Many companies today recognize that there is a significant return on investment (ROI) available from simply integrating their contact center with their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. Some benefits are easily measured, such as faster handling through screen pops and an integrated user interface and some perhaps more intangible such as improved customer satisfaction and more consistent first call resolution.
In the early days of computer telephony integration, there were many complex challenges. Previously APIs were closed and proprietary. Today several standards have emerged to help standardize the industry. Despite these advances, there remain several myths around CTI that can make organizations leery at the thought of integrate their CRM and contact center applications. Let’s take a look at these myths that perhaps at one point may or may not have been true but are no longer.
We’re debunking CTI myths below:
Myth #1: Screenpop is only based off a phone number – Screenpop can be based on any piece of data. Contact Canvas allows you to define a hierarchy of searches. For instance, if someone enters an account number via the IVR, a search can be performed on account number, but if no match is found the ANI could be used. Some organizations even look for screenpops on outbound calls or perform data dips into the CRM before routing a call to the agent!
Myth #2: CTI is a really expensive and labor intensive endeavor – If you know your environment and have the right resources on the project, CTI can be done very quickly. Like any project, when you don’t have the right skillsets in place, the effort can drag on. Often times organizations that are transitioning to a new platform look for feature parity with their old system. Deferring CTI to a phase 2 of a project may simplify troubleshooting newly set up environments. However, CTI considerations and requirements gathering should be included in phase 1 to avoid rework and reconfiguration.
Myth #3: The softphone from my telephony provider is just as good as one embedded in the CRM – there are a lot of feature rich softphones that have been developed by telephony providers and contact solution providers, however productivity is lost bouncing back and forth from application to application. You can avoid the swivel chair effect by providing a unified agent experience within CRM.
Myth #4: Out of the box solutions lack flexibility – some out of the box solutions provide ways to extend the solutions to address unique requirements. Contact Canvas Agent for instance provides a robust and flexible development tool called Agent Palette. Through Agent Palette developers have access to CTI events and user control events.
Myth #5: Custom Dev or in house dev gives an organization more control – while it is true that maintaining your own software provides a lot of control over features and timelines, the tremendous amount of overhead associated with acquiring and/or maintaining telephony integration skillsets in house or through consulting services is great.
Debunking CTI Myths
Many companies today recognize that there is a significant return on investment (ROI) available from simply integrating their contact center with their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. Some benefits are easily measured, such as faster handling through screen pops and an integrated user interface and some perhaps more intangible such as improved customer satisfaction and more consistent first call resolution.
In the early days of computer telephony integration, there were many complex challenges. Previously APIs were closed and proprietary. Today several standards have emerged to help standardize the industry. Despite these advances, there remain several myths around CTI that can make organizations leery at the thought of integrate their CRM and contact center applications. Let’s take a look at these myths that perhaps at one point may or may not have been true but are no longer.
We’re debunking CTI myths below:
Myth #1: Screenpop is only based off a phone number – Screenpop can be based on any piece of data. Contact Canvas allows you to define a hierarchy of searches. For instance, if someone enters an account number via the IVR, a search can be performed on account number, but if no match is found the ANI could be used. Some organizations even look for screenpops on outbound calls or perform data dips into the CRM before routing a call to the agent!
Myth #2: CTI is a really expensive and labor intensive endeavor – If you know your environment and have the right resources on the project, CTI can be done very quickly. Like any project, when you don’t have the right skillsets in place, the effort can drag on. Often times organizations that are transitioning to a new platform look for feature parity with their old system. Deferring CTI to a phase 2 of a project may simplify troubleshooting newly set up environments. However, CTI considerations and requirements gathering should be included in phase 1 to avoid rework and reconfiguration.
Myth #3: The softphone from my telephony provider is just as good as one embedded in the CRM – there are a lot of feature rich softphones that have been developed by telephony providers and contact solution providers, however productivity is lost bouncing back and forth from application to application. You can avoid the swivel chair effect by providing a unified agent experience within CRM.
Myth #4: Out of the box solutions lack flexibility – some out of the box solutions provide ways to extend the solutions to address unique requirements. Contact Canvas Agent for instance provides a robust and flexible development tool called Agent Palette. Through Agent Palette developers have access to CTI events and user control events.
Myth #5: Custom Dev or in house dev gives an organization more control – while it is true that maintaining your own software provides a lot of control over features and timelines, the tremendous amount of overhead associated with acquiring and/or maintaining telephony integration skillsets in house or through consulting services is great.
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