A match made in heaven: business applications and business phone systems. Don’t believe me? Keep reading and find out how ERP/CRM and hosted business phones are a powerful productivity multiplier for a business.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are integral to increasing company productivity and revenue by being the main repository and management tools for business information. Phone records should be a part of this business information and should be automatically recorded by the CRM or ERP software.
I highly suggest searching for CRM/ERP software and a business phone system with integration capabilities. Ultimately, it will be the business phone system that will have to have the integration capabilities. For a better chance of this functionality, go for a hosted VoIP business phone system.
What are the Benefits?
Integrating your business applications with your business phone improves customer service quality. When a call comes in, a popup will appear on the appropriate employee’s screen that is populated with information from a CRM or ERP application with information about the person calling. If it’s a customer, the employee can see who exactly is calling, what product or service they have purchased, if they’ve called in the past, and any issues that are pending/resolved. If that’s not a productivity multiplier, I don’t know what it is.
Keeping track of phone records can be a difficult task, especially if the CRM or ERP are keeping records that are separate. Application integration allows phone records to be automatically recorded to those business applications. So, the next time a customer calls, the customer service that was mentioned earlier is improved further with seamless, up-to-date information. Employees will be able to focus on more important tasks while record keeping accuracy sky rockets.
Measurement equals improvement. The combination of business information tools and business phone systems creates improved metric reports with information on employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and business workflow. With these reports, a business owner can view what times of the day the phone lines are the busiest, who calls most often, and an in-depth report of out-going/in-coming calls.
BYOD (bring your own device) and the cloud do indeed get cozy with hosted VoIP phones. Business smart phone apps allow employees to have two numbers on one device. BYOD is even better when the system has application integration so that no matter where or when an employee takes a call, it is automatically and accurately recorded.
These Benefits can Contribute Positively to any Facet of a Business:
- Customer service and support can take and make more calls faster. The calls will also be more personalized because of the application integration’s expedient and up-to-date information.
- Telemarketing will be able to outreach to a great number of potential customers while keeping accurate phone records and notes.
- Marketing can tie phone numbers to specific campaigns while calculating ROI for those campaigns.
- Sales staff can increase outbound call activity, enhance over-the-phone customer satisfaction, and conveniently create follow-up notes.
- Accounting can make more collection calls while retaining accurate records of call history.
That’s a pretty impressive list of benefits and advantages that are all made possible by ERP, CRM, and a business phone system. If you’re a business owner, there’s no reason not to make application integration through these systems apart of your business. If you’re a casual reader, now you know the power of this pairing.
