The Beginner’s Guide to CTI Integration with Salesforce

 There are many indispensable tools that companies are adopting these days to take their customer service to the next level. One such capability is CTI integration with Salesforce, which enables integrating your telephony system with Salesforce and helps you access calls and call records through Salesforce only. It helps companies to build a robust connection between their traditional telephone systems with the advanced Salesforce capabilities that could help to transform customer service. 

It is common for companies to have distinct and complex processes for production, marketing, or data management. But one thing that is common for all is customer service. Every company pays more attention to improving its customer service operations, especially by improving the service through Salesforce telephony. 

Despite so many channels, most customer segments still prefer telephone systems to reach out to any business team and address their issues. This is the reason the customer service teams of companies have to be active enough to track queries and complaints acquired through telephony and address them as quickly as possible. That’s something CTI Integration with Salesforce makes easier for the support team.

There’s a lot that any user should know before integrating Salesforce with the telephony system. This article will share a guide for beginners about Salesforce integration with CTI and help them know its essentials before getting started. 

What is Salesforce CTI Integration?

When we talk about customer relationship management solutions, Salesforce is always the market leader. One of the main reasons for its popularity is Salesforce's open CTI, a technology that enables effective collaboration between Salesforce with the telephony system. 

CTI integration with Salesforce helps connect existing phone systems so that different teams can use telephony within the Salesforce CRM. It enables teams to call and receive from the system without switching systems. 

Ways to Integrate CTI and Salesforce

Integrating Salesforce and CTI can be achieved by following two approaches. These two methods are given below.

 Integration using open CTI tools

Open CTI is a tool by Salesforce that empowers Salesforce users to use external CTI frameworks with Salesforce. This approach is so impressive that the user does not have to download specific CTI applications that can end up depriving him of the benefits of cloud architecture. Instead, with open CTI, you can fully use the cloud, enabling business mobility. To perform this kind of integration, it is essential to have knowledge of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, CTI connectors, Visual APIs, and Salesforce CRM Call Centre. 

While using this integrated approach, you have to use Open CTI API. Another connector that you can use is Asynchronous JavaScript Asterisk Manager. This connector is customized and added to the server for use. Another thing you need is Custom Salesforce Softphone. 

Integration using Telephony service provider API

When Salesforce was in the improvement stage, there were time slacks while pushing notifications, which increased when the team used call focus elements. This enabled users to work with the CTI-to-work area instead of using CTI-to-Salesforce, ultimately reducing this time slack. 

With this kind of innovation, people have stopped using CTI-to-Desktop display and have, started using the Salesforce Telephony integration Provider API to set up customer calls. To use this approach, users need to understand Apex classes. Visualforce classes and Salesforce CTI connectors. 

It is essential to reassure to use of the telephone utility supplier’s connector whenever a call is set up from the Salesforce softphone. When you do so, the call will hit the server of the phone provider. During this, the control of the call would move to the AGI connector. This is why this connector is known as the CTI connector of Salesforce.com while ensuring that the call has been set up.

Top Features of Salesforce CTI Integration

There are several features of CTI integration with Salesforce that make it so helpful for service teams. Here are some of the most used features of Salesforce CTI integration:

1. Screen-Pop: This feature gives the agent a pop-up with caller information as soon as an agent picks up the phone.
2. Click-To-Dial: With this feature, phone numbers are changed into active links to automatically dial a number with a single click instead of dialing it manually. This saves agents a lot of time to keep dialing each number manually.
3. Intelligent Routing: This feature allows service agents to set up rules to decide which call would be routed to which agent.
4. Up-To-Date Call Reporting: The integration allows you to create accurate reports indicating incoming and outgoing calls and caller details.
5. Multi-Tenant System: The system can be handled without any inconsistencies as it is hosted on the cloud. 

Salesforce CTI Integration Benefits for Different Professionals

CTI integration with Salesforce offers many benefits for different departments. But it explicitly serves the sales and the support team in many ways. The sales and support teams are the main components of any business, making it essential for them to leverage technology to improve efficiency. Let’s see how considering CTI integration with Salesforce can prove to be beneficial for both these teams:

1. For Sales

• The integration allows the team to use sales automation software to speed up lead conversion.
• The team can access features like "click to dial" and "power dial" to set up and manage calls faster. 
• It helps to reduce waiting periods for customers.
• Boost in sales can be achieved as all team members can access customer data if the respective sales rep assigned to the customer is unavailable.
• The user can record and track customer calls, which could provide the team with a comprehensive analysis of sales tasks.
• The sales team can easily track the key performance indicators like conversions, and total calls made, etc. These KPIs enable managers to track the efficiency of the team members. 

2. For Support

• The Salesforce integration with CTI allows the support team to call customers quickly with a single-click dialing function.
• It provides representatives access to calling functionality within Salesforce, enabling them to use features like call holding, call forwarding, call muting, etc.
• The integration enables users to route calls intelligently to enable self-service with features like interactive voice response. 
• It enables routing the calls to the best-suited available support rep. 
• The integration enables team members to cross-reference the calling number with the database records to pull out customer journeys and previous interactions easily. 
• The integration also enables reps to access the caller's details and call history in a pop-up window, thus enabling them to access needed information while connecting with a customer.
• It enables the support staff to quickly access details like call logs, billing history, etc., to deliver individualized assistance easily. 
• Managers can quickly assess employee and team performance through records and reports.  

It’s Time to Move Ahead with CTI Integration with Salesforce

In the current market, more and more businesses are working to meet the growing and changing customer demands. This can be better achieved by connecting with customers and understanding them better. Interact with your customers easily through telephony systems from within Salesforce through Salesforce CTI integration.

Now it's high time to start connecting the dots between your telephony system and Salesforce, and 360 Degree Cloud can help you with that. As a trusted Salesforce partner, our consulting team can assist you with Salesforce CTI

Source : https://telegra.ph/The-Beginners-Guide-to-CTI-Integration-with-Salesforce-12-26

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