Published : October 26, 2019Cloud-based business communications solutions have come a long way. From being considered as a cheap alternative to on-premise phone systems, it is now considered as the primary choice for business communications for companies of all sizes. And like all great products and services, it continues to evolve and add different functionalities to better meet the needs of its customers.
One of those innovations is its ability to play nice with other business productivity apps, specifically customer relationship management systems or CRM. That is right, most cloud-hosted business communications solutions available in the market today can be integrated with the top CRMs.
This may seem like a trivial thing, but having your phone solution integrated into your CRM like pipedrive can lead to a number of advantages. In fact, here are some ways how integrating your phone into your CRM can help your business be more successful:
Improves efficiency
The main purpose of integrating your phone solution into your CRM is to improve efficiency. By adding your communications component into your CRM, employees would no longer have to shift from the CRM app to the phone app to make or receive calls. In addition, you can also set it up where customer information automatically pops up whenever they call. This saves the employee the time and effort to look for the customer’s profile and pull it from the system.
And let us not forget outgoing calls. Instead of having employees dial the numbers into your phone app, you can also set it up where phone numbers within the CRM are clickable via the click-to-call feature. Not only does it make dialing faster, but it also significantly reduces misdial instances because it removes the human element in the process.
Easier tracking
Sometimes, the most important pieces of information are the ones that are not being tracked. That includes information on who talked to whom in a business setting. That is even more problematic when an incident arises from one of the many customer phone interactions within the company wherein one cannot pinpoint who handled a particular call.
But when you integrate your phone system into your CRM, you also get to merge call logs and call history with customer profiles from your CRM. From there, you will be able to track who talked to which customer, the time of the call, duration of the call, and other similar information. If you have call recording functions, it will even be easier to pinpoint which call recording you need to listen to when investigating incidents.
Personalizes Customer Service
As mentioned, you can set up your system so that when a customer calls, his or her customer profile will pop up and be accessed by the employee assigned. This saves the employee the time and effort to search and open the customer’s profile, which also translates to more time to provide good customer service.
To take it even further, having your phone solution integrated into your CRM is also a step towards an omnichannel setup. By having all your communication channels, including social media, email, chat, and issue ticketing systems linked to the CRM, you can achieve the seamless flow of information where all communications from the customer can be accessed through one account. With all this information, employees not only get to access basic information but all communications history from different channels. With the information at hand in an instant, the employee will have an easier time providing a more personalized experience.
Gives you more data
Aside from being able to track calls more easily, integrating your phone solution into your CRM also means access to more data. Data is invaluable. When used properly, it gives insight into different things about your company. Separately, both your phone solution and your CRM are already providing you with useful information.
From your phone system, you can investigate your call log history, your virtual phone number data including which one is getting the most calls, and who is the person assigned for each phone number or extension. Your CRM, on the other hand, gives you information on your customers. You get access to customer basic information, existing accounts, customer leads, and sales opportunities.
Combine those, and you get more quantifiable data that you can use to improve customer experience. This includes talent and skill evaluation data like average sales call duration, upselling activities, and overall conversion rates.
Improves employees’ performance
Speaking of talent/skill evaluation data, by having quantifiable data to properly evaluate your workforce as objectively as possible, you also get more opportunities to improve and refine their skillsets to better serve your customers.
The right data combined with the constructive feedback from your managers and supervisors will help you help your employees see their areas of improvement and their overall strengths. And they will know that what you tell them is the truth because it is backed by data.
But data aside, by virtue, that integrating your phone solution into your CRM makes their jobs easier, it should automatically make them better employees as well. By no longer encountering trivial roadblocks like failing to find customer profiles or misdialing phone numbers, your employees can now focus on being the best employee they can be for your customers.
Updated : November 15, 2024
Paras Kela brings a wealth of IT knowledge to his writing, with a strong focus on technical content. In recent years, he has specialized in virtual telephony solutions, creating clear and insightful content. His passion for technology, experience in the IT field, and dedication to learning new trends make complex topics easy to understand.
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