5 Headaches Solved with Integrated Telephony

Computer telephony integration (CTI) is a voice solution embedded into a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, like Salesforce. A CTI solution is a key component to any customer service strategy. For contact center agents and sales teams, CTI is vital in providing efficient customer service and streamlining processes – allowing phone conversations to be tracked inside Service Cloud and Sales Cloud for true business insight. This technology also allows for a broad range of key customer service and sales functions to be simplified or even eliminated. 

Solve these five common headaches with CTI: 

1. Inability to make and receive calls directly from a computer

Teams without CTI require separate hardware and infrastructures to operate their respective VoIP phone and computer systems. Those who have a CRM-integrated telephony solution are empowered with a single system – eliminating the need for a standalone phone system.

There is a demand for a more streamlined experience, with 66% of workers saying they would like to centralize all workplace communications into a single platform. The same number of workers believe that a centralized platform would make them more productive at work.

Immediate and complete visibility into critical client information empowers a workforce to have more effective conversations, resolve issues more quickly, and tailor calls to the specific needs of a given prospect. As an additional efficiency, users can seamlessly complete necessary tasks, during or after a call, without diverting attention from the client.

2. Lack of quantifiable call data 

Standalone telephony systems rarely, if ever, enable automated data collection. Instead, they must undergo manual recordkeeping, creating inefficiencies and inaccuracies in your CRM. 

CTI allows contact centers and sales teams to automate the tracking of important KPIs like call rates, conversion rates, speed of answer, handle time, and more. These data points are vital to understanding how to best serve clients with insights into how to resolve issues, close deals at speed, and provide a consistently superior experience.

Real-time data also helps managers pinpoint specific areas for improvement. Without it, key decision-makers are beholden to self-reported numbers that often depict only part of the picture when it comes to evaluating performance. A CRM-integrated telephony system can empower supervisors to assign calls to agents best equipped to help with specific caller issues or highlight important call patterns.

Call data collected by salespeople or customer service representatives can be leveraged across business functions to pinpoint growth opportunities, inform more intelligent marketing strategies, shape the product development process, or influence opportunities for cross-selling. In short, the effective use of data analytics leads to improved operational and business performance. 

3. Insufficient personalization 

Every customer-agent interaction is an opportunity to offer superior service and build customer loyalty. Unsurprisingly, 80% of customers are more willing to give their business to a brand that offers a personalized experience whereas, 63% of customers stop purchasing from brands that don’t.

When it comes to sales, personalization is the name of the game. The entire customer journey hinges upon a salesperson’s ability to connect with a prospect in a genuine, one-on-one format. A 2019 study conducted by Forbes found that 40% of executives report that “personalization efforts have had a direct impact on maximizing sales, basket size and profits in direct-to-consumer channels, such as e-commerce, while another 37% point to increased sales and customer lifetime value through product or content recommendations.”

4. Silos in customer experience 

Omnichannel marketing campaigns provide customers with an integrated experience and is undoubtedly the future of sales, marketing, and customer service.

These campaigns earn nearly four times the engagement and 250% higher purchase rates compared to single-channel campaigns. It is nearly impossible to offer a seamless omnichannel experience if contact center data isn’t integrated with its CRM.

A gap is created in the customer experience when telephony systems are disassociated from a CRM platform. This disjointed journey can result in diminished customer service making it increasingly more important to break down silos with CTI integration and begin the cultivation of increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

5. Barriers to collaboration 

A CRM-integrated telephony solution allows employees to streamline customer interaction and provide faster and more efficient collaboration between departments. Whether team members are utilizing more standard call functions like holding, transferring, and conferencing or more advanced functions like whisper coaching or immediate file transfer, they are able to request and deliver help to each other without a hitch.

This collaboration creates a more efficient call funnel with shorter wait times, fewer missed, dropped, or blocked calls, and a higher rate of first-call resolution — all of which ensure customers and prospects receive a higher quality of service.

Integrating Voice with Salesforce

Resolving the above pain points with a Salesforce-integrated CTI solution improves the customer experience, streamlines the sales process, and delivers better long-term results while providing unprecedented visibility into call data and KPIs – directly translating to cost savings.