The customer relationship management software market is one of the fastest-growing markets. It has witnessed influential technological advancements in the last decade that have soared its demand.
It’s likely that your business already uses CRM. But why do you need to integrate it with your contact center? What possible benefits does the integration accrue? What should be the future strategy for organizations using CRM?
What is a CRM?
CRM is expected to reach $80 bn in revenues by 2025, making it the biggest software market in the world
Abbreviated for Customer Relationship Management, CRM is a widely used technology by companies & brands, for managing & tracking all interactions, with existing and potential customers. It streamlines the overall business cycle for companies to stay connected with customers, track their data, and improve profitability.
Without a CRM, it can be a daunting task for agents to deal with the vast amount of customer details. And, there’s a huge possibility of these details getting lost or forgotten, and this mainly drives organization on guesswork rather than hard, established facts.
CRM functionalities can be upgraded with the help of integrations. Let’s explore these.
Importance of integrating your CRM:
A recent survey by Cisco shows that integration is among the top priorities for contact centers, particularly with CRM systems.
According to a 2023 report, 91% of businesses using CRM have witnessed their sales improve by 29%.
The Contact Center CRM integration would save agents from forgetting to update contact information or not being able to keep track of relations across platforms. Also, with all information accessible to agents on a single interface, it saves agents the hassle of switching across multiple screens to access customer data.
There are several other reasons behind this increasing need of integration-
- Seamless dataflow
- Enhanced analytics
- Personalized CX
What are the benefits of CRM Integration:
Integration of your contact center software with CRM can help you drive up sales and consequently, enable greater realization of revenue.
CRM integration with Contact Centers like Cisco, Avaya, Genesys, Five9, Dialpad, Zoom, Webex CC & Amazon Connect can streamline operations and improve customer service delivery.
1. Boosts Agent Productivity:
Agents are often loaded with unproductive work such as updating caller information, accessing the interaction data, etc. And then searching for customer details by toggling between different screens makes it even more cumbersome for agents. Your agents should be, by virtue of their job, involved in targeting leads and driving conversions.
With Contact Center Software CRM integration, you can utilize your human capital in the best possible way. The integrated CRM system ensures a seamless flow of data across systems, thus eliminating the need for manual efforts and increasing precision to update caller details. The agent can now spend more time interacting with the customer than dealing with post-call activities.
| 💡Also Read | 10 Ways to Increase Agent Productivity Through Contact Center Automation |
2. Omni-channel Contact Management:
With digitization, the touchpoints of communication have significantly improved. It’s not an easy job for the agent to be prompt across all these channels without some aid. And that aid is an integrated CRM. Your Contact Center CRM can quickly receive information about customer journeys across these multiple points of contact. This includes the journey from visiting a website to establishing communication.
3. Creates Upselling and Cross-selling Opportunities:
This is a significant feature for those agents who have to deal with inbound and outbound communications. The data that is connected by CRM can be analyzed holistically. It can then help in understanding latent demand, future requirements, and also cross-selling/upselling opportunities.
By utilizing this data, agents can benefit by making their outbound conversations more effective and personalized. It leverages customer trust and builds brand loyalty in the long term.
4. Reduction in Call Resolution Times:
Agents prioritize first-call resolutions by ensuring quick and effective resolution of customer queries. It’s very frustrating for customers to wait in long queues before being connected with an agent or getting connected to the ‘wrong’ agent who demands an entire narration of queries once again.
Quick call resolutions are a result that emanates from giving agents the context of the call and details about customers. This would pave the way for meaningful interactions and early query resolution.
5. Improved Customer Experiences:
As more and more customers turn to self-service channels, such as live chat and chatbots, it underscores the importance of growing emphasis on personalized interactions. A customer is the end-driver of growth for organizations and their satisfaction is important to ensure visibility in the market.
Call center software CRM integration offers valuable insights into the customer journey by highlighting their requirements and preferences. These can be utilized to tailor agents’ responses accordingly and increase conversions.
Every interaction gets recorded into the customer’s history and can be accessed with ease on a unified screen. By ensuring smooth customer journeys, the CRM contact center integration inevitably shows that it’s customer-oriented.
BONUS: Cloud-based CRM for Business
Advancement in technology has transformed the way business is done and customer data is stored. The most significant development in recent years has been the migration of the CRM system cloud. With ease of task in mind, organizations prefer moving the customer data to a secure environment instead of installing CRM software on hundreds of desktops or mobile devices.
Here’s a quick look at some key reasons for adopting the cloud-based CRM
⦿ Work From Anywhere
With a cloud-based contact center CRM, all authorized users can access the information from anywhere. If an urgent issue needs to be addressed aside the office hours, the vital details can be accessed by the cloud from any remote location. This promotes work flexibility for agents and improves their productivity.
⦿ Mitigates Surplus Capital
A cloud-based contact center CRM has zero requirements, like no hardware and reduced IT costs that aid in saving a lot of time & expenses for an organization. Generally, a cloud-based CRM is priced based on the number of users accessing it. This makes it financially flexible for a business to scale the CRM as the staff increases or decreases.
⦿ Mitigates Surplus Capital
A cloud-based contact center CRM has zero requirements, like no hardware and reduced IT costs that aid in saving a lot of time & expenses for an organization. Generally, a cloud-based CRM is priced based on the number of users accessing it. This makes it financially flexible for a business to scale the CRM as the staff increases or decreases.
⦿ Secure
Gone are the days when customers’ confidential data was vulnerable to hackers. Ever since cloud-based contact center CRM entered the market, businesses have been relieved. A cloud-based CRM takes cyber security to another level by backing up the data automatically. It can be further strengthened by enabling two-step verification and passwords.
The future of CRM: An automated one
As the market is flooded with CRMs, it’s prudent to find the one that suits your specific needs. The unfolding trends of digitization hint towards an automated future and CRM is no exception. With predictive data and AI, CRMs can break into a world of enhanced productivity with decision-support algorithms.
The future is digital and it’s CRM is inevitably a critical element in it.
