AI transcription company Otter.ai on Wednesday launched OtterPilot for Sales, an AI sales assistant that helps employees with non-selling tasks such as note-taking and CRM data entry.

The sales-specific product launches seven months after Otter.ai released OtterPilot, an AI meeting assistant that automatically sends AI-generated meeting notes, including summaries and key meeting points, to participants after a call.

"One cohort of users who we saw using OtterPilot was salespeople," said Sam Liang, co-founder and CEO of Otter.ai. "Sales reps do a lot of calls every day and it's actually a big pain point for them to enter the data [from those calls] into Salesforce. With Otter, AI automates that process so, not only can OtterPilot for Sales listen and take notes at the end of the call, it can automatically pull that information into their CRM."

OtterPilot for Sales also builds on the features introduced to the Otter platform in February, providing automated sales call notes and AI-powered insights to sales representatives after the call has finished, including budget, authority, need, and timeline.

Additional sales-specific features include the ability to automatically sync sales insights directly into Salesforce. Integration with Hub Spot will be "available pretty soon," Liang said pointing out that Centrally Organized Customer Call Notes are designed to keep sales teams aligned by storing customer call notes and insights into centrally organized folders that can be accessed by entire sales teams.

Finally, Otter AI Chat, a product launched by Otter.ai in June, would be able to answer questions during calls, write follow-up emails, and summarize a customer's sentiment. It also allows sales managers to view sales calls taking place in real time via a live transcript and message sales reps without having to join the call and disrupt the conversation.

When it comes to the training of AI, data privacy has become an increasingly contentious issue and Liang said that when it comes to using OtterPilot for Sales, sales representatives would disclose to customers upfront that they'll be using the tool during the call.

"Before the meeting, OtterPilot can send an email to the customer in advance and say 'Hey, I'm going to use this. If you don't want me to use this tool, please let me know in advance and I will turn it off,'" he said. "Transparency is definitely super important."

Otter.ai to focus on building more vertical solutions

Otter.ai has been built as a horizontal platform to support lots of different meetings, Liang explained, noting that although some Otter features are beneficial to people across teams, each department has specific needs and insights that are unique to them. This means that moving forward, Liang said, there are opportunities for Otter to develop additional specific features.

"This is only one of the verticals we're looking into... we are planning to provide more vertical solutions," he said. "We're continuing to invest in the horizontal product, which is valuable for tens of millions of users, but then, for certain areas, we are creating more specialized solutions."

OtterPilot for Sales is available to Otter.ai enterprise customers at launch via both the Otter web and mobile app. Details on pricing were not immediately available.