CTI Integrations for CRMs: Taking Customer Interactions to New Level

Customer support has become a quintessential part of growing a business. It is no longer a necessity but a significant part of brand building and fostering long-term relationships. Earlier, communication with customers was usually one-sided. A customer buys a product, they don’t find it up to the mark, they call the customer support and have their issue resolved. Customers nowadays expect a proactive approach to their issues. When reaching out to a brand that they have interacted with before, they expect the contact center agents to be privy of their basic information as well as the issue they are facing.

In turn, customer support has transformed into a much more valuable and essential part of running a business. And in the coming years, contact centers are only bound to grow to offer quicker and more personalized solutions to customer issues.

The role of automation is critical in this transformation of contact centers. And one such tool that automates and simplifies agents’ operations is a CTI Connector. Integrating a CTI connector with your CRM can do wonders for your business. From improving CSAT to establishing long-lasting relationships with your customers, a CTI Connector can help you transform the way you interact with customers.

What is CTI and How Can You Integrate it With Your CRM?

Simply put, CTI or Computer Telephony Integration is a technology that enables you to make and receive calls directly from your CRM. It helps coordinate your CRM with a telephone system, giving you the ability to obtain call related data, access customer information, and transfer calls to other agents.

A CTI connector serves as a bridge between your CRM and your telephone system. It enables the two devices to communicate with each other and work in cohesion. Using a CTI connector, you can access data from your telephone system such as caller ID, phone number, and call history right on your crm screen. An advanced CTI connector can also give you detailed reporting, advance automation, customer feedback surveys, and more.

Most CRMs offer easy third-party integrations. So, if you are looking to integrate a CTI connector with your CRM, you shouldn’t face any difficulty. It will take a few minutes to get your CRM integrated with high-end CTI, taking your customer support to the next level.

Why Should You Integrate CTI with your CRM?

It goes without saying that if you don’t have a CTI in place, you are significantly lacking in your ability to provide quicker and more accurate resolutions. But that’s only one part of the spectrum. The lack of CTI Connector in your CRM can affect many aspects of your business including sales, retention, marketing, and operations.

In order to understand this, let us picture a contact center without a CTI connector integration. Imagine you run a retail business. You get around 100 customer calls daily. Every time your customers call you, your agents have to go down a rabbit hole in order to secure the right information so they could help resolve the issue at the earliest. Your agents run through various data silos to figure out who’s calling and what issues they are facing. All in all, every call is lengthy and unnecessarily complicated simply because the agents don’t have the proper data at their disposal. And not having the right information at the right time is leading to context-less generic communication, leading your customers dissatisfied and skeptic.

This is an inefficient way to handle customer concerns.

Enter CTI Connector

Now, every time you receive a call, you get access to relevant information about the caller along with the issue they have been facing right on your CRM screen. So, your agents can now lead a context-based personalized conversation with the customer and resolve their issue within seconds.

Faster resolutions and personalized approach means better retention and long-term growth. Win-win.

Benefits of Integrating CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) with Your CRM

Now that we have understood how CTI connectors work and how it can streamline your contact center operations, let’s get into the empirical benefits of CTI.

⦿ Increased Customer Satisfaction

Your customer expects a human approach to resolving their issues. If a customer is facing a difficulty doing business with you and your customer support is proving to be a dull affair, you will find yourself in between a rock and a hard place. The secret to a thriving business is optimal customer satisfaction. With a CTI Connector in place, you can rest assured that your agents will deliver personalized, accurate, and efficient customer service. Not to mention, talking to a customer support agent who knows and understands the situation the customer is facing leads to a more satisfactory customer experience.

⦿ Improved Productivity

Gone are the days when a customer support agent had to spend hours sourcing the right information and establishing a context for the upcoming customer queries. Nowadays, agents with the right technology at their disposal can wrap up complicated cases within minutes.

With a CTI Connector integrated with CRM, your customer support team will be able to access all the necessary information including caller ID, call history, and other relevant data. Your team also gets the ability to transfer to the right agent as well as a comprehensive performance stats stating call durations, pending resolutions, and more. Furthermore, a CTI Connector also comes with a dedicated Supervisor interface, helping you train and support your agents with features like Barge-In, Silent Monitoring, Agent State Change, and more.

⦿ Personalized Support

The need for personalized communication with your customers can’t be stressed enough, especially in the current market that is saturated with millions of brands with new ones coming every day. Personalized support means providing tailored solutions to your customer as per their specific needs and preferences. Personalization gives your customers a sense of belonging and makes them feel valued.

