The trap
Most teams bolt a chatbot onto their CRM. The bot reads documents, answers FAQs, and sits in the corner of the dashboard. Reps ignore it within a week because it never knows what they actually need to know.
What works
The chatbot has to live inside the data model. That means tool calling into the CRM, real-time access to deal records, and a retrieval layer over notes, calls, and emails. The interface should be embedded in the deal view, not a side panel.
- Tool calls into the CRM for live records, not snapshots
- Hybrid retrieval (vector + keyword) over notes, calls, and emails
- Evals that score against last-quarter's deals before each release
The metric
If the chatbot doesn't reduce rep prep time by at least 30%, it's not paying for itself. We measure prep time per call as the leading indicator.