VOIP Integration

A major tool for businesses today is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. CRM’s allow for business to track their interactions with current and prospective customers.

Most popular CRM integrations will have API’s available for cloud VoIP providers to connect the CRM account with the business phone system. This now provides real-time data exchange, giving your business instant access to information regarding your customers preferences of history.

VoIP / CRM integrations offer key data and analytics to sales & marketing as well as the business support teams.

 

Real-Time Data

Sales agents will be able to focus on the caller rather than concern themselves with logging call time, location, start and end times, phone number etc. This is all done in real-time with the VoIP integration. Some integrations will allow for call recording where agents will be able to attach a record to the customer account, providing accurate history if another agent receives a call from the customer at a later date.

Other information becomes available such as whether the call came from a home phone, mobile device, office phone, laptop, internet call etc. Knowing the source helps in the future.

 

Customer Experience Improved

CRM’s using VoIP integration allows sales and support agents to understand and respond to customer needs in real-time. Good CRM’s will guide the agent to the customers profile and history immediately and have a tracking number prepared to give to the customer right away. Once again, time is the value saved and the agent can focus on the customer and deliver a close quicker.

Sales agents can access other CRM profile information quickly such as website visits, which items were viewed and past purchases for example to better respond to the call. Product conversion or sales can be expedited with this information for existing customers or used to create a new customer enquiry into a loyalty member.

It is safe to say that regarding support calls, troubleshooting history, support call history, past tickets etc. displayed leads to shorter exchanges, smaller wait times and speedier resolutions.

 

Analytics

CRM data becomes critical for marketing in order to assess reports and sales funnel data to lead agents to better capture and convert sales.

Known as ‘Closed Loop Analytics’ this is the process of sharing data to close the loop between the marketing and sales departments. Better tracking and identification of potential markets is designed to lead to higher revenue and conversion rates.

VoIP integration here with the business CRM will have the marketing department test out the effectiveness of different tactics to gain customer interest. It can be as simple as analyzing whether specific FAQ’s and web pages would lead to a reduction of calls as the information is now available online.

 

Efficiency

The elimination of all the extra work mentioned above is one area that significantly impacts the customer experience. Sales and marketing agents can readily access this CRM data in order to more accurately target the specific audience, location or market in need.

 

Management

Managers would now have real-time access to key metrics on each individual agent. Number of calls per day, number of hang-ups, average call times and wait times are only a few of the many reports available.

Managers will be able to spot agents who may need assistance quicker and assign another agent to support them immediately. They will also be able to schedule agents according to demand times rather than have agents sitting with no calls coming in on slow periods.

 

VoIP Integration: A choice made

In today’s world of hyper-information quickly, it is beneficial to have the facts available to your business in real-time rather than fall behind. A CRM system integration with VoIP will not guarantee you success. But if it is used wisely with the right staff, it will define whether you communicate to your customers or with your customers.