Speak, Copy, Paste, Format, Send

May 7th, 2009 by Chris Cranis | located in Productivity, Salesforce | trackback

Have you ever been driving to work or a meeting and realized you forgot to send someone a follow-up email?

Maybe you had a new thought or strategy that you wanted to share with someone but had to wait a bit before you could log into your computer to whip up an email. How frustrating is that? How many emails never get written because you either forgot or told yourself you would “do it later”?

One of the things I find myself doing on a daily basis is giving myself a list of emails to “write” as I commute to our HQ in Mt. View, CA. Since my daily commute is just over an hour each way, you can imagine how many emails I could send. This could be an email to one of my customers saying “thanks” or perhaps I need to write a new prospect that just test drove Ribbit from the AppExchange. It could be that I want to say “Thanks for your time today” after a demo or sales pitch?

I don’t drive a special car by the way nor do I use my iPhone to type while driving (hello $300 ticket). How do I do this? Simple! I use Ribbit!!

Since Ribbit allows voice messages up to 3 minutes (that can be left by myself using * + ‘5’ in the Ribbit Voice Menu), I can dictate an email right from the drivers seat while speaking into my mobile phone via Bluetooth headset. Once I complete the message, Ribbit transcribes the call to text and then delivers the message to my email (and puts a copy in salesforce.com).

When I get to my office, fire open my email, I can see all the new messages I have left myself. At this point, all I have to do is Copy, Paste, Format & Send! Simple.

Here is an email I dictated to my friend (and Partner) at Model Metrics, Sachin Saste.

(Image 1: Email copy of the transcripted voicemail)

(Image 2: Highlight the transcription and copy it to the clipboard)

(Image 3: Paste the transcripted text into a new email.)

(Image 4: Format the email & clean up any language or punctuation. Then click send. Done.)

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One Response to “Speak, Copy, Paste, Format, Send”

1. Mike Vicchitto Says:
   May 7th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

   Chris, that rocks. Nice job! I’m going to fwd to our often very mobile Sales guys.

   Mike