In today’s evolving digital world, the customer journey is becoming increasingly complicated. Your modern consumers don’t just interact with you in-person when they visit your store or office. These digitally-savvy individuals are constantly looking for information online, connecting through social media and making purchases through apps.
This means that companies have more touchpoints to keep track of if they want to ensure that they’re taking full advantage of the customer journey. A CRM system, or customer relationship management tool, can offer insights into the behaviour of your target audience so that you can build more personalised and relevant experiences.
So, why should you be connecting your CRM with your contact centre?
Integrating CRMs and Contact Centres: The Basics
Your CRM system is the technology that allows you to collect customer data from various points in the purchasing journey. The more you learn about your client’s journey, the easier it is to identify the strategies you need to boost loyalty and satisfaction.
With a CRM integration for your contact centre, you can give your agents access to all the information you have about this evolving customer. It’s then much easier for your team members to instantly access data about a client during any conversation. For instance, your agent could use a CRM integration and a smart virtual assistant to immediately pull up customer details when someone calls a service helpline.
Access to that information will show the agent what the customer’s name is, what they’ve bought in the past, which agents they’ve interacted with, and more. By integrating your contact centre and customer relationship management tool, you basically get an end-to-end solution for building personalised experiences from a holistic view of every client.
Unlocking New Opportunities with Integrations
Connections between difference pieces of technology in the communication and customer engagement landscapes are becoming increasingly important these days. However, few links are more important than the one between your contact centre and CRM. Linking these two systems extends the value of your CRM data, so you can more easily route customers to the agent that can resolve their issue and give that employee the information they need to handle the interaction well.
A CRM solution can ensure that your employees have access to the same contextual information no matter which channel a customer comes to them on. You can even link your CRM to your intelligent routing system and automatically connect clients to the employees they’ve spoken to before. With inbound calls, useful information can pop up immediately, as soon as agents need it, and every interaction can be recorded to add to the customer service database.
CRM integrations can even assist with outbound calls, by helping team members to determine the best sales or service strategy based on the analysis of similar customer profiles and personas. With a CRM and contact centre integration, you ensure that you always have the information you need to deliver truly personalised experiences to your clients.