When you have all the relevant information of the caller right at your fingertips, you are more likely to deliver a curated support that will leave your customers satisfied and impressed.

⦿ Timely Resolutions

Time is of the essence. This is even truer in the customer service industry. As a customer support representative, you would want the best for your customers and you would want it quicker. Even a minute of needless delay can leave your customer frustrated.

With a CTI Connector in place and all the right information by your side, you will be able to solve problems quicker and more efficiently.

⦿ Intelligent Call Transfer and Routing

Having trouble solving a particular customer problem? Transfer the call to the right agent and sort it out within minutes. NovelVox CTI Connector gives you the option to reroute the call to the relevant agent at the customer support center for faster and easier resolution. Moreover, you can also control to which agent the call lands as per the customer feedback in IVR and the data fed to the algorithm. The system works based on the logic developed by entries of your preferred criteria of routing.

⦿ Reduced Call Abandonment

Calls being dropped by the customer before connecting to a customer support agent are not good for a business. This often happens due to longer hold times and poor IVR process. A CTI connector helps you eliminate such issues by providing to-the-point data on time, giving you the room to focus on customer problems rather than toggling through menus to find and secure the right information. A CTI Connector also helps route the calls to relevant agents as per the feedback given by the customer through IVR.

⦿ Improved Call Length

When customers are on a call with contact centers longer than usual, they often form a negative impression of the brand. Often, agents have to scourge through a range of platforms while on a call with the customer to understand where they are coming from. This can easily be avoided with the help of a CTI Connector.

A CTI Connector will present the agent with all the necessary information including the number of interactions the customer has had with the company on the same ticket. Agents also get access to the caller ID and many other relevant information which helps them resolve customer issues faster and with an empathetic approach.

Features of CTI Connectors

A CTI Connector comes with a wide range of features and characteristics, which makes it an essential tool to have in a fast-paced customer support environment. Here are some of the features of a CTI Connector that help you elevate your customer experience:

⦿ Unique CRM and Screen Pop Workflows

Get automated Screen Pop directly on your screen with all the relevant information sourced from your CRM and integrated telephony system. WIth the Screen Pop feature, the contact information page or new contact page automatically pops up on the agent’s screen, giving them access to all the relevant information on the go. Information displayed in the screen pop can be customized according to the unique business requirements.

Screen Pop not only helps expedite the customer resolution process but it also empowers the agent to deliver high-quality and efficient solutions.

⦿ Dedicated Supervision Interface

Take control of every call with the dedicated Supervision Interface. Assist and coach agents in real time with features like Barge-In, Silent Monitoring, and Whispering. Barge-In allows you to carefully monitor a call and join the conversation when you find the agent having difficulty in providing the right solution. Silent Whispering allows you to inconspicuously listen to the call and observe the drawbacks and opportunities for future implementations.

Lastly, Whispering allows you to assist the agent in handling the customer query and providing real time support.

⦿ Click to Dial

No need to toggle through different screens to find the contact information and make an outbound call. With the CTI connector, you can simply find the contact number right next to the customer information page and click to dial.

⦿ Complete Call Control

Get all the essential call features in one place with a CTI Connector. With a CTI Connector, you get complete call control features such as mute, hold, transfer, and conference. No more sacrificing customer support experience due to a lack of proper features.

⦿ Call Monitoring and Analytics

Keep track of every successful call as well as the ones that didn’t cut it. Get into the nitty gritty of your customers’ persona and understand what needs to be changed to help you provide consistent improved support. Analyze and improve your process with proper analysis of each call and continue to deliver exceptional customer support.

Conclusion

The integration of CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) with CRM systems has proven to be a game-changer for businesses seeking to elevate their customer support, retention, and brand growth. By seamlessly linking telephony and customer data, this powerful combination enables agents to access comprehensive customer information in real-time, allowing them to provide personalized, efficient, and effective support. The enhanced ability to address customer needs promptly fosters increased satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately leading to higher retention rates.

Moreover, the seamless interaction between CRM and CTI helps businesses gain valuable insights into customer behaviors and preferences, enabling targeted marketing strategies that promote brand growth and solidify market positioning. As a result, CTI integration for CRM emerges as a transformative solution that not only streamlines operations but also elevates customer experiences, augments retention rates, and propels sustainable brand expansion in today’s competitive landscape.