CRMs are increasingly used in the contact center market. Designed specifically to centralize and manage customer information efficiently, they help companies implement effective customer engagement strategies. Companies are looking to differentiate themselves by offering a personalized, proactive experience: 90% consider customer experience to be a strategic priority, and 87% believe that CRMs play a crucial role in improving this experience, according to Salesforce. In fact, 67% of customer relations experts say they use a CRM to manage customer interactions, according to Forrester.
CRMs play a central role in customer relationship management, but they can’t act alone to deliver an optimal experience. They need to be coupled with contact center software. Around 70% of companies use CTI-CRM integration to improve their customer service. And they’re right to do so: by combining CTI and CRM, they can take full advantage of the benefits of both systems. Rapid access to customer information, improved operational efficiency, interaction tracking and data analysis all contribute to better customer relationship management, more personalized service and enhanced customer satisfaction.
Technological advances are having a significant impact on all aspects of our lives, including the way companies interact with us as customers. In the field of customer relationship management, CRMs have played a key role in improving the efficiency and personalization of customer service.
With the advent of cloud computing, CRM distribution and access have been transformed. Previously, CRMs were mainly distributed as software installed locally on company servers. This entailed high infrastructure, maintenance and update costs. The arrival of cloud-based CRMs has made them increasingly popular, due to the advantages they offer. No need to install software locally. This cloud-based distribution, offers greater flexibility, faster implementation, centralization and data security.
Another major technological development is the integration of CRMs with other tools and platforms. Modern CRMs can be integrated with real-time communication systems such as instant messaging tools, online chat systems and social networks. This integration enables companies to centralize all customer interactions, facilitating the management and history of conversations, and providing a global, organized view of customer service activities.
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning makes it possible to automate certain repetitive tasks and improve service personalization. For example, AI can be used to analyze customer data and provide relevant recommendations to customer service agents, facilitating problem resolution and enhancing the customer experience. In addition, AI can be used to automate responses to common customer queries, reducing response times and improving overall customer service efficiency.
What’s more, technological developments have also boosted access to CRM. With the advent of smartphones and tablets, CRMs can now be accessed from any mobile device, enabling customer service agents to access customer information, manage requests and communicate in real time, wherever they may be. This enables greater responsiveness and better management of customer interactions, regardless of the location of the advisors.
Taken together, these technological developments represent a windfall for companies offering more efficient, personalized and responsive customer service, thus strengthening their relationship with their customers.
Traditionally, the technological ecosystem of customer relations professionals has been based on two tools: Contact Center solutions and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. While their use has until now been fairly compartmentalized, recent changes in consumer behavior and volatility are prompting experts to unify their systems. The objective is clear: to offer personalized, fluid and transparent customer experiences in order to create or reinforce the strong bond between brand and customer.
Discover 6 benefits of integration!
95% of customer service managers agree that a CRM is an effective way of increasing productivity. Simplify your staff’s work by unifying their environment with a single platform for all interactions, offering a 360° customer view. Interconnection also enables the automation of many tasks, such as call recording.
72% of customer relations managers want to merge teams and responsibilities around CX to increase operational efficiency. By automating a number of processes, thanks to automatic customer feedback and systematic data storage, call center agents save a considerable amount of time. Processing times between each interaction are reduced, and the number of requests handled increases.
Access more information in real time and in cold conditions. Agent performance, interaction volume, statistics on contact reasons: compiling this information gives you access to comprehensive reports to optimize operations and improve overall performance.
1.8 is the average number of CRMs used by a company in the USA in 2023. Because they have different needs, marketing, customer service and sales departments use different CRMs. Integration enables interactions to be routed to the right CRM. Thanks to advanced functionalities, incoming and outgoing flows can be dispatched to the right teams and the right call center agents.
79% of customer relations professionals agree that data should be used more for personalization. Integration ensures better data management by providing a centralized system for orchestrating and managing customer data, interaction history and other essential information. Bringing all this information together creates more virtuous, personalized customer journeys that anticipate customer needs.
69% of customers believe that personalized customer service influences their brand loyalty. With access to information, agents can respond to customers’ objectives, on the right channel and with the right information.
It is essential to couple CTI – Computer Telephony Integration – and CRM – Customer Relationship Management – in customer relations for several key reasons:
It’s important to integrate one or more CRM solutions into your contact center, depending on your needs. However, when asked why you should integrate your CRM with your contact center, the opposite question also arises. Why do you need to integrate your contact center with your CRM? How can you manage your customer relationships if you don’t contact them? When it comes to customer relations, CRM is sorely lacking in one key aspect: customer contact. That’s why it makes sense for Vocalcom to use CTI in conjunction with CRM, and thus create interconnectivity between the two software packages, making them one and the same. Your CRM customer data is your contact center customer data.
Coupling a CRM with a CTI allows you to benefit from a dialer with the routing of incoming and outgoing contacts. CRMs don’t have this expertise. What’s more, there’s the question of contact volume. CRMs don’t know how to route and organize massive interactions, whatever the channel used. CTI does.
While the majority of CRMs today offer interaction management modules, they lack the experience of professionals in managing omnichannel interactions. As a pioneer in CRM integration, Vocalcom offers a connector that makes it easy to give any CRM on the market the power of a contact center solution!
With Hermes Universal CRM Connector, give your CRM(s) the best omnichannel features of Hermes360 and let your CRM drive your inbound and outbound CX strategies.
