If you’re not quite sure how serious Google is about wooing business users, here’s another indication that it is: the company is working with enterprise-y software companies to put the Google Hangout button on their websites or applications. So for example, if you’ve got a problem, bam — you’re in a hangout with customer support. It’s basically a replacement to the live chat buttons you see on most web sites these days, but with video.
Partners here include Zendesk and Zoho. For a quick demo of Hangouts’ integration with Salesforce.com check out the video below, although Salesforce.com is not mentioned as a participating partner.
Business customers already incorporating the Hangouts button include The Weather Channel and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, Google said. In much the same vein, the company launched Chromebox for meetings, which also runs Hangouts, earlier this year.
Making Hangouts ubiquitous can promote collaboration, customer service, employee recruiting and other tasks, Stephen Cho, head of Google Apps and Hangouts technology partnerships, said in the blog post announcing the news.
Given Microsoft’s continued dominance with Office and integration of Skype with those bread-and-butter apps, this makes perfect sense.
Feature photo courtesy of Flickr user The Daring Librarian
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