Managing employees efficiently: advantages and disadvantages of a voice assistant in sales

Employee management in sales is one of the most important aspects that determines the success or failure of companies on a daily basis. In order to optimize these, voice-based assistance systems and chatbots today offer numerous innovative options and opportunities. But what are the advantages of such an assistance system in sales and what are its weaknesses?

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Benefits of a voice assistant in sales

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The most useful assistance systems for sales are chatbots and voice assistants. Sales Assistant Sally, for example, is used in this area. Sally is a voice assistant that is intended to make it easier for sales employees to work with computer systems such as customer relationship management systems (CRMs). The focus is on increasing efficiency.

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Design work processes efficiently and save costs

A voice assistant like Sally can ensure that a company costs significantly less by optimizing the communication infrastructure. Information can be entered into systems more easily and quickly, processed, accessed and evaluated by a voice assistant. In this way, work processes are designed and organized more efficiently. As a result, voice assistants such as Sally promise to reduce costs of up to 24 percent.

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More turnover by focusing on the sales business

At the same time, sales can be boosted by using voice assistants and chatbots. This effect can occur because thanks to the assistant, a company's sales staff can concentrate on their core competencies instead of wasting tons of time on administrative tasks. This leaves more time for their actual tasks, i.e. for selling the products. When more time is available for direct customer contact and sales activities, this is reflected in higher sales quotas. Sales are also increasing accordingly.

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Use idle time productively

Thanks to mobile technology, sales staff can flexibly access the voice assistant at any time. Since everything can be controlled by voice, they can even be productive while traveling by train or car. This allows them to use idle time not only to complete administrative tasks such as creating visit reports or entering customer data into CRM. With the help of the voice assistant, they can also flexibly access structured data and up-to-date information, anytime and anywhere.

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Clear processes through guided working

Another major advantage is that the voice assistant clearly communicates work processes. According to the principle of guided working, the sales process can be modelled and can be clearly specified. The voice assistant implements this plan by communicating the necessary work steps to employees in a clear and easy-to-understand way. Clear management of employees creates an optimized and structured sales process.

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In summary, it can therefore be said that a voice assistant brings significantly more structure to sales, optimizes work processes and frees up important capacities of sales staff. Chance only plays a minor role in this process.

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Are there any disadvantages of a voice assistant in sales?

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One disadvantage of voice assistants is that they can only use visual representations to a very limited extent. Processes that are increasingly linked to visual elements can therefore be supported less effectively using voice assistants.

While intuitive operation of systems via voice minimizes training costs, for example when using CRM systems, simplicity of operation can lead to convenience and also mean that employees no longer learn how to work with CRM.

In addition, an investment in the voice assistant and the conversion of the system is of course required first, as well as appropriate change management to familiarise sales staff with the new processes.

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