VanillaSoft has broadened its Web browser horizons and now instead of offering its lead management software only to Internet Explorer users, the autodialing platform supports Firefox and Safari.
The Dallas-based lead management software maker announced today that it started supporting these two alternative browsers in a bid to open up its services to more users.
“Our autodialing feature even works on the iPhone (News - Alert),” Leonard Sussenbach, vice president of Product Development VanillaSoft, told TMCnet. The move was the result of several factors, not in the least that the ubiquitous iPhone uses Apple’s (News - Alert) Safari browser and Firefox has been gaining market share from IE in recent years.
“Customers don’t care about the browser,” said Sussenbach. “They just want to see the sales call stats of their inside sales team, wherever they are: at home or outside the U.S.”
In fact, the browser market has shifted so much lately that Microsoft’s (News - Alert) IE has lost its stranglehold on the attention of Internet users. For years the browser captured approximately 90 percent of all Internet users, but now those numbers have declined.
At the end of last year, IE’s market share dropped below 70 percent for the first time, according to Net Applications. It is no coincidence that furring that same period Firefox hit its all-time highest share with 21 percent. Apple has also seen rapid growth in the browser market with its Safari browser growing from less than 5 percent to almost 8 percent in 16 months. This latest growth is undoubtedly due to the growing legions of iPhone users and an increasing number of Mac’s making their market.
“We still autodial more telephone systems through Internet Explorer then anyone, but the rise of soft phones such as Skype (News - Alert) and X-Lite make it possible to offer autodialing inside other browsers,” said Sussenbach.
While neither Firefox nor Safari support Microsoft ActiveX which is the secret behind VanillaSoft’s ability to autodial any major PBX (News - Alert), soft phones have mitigated this fact and generally autodial a little bit faster, according to Sussenbach.
VanillaSoft also supports call recording on both soft phones.
“Our goal for our customers is to make more effective calls, with less distraction,” said Ken Murray, co-founder of VanillaSoft.
Murray also noted a simple layout of the sales agent’s screen that offers the administrators detailed lead routing features to cater to the customer’s specific business rules. “Ordinary CRM is no fit with inside sales, it’s too complicated to run an inside sales team productively. Most of our users are making sales calls within the first few minutes after they log on.”
Tim Gray is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Tim’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Tim Gray
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