Let’s Look at CRM and VoIP Integrations

For any customer-facing business, understanding customers and efficiently meeting their needs is of the utmost importance. After all, modern customers have plenty of options when shopping for virtually anything, so a consistent approach to communication and service is the key to productive — and profitable — relationships.

Choosing a VoIP solution that enables the types of communication your customers want and expect is one element of the equation. VoIP-powered call center software solutions from providers like Vonage Business Communications provide a wide range of benefits to create a top-tier customer experience.

But how do your agents answering the phones know who they’re talking to — including their relevant account information, transaction history, and more? The answer is simple: a VoIP CRM integration.

How a CRM System Is Used in a Call Center

Call centers typically use a CRM system as an accessible, centralized repository of important customer data related to their experience(s) with the brand over time. Accessing and using this data in the context of customer interactions enables agents to provide the consistent, high-quality service that makes customers feel more valued.

The potential use cases and benefits of using a CRM within a call center environment are difficult to overstate.

Storing, Organizing, and Accessing Customer Data

Businesses hold vast volumes of valuable customer data: buying habits, past interactions, preferences, demographics, and much more. Call centers can use this information to improve and personalize customers’ calling experiences. But so much data can easily become disorganized, siloed, and lost.

This is where CRMs come in.

CRMs pull customer data from across your channels and departments — marketing systems, point-of-sale systems, your website, social media, and, of course, your call center software. This data is stored and organized within this centralized location. As a result, call center agents can access it without having to contact siloed departments or sift through disparate systems.

Track Relationships Over Time

CRMs give you full visibility into every unique customer journey. You can see all of your interactions with your customers over time: calls, emails, texts, and chats, as well as purchases, milestones, and positive or negative feedback.

This is useful because it can help you understand and strengthen customer relationships. Call center agents can spot trends, identify patterns, and gauge what stage of loyalty or churn customers are in — and adapt their communication strategy in response.

Use Customer Data To Improve

By giving you access to real-time customer data and KPIs, CRMs are instrumental in your continuous improvement strategy.

For example, CRMs provide the data you need to segment customers based on common characteristics, such as demographics, buying habits, and interests. They can tell you, for instance, which leads are interested in which types of products. Outbound sales teams can use this data to tailor sales strategies for each segment, boosting conversions, satisfaction, and loyalty.

CRMs also can collect data like calling KPIs, customer lifetime values, customer satisfaction, and customer feedback, all of which illuminate flaws and bottlenecks in your calling experiences.

Let’s say your CRM analytics report that customers are dissatisfied with long wait times or transfer volumes. Thanks to this data, you could implement solutions that reliably reduce wait times and transfers, such as virtual assistants and skills-based routing.

But this is barely scratching the surface. CRMs can drive improvements to processes, systems, and strategies across your entire business.

The Value of CRM Integration With a Phone System

CRM integration refers to a process in which an organization connects their VoIP and CRM technologies to provide more personalized service. While some companies try to cobble together solutions and workflows, those that adopt and integrate a CRM can automate the process of syncing valuable data. This, in turn, empowers agents with timely insights they can use to provide exceptional service. Ultimately, with CRM and VoIP integration, both solutions become more powerful. Vonage Business Communications offers a wide range of available CRM integrations for call centers — Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and many more.

The Advantages of CRM-VoIP Integration

There are several key advantages to integrating a CRM with a VoIP phone system, all of which empower companies to provide top-tier service to their customers and build more productive, long-term relationships.

Specific advantages include the ability to:

• Make Calls Within the CRM Platform

Click-to-call CRM integrations streamline your agents’ workflows and boost productivity. Instead of bouncing back and forth between your call center software and CRM app, agents can call customers from within the CRM in a single click.

This is a game-changer for agents who make lots of outbound calls. With no need for tedious app-switching or manual dialing, agents can efficiently connect with more leads and customers. And, because they can make calls without moving out of the CRM, they have immediate access to the customer data they need.

