Empowering Your Business with CRM Telephony integration

Why every modern company must invest in CTI: article sponsored by Zadarma

Unified Communications

Published: December 12, 2017

Ian Taylor Editor

Ian Taylor

Editor

“Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!” These were the first words ever transmitted along the practical telephone by its Scottish-born inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, way back in 1876 – and just look at how far it has come since then!

Though adapted and upgraded by many other innovators and technical designers along the way, it’s astonishing to see that billions of people across the world still use Bell’s 141-year-old-invention to communicate with one another on a daily basis – but is there any room for the telephone in a post-digital world?

The short answer? Absolutely. Though cloud technology may have opened up many new doors over the last decade and carried communications forward to their next evolutionary step, the telephone definitely isn’t going away anytime soon – and with the added capabilities that come from integrating it with powerful customer relationship management (CRM) software from providers such as Salesforce, Zoho CRM and Bitrix24, it’s more efficient and effective than ever before.

“CRM Telephony Integration? What’s that?” We hear you ask. Well, in order to answer that question for our beloved readers, we have pulled together some of the top reasons why CRM Integration solutions from providers such as Zadarma have transformed the way businesses communicate over the telephone and why it’s such an important feature for any modern business.

 

 

Click-to-dial

Time is precious in any business environment, but when you’re working in a busy office or contact centre that handles thousands of calls on a daily basis, those wasted seconds spent manually dialling in numbers can quickly add up. As a result, agents become less efficient and customers become increasingly frustrated as they are forced to wait in queues for their call to be answered. With click-to-dial however, agents can make, receive and transfer calls at the click of a button directly from their screen, thus increasing call flow efficiency and ensuring agents work productively throughout the day.

Automated Call Routing

The last thing an angry customer wants to hear after they’ve already been waiting on hold for 10 minutes is that they are being put on hold again while the agent transfers them through to the relevant department. By integrating with the CRM, some phone systems can make accurate predictions on the nature of the call based on data logged from previous interactions to direct the customer through to an agent capable of handling their request immediately.

Personalised Interactions

 When you take into consideration a recent study from Salesforce that demonstrates how 52% of customers are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalise communications to them, we can see how important it is for businesses to go that one step further for their clients. By connecting their phone systems to their CRM, businesses empower their agents to provide a deeply personalised service to their customer by giving them instant access to a rich pool of data and notes from previous interactions at the start of every call.

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Empowering Your Business with CRM Telephony integration CTI
Zadarma provide free CRM Integration for their partners.

Explaining yourself once is fine, explaining yourself twice is frustrating, but the chances of you explaining yourself for a third time are incredibly slim as, by this point, you’ve more than likely picked your phone up from your desk and thrown it out of the nearest window in a furious rage. With CRM Telephony Integration, however, agents can access all of their customer’s information and account history from a window that pops up on their computer during an incoming call.

Call Recording

Should a dispute ever occur between agent and customer, businesses using CRM Telephony Integration can quickly resolve the issue by playing through the recording of the call stored in the customer’s CRM record to determine who was at fault. As well as simplifying and speeding up the dispute resolution process, this feature also provides businesses with a great training resource to help agents understand where they went wrong what they need to do to improve their service.

Performance Monitoring

Likewise, any business that runs regular performance reviews on their agents will struggle to measure the metrics with any degree of accuracy if their phone system and CRM are working independently from one another. By integrating the two, businesses can easily measure KPIs, call rates, call durations, agent activity and a wide range of quantifiable datasets that CMOs and managers can use ensure their employees are performing well and meeting their targets.

Call Scripting

To add further support for employees who are in training or are uncertain on how to handle a customer request independently, linking CRM solutions with telephony enables businesses to create interactive call scripts that allow the agent to direct the customer towards a resolution in a calm and professional manner. As well as improving the efficiency and confidence of the agent, these scripts also ensure that each customer maintains a positive impression of the business, making them much more likely to continue using the brand in the future.

Omnichannel Support

To deliver good CX in the modern market, businesses must deliver omnichannel support that provides consistent, integrated service across the wide number of entry points customers now use to communicate with their service providers. If a phone system is disconnected from the CRM, quickly sourcing customer information taken through SMS, Social Media or WebRTC, for example, is going to be nigh on impossible during a call. With CRM Telephony integration however, agents are given a 360-degree view of the customer journey and can easily familiarise themselves with information from previous interactions, regardless of what channel it came from.

This article was sponsored by cloud based phone service provider, Zadarma.

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