Improve business efficiencies with CRM integration

If you’re currently using a CRM in your business, you can improve efficiencies and customer service by integrating your current CRM software with your phone system. If you’re using one of the major supported CRM systems, talk to us about our CRM integrated solutions to enjoy further business benefits which includes an enhanced customer experience, consistent call processes and more informed users. Besides improved call handling and increased professionalism, an integrated CRM system means that your business is better equipped for remote and flexible working.

With increasing demand for enhanced technologies like softphones and CRM solutions as modern-day business tools, Central Telecoms can further improve your business efficiencies by integrating your CRM with your phone systems.

CRM integration basics

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and is a software system used by a business to capture, track and support interactions with existing and potential customers.

CRM integration is where inbound and outbound calls to and from an organisation can be automatically logged in a database with a copy of the audio file from that call. This is particularly important for customer-service type organisations that need to track how many calls have come in per customer. This type of technology also gives a business the ability to easily resolve disputes. Other functionality includes click-to-dial from computers and screen pop-ups with customer details.

Benefits of CRM integration

CRM systems create a more efficient workforce. With CRM integration, when a customer calls, their details pop-up automatically which gives a history of their account and also prompts to create a new ‘ticket’ task. The customer experience is immediately improved with this type of instant personalisation. This means you can answer the call immediately engaging your customer by saying ‘Hi Jane. How can we help today?’ instead of ‘Welcome to ABC Business. Bob speaking…’ CRM makes customer interactions more efficient and more personal, and importantly puts the focus on the customer.

• Staff benefits include ease of use. Automation helps to ensure that key tasks aren’t missed and also further supports flexible WFH set-ups when needed.
• Business benefits include greater efficiencies. Every interaction with a customer or prospect is logged—emails have integrated with CRMs for years but it’s always been much more difficult to integrate phone systems until recently. Today, a robust integrated CRM system enables every inbound or outbound call to be logged and time-stamped against a person or organisation. This helps if ever a report needs to be created (e.g. segmenting by customer spend) or for an audit trail, if ever there is a complaint.
• Customer benefits include an enhanced customer experience where your business and brand benefits by providing better, faster and a more personalised customer service.

What types of business use CRM technology?

Virtually every business today has some sort of CRM system in place, even it’s just a spreadsheet with customer contact details and notes. There are a lot of CRMs out there, with some specific to certain industries like law and medical. But most CRMs can be used across multiple industries, like Salesforce and Zendesk, which is what we use at Central Telecoms to help our support and provisioning processes.

CRM functionality-match to business needs

CRMs that Central Telecoms natively integrate with are Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, Salesforce, SugarCRM, Zendesk, and Zoho CRM. We don’t supply the CRM software, just the integration to our phone system to log calls using CRM systems from the big players.

Each CRM is different but they ultimately all do the same thing—Customer Relationship Management. But some software is better than others in certain situations. For example, we use Zendesk for support tickets and Pipedrive for sales, whereas Salesforce mostly offers everything to everyone.

Too good to be true?

One of the few potential historical red flags about CRMs is that they can be very complex and depending on the size of the organisation, may need a dedicated person to manage the data and processes. While automation is good, some companies go too far and make processes overly complicated when they don’t need to be. CRMs can also be expensive with costs ranging from free to over $200 per user per month depending on the complexity of the CRM solution.

Contracts can be month-to-month. CRM companies almost always give a discount for 12 months upfront payment. Outages used to be more of an issue when the Internet connection was less reliable or when CRMs were hosted on a server or computer on site that needed maintenance. All of the large CRM providers now offer cloud-based applications that you can access over any Internet connection so if you lose your NBN service, for example, you’ll still be able to access the same information using a 4G connection.

Central Telecoms CRM solutions

Central Telecoms simplifies all this for our clients. We customise a CRM solution, natively integrating with the major CRM providers. Where Central Telecoms adds unique value for our clients is in the CRM/phone integration. There aren’t many telcos that are doing what we’re doing. Central Telecoms enhances CRM by integrating the CRM with your company’s phone system. Because there is so much information in there that helps grow and retain revenue for our clients! This is when CRM becomes an invaluable business tool.

Costs can be as low as $15 per user per month plus a one-off cost of $100, and installation is a very consultative process. Nothing physical needs to be installed, it’s just software. But there’s a lot of going backwards and forwards between us and the customer throughout the process to determine the best CRM solution for their specific requirements.

Beyond NBN and phones, Central Telecoms supports businesses with bespoke software solutions. By first understanding your business, we can provide a personalised level of support that is unprecedented in the telco industry. To top it all off, we’re just around the corner, based in West Gosford and with a growing customer base across North Sydney, Central Coast and Newcastle up to Singleton.

With zero commitment, zero costs, zero contracts, you can give it a try before you buy and if you don’t like it, you can simply walk away. All this is in line with a greater need for businesses flexibility where new technologies need to support and improve business efficiencies. This includes technologies like softphones and CRM integration, which can make things easier and better than ever before.

To find out more about our CRM integration solutions, call our friendly team on 1300 677 406 or make contact today. We’re open Monday to Friday 8am to 5.30pm. Central Telecoms is an award-winning, hands-on telco provider servicing more than 1600+ regional Australian business and residential customers since 2016. We’re experts in delivering NBN solutions, superior phone, VoIP and Internet systems offering 100% onshore real-people support.