• Provide Personalized Service for Every Customer

VoIP CRM integrations place comprehensive customer data at your agents’ fingertips. Whether they’re calling a customer from the call center software or the CRM, they can immediately view customer data like past interactions, complaints, purchases, and more — all before the customer has even picked up the phone.

Leveraging this accessible data, your team can provide fast, personalized experiences and customized solutions.

Agents don’t need to put customers on hold while they hunt for information, and customers don’t have to repeat their issues and details over and over again. This reduces hold times and drives faster call resolutions, boosting customer satisfaction levels.

• Optimize (or Automate) Data Collection

Manually inputting customer data and transferring it from your VoIP software to your CRM is a timely task that’s prone to error. CRM and telephony integrations optimize — or in some cases, completely automate — data collection to improve data accuracy and save agents valuable time. 

Essentially, CRM data automatically syncs with your call center software data and vice versa. So there’s no need to input the same data into each system, increasing agent productivity. And, with full confidence that your data is synchronized and up-to-date, you can leverage it to provide better customer experiences.

• Streamline Post-Call Work for Agents

After every call, agents need to update CRM customer records. It may only take a couple of minutes after each call, but those minutes add up and eat away at productivity.

CRM-VoIP integrations streamline post-call work by automatically collecting call data and adding it to the CRM. The CRM can proactively record calls, take notes, pre-fill forms, and add new customer details, reducing the volume of post-call work that your agents need to complete.

This has the added benefit of reducing manual data entry errors, too. So your agents have fewer tedious admin tasks to complete — increasing their satisfaction — and customer data is more accurate, enhancing future personalization.

Why CRM-VoIP Integration Matters

Unconvinced whether CRM integrations are worth it? Consider these statistics:

• 80% of customers consider their experience with a company to be of equal importance to the products and services it provides (according to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report). CRM integrations are key to providing this high-quality experience.

• According to Zendesk’s CX Trends 2024 report, customers are likely to reach out via phone (16%), email (16%), or self-service (15%) for simple questions. But they’re almost twice as likely (29%) to reach for the phone for complex questions. CRM integrations make it easier for your agents to provide the answers they’re looking for.

• Many companies struggle with aligning their sales and marketing teams. Luckily, according to Hubspot’s 2024 Sales Trends report, 78% of professionals find that a CRM helps improve this.

Between a more streamlined agent experience, a better customer experience, and tools that drive efficiency, productivity, and insights, the benefits of CRM integration speak for themselves.

How To Integrate a CRM With a VoIP System

Because CRM integration is a widely acknowledged best practice, many VoIP and CRM integration providers — like Vonage — make it easy to connect these vital systems. In fact, integrating the two systems isn’t too different from installing a browser extension, and your VoIP provider will often be willing to help you figure out how to integrate VoIP into CRMs and offer support along the way.

The integration process typically involves using an application programming interface (API), which IBM defines as “a set of defined rules that enable different applications to communicate with each other.” In other words, a CRM integration API makes it quicker and easier for call center leaders to ​​connect a CRM with their phone system.

It might help to think of a CRM system as an extensive database of customer information. It’s a vital resource agents can consult before engaging with a customer, to know who exactly they are about to speak to. Consider this CRM integration example:

• Without a CRM integration, an agent might answer a customer call and then have to put them on hold in order to look them up in the system. While this process enables the agent to acknowledge the customer effectively, it’s not efficient. As the agent searches for the customer’s information, the customer will realize that the company doesn’t really “know” them, which can leave them feeling like “just another customer.”

• With CRM integration in place, when an agent answers an inbound customer call, the API can automatically and immediately communicate with the CRM, locate that customer’s information, and present it to the agent. This often happens via a “screen pop” (a pop-up window) that doesn’t require the agent to navigate to a different program or browser tab. It’s a much more efficient way to ensure that customers feel understood and valued.

CRM and VoIP: Better Together, and Better With Vonage

If you’re looking for a VoIP-powered solution ready to integrate with your CRM of choice, consider switching to Vonage — it’s easier to switch than you might expect. To explore your needs — and how our platform can meet them — schedule a time to chat with a member of our team today!