Does Anyone Use Email Anymore?
Businesses use customer relationship management (CRM) systems to manage and track customer activities. They use contact center solutions to manage customer interactions. Over time, many businesses have realized that combining the two can enhance the customer service experience.
Despite the plethora of available communications channels, conventional methods like voice and email accounted for >80% of all contact center inbound engagements last year.1
Combining a CRM system with a tightly integrated omnichannel contact center solution enables conventional and modern channels so customer representatives can efficiently handle any customer engagement.
Providing a Single Pane of Glass for Service Representatives
Many CRMs can allow a service representative to work in a single window for the entire interaction by using a computer-telephone integration (CTI) application. A CTI can provide the following benefits:
- Representatives can receive a CRM screen pop on their screen that displays the relevant customer details when an email arrives based on the email address of the customer
- They can respond to the email message directly in the CRM tool
- Historical context about the customer can provide valuable insight to quickly resolve issues
A CTI application eliminates the need to switch back and forth between windows. It can even be configured for click-to-call when solving a problem over the phone would be the most effective method of engagement.
Enabling Faster Problem Resolution
Without a CRM screen pop, the beginning of each interaction is spent gathering basic information – the customer’s name, phone number, account number, address, etc. While customers typically would not use email for urgent requests, they have a problem to solve and want it solved quickly. Anything that delays the problem’s solution can negatively impact customer satisfaction. Gathering this information over the phone is a matter of minutes, but with email it can quickly turn into a burst of back and forth messages that can delay the process several hours or even days.
A CRM screen pop can eliminate the process of manually obtaining customer information and allow the representative to focus more time on solving the customer issue.
Tracking and Logging Each Interaction Automatically
Not having a CRM integration can increase the time spent at the beginning of a call gathering data, but it can also add time after the call. After ending the call using the contact center application, representatives have to go into the customer’s account in the CRM and manually add notes describing the nature of the interaction, followup actions, outcomes or other relevant information.
Even with conventional channels like email, a tight CRM integration will automatically log each interaction into the customer account, allowing the representative to just enter any relevant notes or comments and get to the next customer as quickly as possible.
CRMs and contact centers should not operate in silos because both serve the same purpose – providing the best customer experience possible. Businesses can deliver a better customer service experience—both internally and externally—by combining the power of their CRM and contact center solution, providing a more straightforward experience for representatives, reducing the time required for problem resolution, and automatically tracking interactions.
To learn more about modern contact center CRM integration, visit https://www.mavenir.com/contact-us/.
