developers

Catalyst works on Deluge, Zoho’s own programming language. There are 40,000 Deluge developers, of which around 10% are from India, who use it to create applications on Zoho’s platform.

“The developers eloquent in Delgue are becoming a valuable resource for our rich global partner network. In fact, our partners have started hiring developers in India,” said Vembu. “As Zoho’s ecosystem expands further with Catalyst, there will be an increase in demand for Deluge developers, creating job opportunities. Our goal is to have 1,00,000 developers in India on Zoho’s platform over the next three years."

According to the company, most features are available immediately on the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Zoho CRM. Some features are being rolled out to customers in a phased manner. Zoho CRM is available in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Edition, ranging from Rs.900 to Rs.2,700/user/month, and the Ultimate Edition, catering specifically to large businesses, at Rs.6,000/user/month.