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Call Center technology evolves pretty glacially all things considered. Since there’s really only two things that a company really needs to run a call center (phones and agents) the addition of all those acronyms you sort though on a daily basis are more of a catalyst for communications than an absolute need. This means that the technologies evolution in the market can be disjointed and staggered, with little need to upgrade one item but replacement of another being mission critical.

One technology that has rapidly evolved from little more than a customer database capturer to a fully integrated solution is CRM. Since capitalizing on all of your customer previous experiences is integral to your market survival, CRM may soon be on its way to a need rather than an addition.  But what does the integration of your CRM solution with your telephony system really offer as far as benefits?

Most contact centers handle thousands of calls a day and easily millions a year. If you could shave off 30-60 seconds per contact right up front the time saved could be used to focus on other operations and more importantly more calls. Contactual offers out-of-the-box CTI integration to both salesforce.com and NetSuite (News - Alert) CRM’s.

The integration of your telephony solution enables things like screen popping to track the incoming caller ID and query the CRM database for matches to “pop” the appropriate customer record or case screen for the agent. Click-to-Dial options can also be installed allowing for any dialable number to be clicked on from within the CRM to then initiate an outbound call reducing time to dial the number manually and recording and tracking all pertinent outbound call data. Contactual’s (News - Alert) software can also provide chat Integration allowing for chat to intelligently be routed from a website to an agent and associate the recorded chat to the account owner using it.

Telephony and CRM integration improves response times, customer satisfaction and eventually revenue generation. While you’ll need to have agents and phones to make all that work, a CRM solutions is probably the next best step once those bases have been covered.

Chris DiMarco is a Web Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Chris DiMarco