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Key Features to Look for in a Salesforce Cisco Integration

Investing in a robust CRM like Salesforce is one of the best decisions a business can make. These days where customer experience drives business success, leverage technology like Salesforce indicates a commitment to delivering great service and contributing meaningfully to the success of your customers. Salesforce has allowed companies to build tech stacks that truly work for their teams. For client-facing teams, a reliable CTI likeSalesforce-Cisco integration is indispensable.

Computer Telephony Integration or CTI allows teams to connect CRMs like Salesforce to their phone systems. Today, millions of users rely on Salesforce and Cisco, as these solutions are both reliable and time-tested. Integrating the two allows teams to get the most out of each one. Contact centers, helpdesks, sales floors, and customer service reps benefit from CTI solutions directly through features that they use in their daily workflows.

When searching for a Salesforce Cisco integration provider, make sure they deliver these key features:

Click-to-dial

Click-to-dial transforms phone numbers within Salesforce and your internet browser into links that go straight into a call when clicked. This web-to-phone feature makes the calling process seamless, doing away with having to manually dial on your deskphone and on-screen softphone.

For teams that deal with high call volumes day in and out, the click-to-dial feature delivers big savings in the form of shaved seconds that easily translate to hours per team per day. Click-to-dial directly affects the bottomline and influences important business activities like workforce management and resource planning.

Screenpop

Screenpops are a key feature of an effective Salesforce Cisco integration. Screenpops are on-screen pop-ups that deliver customer records instantly when you make an outbound or inbound call. Some CTI solutions only offer screenpops that show recorded customer data in a uniform manner. It’s best to choose a CTI solution that displays role-based customer records. For example, a service rep would need different data compared to a sales agent. Role-based customer data display from screenpops level-up the benefits teams can get out of their integrations.

Call notes, call dispositions

Still part of the screenpop, a key feature you must look for in a CTI solution is the ability to take notes right on the pop-up. Some providers only allow you to view records and will bring the rep or agent to the CRM interface if they want to make changes to the record. Best-in-class CTI solutions provide teams the option to change call dispositions, take notes, and create tasks right on the screen pop. Any client-facing team will benefit from the saved time and smoother workflow of this feature.

Task creation through natural language processing

Task creation right on the screenpop saves a lot of time especially for big teams. A way to amplify this benefit is through natural language processing. Natural language processing or NLP uses machine learning to “read” a user’s notes and creates tasks and calendar entries based on them.

Team collaboration features

Integrating Salesforce and Cisco also makes team collaboration easier for sales, support, and service teams, especially when their chosen CTI solution provides features that foster teamwork. The @mention feature makes it easier for reps to quickly assign or notify teammates about call updates or any pending action items that need to be done.

Automatic call logging

Your CTI should help you get the most out of Salesforce. Automatic call logging should is a basic but crucial feature that CTI providers should be able to deliver. When a user takes notes and wraps up a call on the screenpop, this feature automatically logs the updates on the CRM, saving time that used to go to manually entering call updates, setting dispositions, and assigning tasks to teammates. Automatic call logging ensures that organizations are on the same page across different departments.

Local presence dialing

Another key Salesforce Cisco integration feature that’s extra important for sales teams is local presence dialing. Local presence allows sales teams to show a local area code on the caller ID of the person they’re calling. This improves pick up and connect rates for outbound calling teams.

Call reporting and analytics

Any business would benefit from the constant improvement of their teams that are in constant contact with their prospects and customers. Today, organizations are committed to making data-driven decisions when it comes to implementing changes and solutions to improve the results they’re getting no matter the department. A key feature you’d have to look for in a Salesforce-Cisco integration is the ability to support your data-driven efforts.

With high volume calling, managers are unable to monitor each call, leaving teams in the dark when they don’t have a data capture solution in place. CTI solutions should be able to provide features that allow management activities like call monitoring, call recording, call transcription, and data-rich call activity records.

With call reporting and call analytics features, organizations can use the gathered and visually-presented data to categorically measure the performance of their teams, craft targeted solutions to their unique challenges, and track important customer experience metrics.
From customer service call centers to sales floors, these key CTI features ensure that businesses are able to maintain and gain competitive advantage through technology that allows them to deliver great customer experience.

Originally published on the Tenfold blog.