Considerations and Tips to Integrate Phone Systems with CRMs
Today, over 5 billion people are estimated to have mobile devices. More than half of these are smartphones. It is no wonder that businesses are bombarded with customer inquiries through social media, chats, email, and telephone calls.
Forward-thinking and progressive organizations are now making use of advanced technologies such as CRM to ensure customer satisfaction. This shift explains the exponential growth of CRM’s market size, which was estimated to be worth $40.2 billion in 2019. CRM solutions are aimed at creating value for customers by not only managing their expectations but also by anticipating them. This approach demonstrates your organization’s willingness to satisfy your customers.
Why integrate phone systems with CRM?
Integrating your organization’s phones with CRM has the following advantages over using isolated platforms:-
- It improves efficiency – integrating the phone system with your CRM improves the quality of your organization’s customer interactions by ensuring that all calls are directed to the relevant personnel. In turn, this reduces customer wait times.
- It makes it easier to manage data – in an age when organizations value data, it only makes sense to collect customer data. Integrating phone systems with CRM enables you to collect such information as abandoned calls, hold times, and call resolution rates. Such data comes in handy when you want to understand customer needs and evaluate your employees’ service levels.
- It speeds up the decision-making process – your staff can corroborate information from the system or fellow employees in real-time. They can share comments and share notes as the call goes on. This speeds up the decision-making and problem-solving processes.
Some of the top considerations and tips for integrating phone systems with CRMs include:
1. Multi-platform support
While you may be considering integration, there’s no guarantee that your CRM software will be compatible with your telephone systems. Ask your vendor whether your CRM solution has multi-platform support at minimal overhead costs. Integration should be carried out without the need for separate applications from your existing CRM or even browser plugins. It should also be scalable.
2. Customization
Your CRM solution and telephone systems may be compatible. But are they customizable? If your solutions can be customized to every employee’s level, it will be an invaluable asset to an organization. Make sure your vendor discloses any customization workflow configuration costs upfront.
3. Licensing issues
Your phone vendor’s efforts are geared towards providing you with a suitable telephony system. Integrating phones with CRM is, in most cases, an afterthought. To integrate phone systems with CRM, you might not only need to obtain additional licenses, but you might also need to install and configure additional telephone components. Seek to understand how such components will affect your existing system’s features.
Reliability
Most organizations would prioritize CRM and phone systems as critical. It only makes sense to consider systems that will provide the highest reliability level long after the integration happens.
Integrating phone and CRM systems not only reinforces the relationship between you and your customers but also gives you control over your organization’s marketing and sales efforts. It also minimizes the use of too many software, thus saving costs.
VoIP began as a simple substitute for traditional phone lines. While today VoIP offers such a variety of features. It has the power to significantly streamline business processes. Departments that make extensive use of phone features can use VoIP.
VoIP becomes the number one telephone choice by businesses in North America. It become a popular choice by companies of any size. Really it offers flexibility, higher productivity, and cost-savings. In fact, according to Ideacom, VoIP saves small businesses 90% in start-up costs. In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of streamlining processes. We will review the 5 most profound ways VoIP impacts workflows.
VoIP began as a simple substitute for traditional phone lines. While today VoIP offers such a variety of features. It has the power to significantly streamline business processes. Departments that make extensive use of phone features can use VoIP.
VoIP becomes the number one telephone choice by businesses in North America. It become a popular choice by companies of any size. Really it offers flexibility, higher productivity, and cost-savings. In fact, according to Ideacom, VoIP saves small businesses 90% in start-up costs. In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of streamlining processes. We will review the 5 most profound ways VoIP impacts workflows.
