What is a Connector? By definition, it is “a thing that links two or more things together.” In the telecommunications sector, that can mean a multitude of things. For the purposes of this blog post, I will be talking about ConvergeOne Advanced Services (C1AS) and the benefits of integrating Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms with Telephony platforms.
In today’s ever-changing digital era, one thing that remains constant is the need to service customers efficiently. CRM tools have been around for a long time. Salesforce has defined CRMs as “a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers,” and it continues on by stating that “the goal is simple: Improve business relationships. A CRM system helps companies stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.”
CRMs are a critical part of contact center success, and another critical piece to the overall puzzle is real-time voice interactions. While we are entering into an age where most people can find answers to their questions via self-service digital channels, some customers will always want—and expect—to be able to speak to a live person to handle their interaction. With that want and expectation comes a need to integrate the CRM platform with the telephony system.
Integrating today’s CRMs with telephony platforms is what C1AS does. C1 Connect integrates many of the top CRM applications (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Service Cloud, Zendesk, and ServiceNow), with the major telephony providers (Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys Pure Engage).
What do you gain by integrating your CRM with your telephony platform? Embedded telephony controls, screen pops of customer records, the ability to click-to-dial from the CRM platform, and logging of telephony data to a specific customer record within the CRM. We will dive into each of these items separately, but the combination of these four items provides the contact center with the ability to better service customers, increase productivity, and reduce Average Handle Time (AHT). The overall result? An exceptional, seamless customer experience.
Now, let’s look at how each of these four main features can benefit your contact center.
Embedded Telephony Controls
This feature allows users to have a single pane of glass with their telephony controls embedded inside of the CRM. In some CRM platforms, like Salesforce, we can even share user state presence with Salesforce’s Omnichannel solution so both voice and non-voice items can be handled in the same window.
Screen Pops
Screen pops are critical to customer experience and contact center users alike. From a customer experience standpoint, customers don’t like having to slog through the long process of having agents look up their records, especially after entering information into the system prior to connecting with an agent. Having the phone system integrated with the CRM gives us that screen pop capability, thus increasing customer satisfaction. From a contact center standpoint, agents will no longer have to spend 30-60 seconds looking up customer information, which reduces their AHT. With C1 Connect, users also have the ability to define an object that will be transferred to another agent. For example, a customer calls in and we screen pop their contact record, but then a subsequent case is opened and the customer needs to be transferred to tier 2. With C1 Connect, we could pass that newly created case over to the tier 2 agent, increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing AHT.
Click-to-Dial
This feature allows agents to click and dial phone numbers with one click within the CRM application. With smart dialing rules in place on C1 Connect, the agents will never have to append outside line codes, long distance prefixes, or international prefixes. The seamless integration will absolutely be a time saver.
Call Logging
Understanding previous customer interactions is crucial to the success of a contact center. C1 Connect allows users to automatically record telephony data, comments, and custom fields. This gives managers and business leaders additional reporting capabilities. It also helps when a customer calls back and connects with a different contact center agent. The agent can quickly look at the customer’s record and review the notes from all previous interactions.
Any contact centers that use one of the CRM platforms listed earlier—or a home-grown CRM application that can embed JavaScript into its pages—would benefit from C1 Connect. The bottom line is that integrating your telephony system with your CRM application can increase customer satisfaction and lower contact center AHT, which benefits both the customer and the contact center alike.
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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
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Topics: Customer Experience
