IP Telephony + CRM = BUSINESS BENEFITS

Integrating CRM with IP telephony enhances customer satisfaction and competitive advantage.

“Please continue to hold. Your call is important to us.” Yeah, right.

Do your customers really believe you care about them? Or do they think your on-hold message is merely meaningless words used to fill the time they waste waiting for service? More importantly, do they view your competitors in a different light? In today’s hypercompetitive market, organizations that fail to make customer service their No. 1 focus will find themselves quickly losing market share. A high quality customer experience is often the only differentiating factor in a growing number of industries, where look-alike products and razor-thin margins have quickly eroded customer loyalties.

The good news is that business communications systems have been revolutionized by technologies that converge voice and data, enabling voice calls to be linked with information from e-mail, contact management, customer relationship management (CRM) and other applications. This is possible with a traditional PBX but requires the addition of computer telephony integration hardware and software — an expensive and complex proposition. The voice and data integration built into IP telephony systems enables even small businesses to costeffectively extend the power of key business applications to their IP phones.

Bottom-Line Benefits
The integration of IP telephony with Microsoft CRM represents one of the most powerful tools in the servicefocused organization’s arsenal. It enables sales people, customer service reps, help desk staff and others throughout the organization to view full account history whenever a call arrives. This ability to quickly gain access to customer information on inbound and outbound calls drives consistent, measurable improvements in every business process, enabling closer relationships with customers and helping to achieve new levels of profitability. When IP telephony is integrated with CRM, new customer data and detailed call information can be uploaded back into the system, so the next interaction with the customer picks up where the last one left off. Additional features include fast and easy click-to-dial functionality from CRM contact records and an easy-touse search system. The combination of IP telephony and CRM helps companies increase employee productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing costs. Information access also helps employees make better decisions and communicate more effectively.

Proven Results
This advantage was demonstrated in a recent Aberdeen Group study that examined the factors driving servicefocused businesses to adopt these kinds of multi-channel customer service technologies. According to the report, organizations across all industries are challenged to support multiple channels — voice,Web self-service, e-mail and chat — in a unified way. Aberdeen Group concluded that a multi-channel strategy has become a competitive requirement, revealing that it is implemented within 90 percent of best-in-class companies surveyed. Thirty- seven percent of best-in-class companies have seen a greater than 25 percent improvement in customer satisfaction. The technology also improves the bottom line.

“Increasing customer satisfaction opens up the interaction for more revenue- generating opportunities,” said Alan Hubbard, senior vice president of the Sales and Marketing practice at Aberdeen. “Ninety-four percent of the best-in class companies increased their customer satisfaction indices compared IP Telephony + CRM = BUSINESS BENEFITS Integrating CRM with IP telephony enhances customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. Fall 2007 to 76 percent of the average companies and 24 percent of the laggards. The best-in-class companies were able to maintain and improve their customer satisfaction indices while moving to a new business process.” According to Aberdeen Group, multi-channel customer service yields such benefits as: Improved service quality through a more complete snapshot of customer needs Reduced call waiting times, call handling times and support costs A better customer experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction and retention Ultimately, the real value of IP telephony lies in its ability to deliver real bottom-line benefits by integrating with business applications. By augmenting a top-down, customer-centric business strategy with integrated voice and data solutions, organizations can enjoy measurable increases in customer satisfaction and more revenue-generating opportunities.

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