Call Center

Best-in-class call centers are typically those that follow a set of bet practices honed from local and industry-wide experience. Since call centers at their core are about managing relationships with customers, many of these best practices will relate to methods for interacting effectively with clients.

 

For example, two best practices are maintaining updated information in the customer relationship management (CRM) database and consistently delivering high-impact communications. Integrating CRM and communications into a single application is one way call centers can maximize their achievement of best practices.

 

However, in the past creating such an integrated application was often prohibitively expensive because it required building custom software. This is changing, thanks to solutions like the application programming interface (API) offered with Contactual’s (News - Alert) products.

 

In many industries, not only in call centers, employees use many different software applications which are typically all disconnected from one another. All of these applications are intended to make users’ lives easier, yet having to work in so many disparate systems can create a real drain on efficiency. People put up with so many different applications because there is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” solution that does everything and is also customized to meet the needs of individual companies and employees.

 

There are really two solutions to this problem: design custom software or integrate together the many different applications. Custom software is tailored for specific needs, so it might seem like the ideal solution. The catch is that it’s also very expensive. Software integration is therefore often the better choice because it costs far less and, if done right, can also solve the productivity problem.

 

Integration is made possible by the APIs software developers provide, which make it easy for programmers to push and pull data from one application into another. While it is necessary to hire a programmer to take advantage of APIs, this is still less expensive than designing custom software.

 

In the call center, integration can make a world of difference. For example, Contactual provides an APIs for its OnDemand Contact Center solution that enable screen pops in third-party applications, synchronization of various data-related interfaces, and CRM “triggers” that fire when database records are created/edited/deleted.

 

Tying together communications and the CRM database is one of the most useful integrations available to a call center. For example, inside sales outsourcing firm Intrep chose Contactual’s software because of its ability to integrate with third-party CRM applications.

 

In the case of Intrep, the integration was with Salesforce.com (News - Alert).

 

“By integrating with salesforce.com, we are able to combine two best-of-breed solutions into one,” said Intrep’s CEO, Jack Sands, in a Contactual case study. “The combination offers single-click access to customers for outbound calls, and screen pops with customer information for inbound calls.”

 

To learn more about the benefits of integration, please visit the Call Center, Contact Center Software and Virtual Call Center channels on TMCnet.com, brought to you by Contactual.