“Customer Service is the next competitive battleground.”
– Jerry Gregoire, CIO, Dell Computers
Welcome to the ‘era of the customer.’ The accessibility of company and product information place customers firmly in the driver seat when deciding between brands. This new empowered buyer demands exceptional products and premium customer experience to stay loyal. Today, providing outstanding customer service is essential to keep your customers coming back. Social media and other cutting edge communications have a place in any company’s customer strategy, but the front-line of every company’s service organization remains the telephone, and the customer service agent. It also remains one of the largest operational cost areas. In this new battleground, companies must provide customer service that surpasses the competition. They must realign their culture and technology to drive the maximum value from their investments.
The shift in telephony & CRM
More revenue, higher quality, greater speed—these all are watchwords in today’s customer-facing contact center industry. Advancements in customer relationship management (CRM) technologies are tackling these challenges, providing valuable insight into customer behavior and guidance for specific interactions. Telephony solutions are allowing more sophisticated routing and control of customer interactions.
The old world of on-premise legacy technologies—CRM, call distributors, autodialers, computer telephony integration (CTI), interactive voice response (IVR) systems—have grown far too complex and unmanageable, making it impossible to achieve the level of transparency and responsiveness demanded by today’s customers.
Organizations of all sizes and industries are reducing their dependence on premise-based solutions like Siebel’s CRM and sales force automation (SFA) solutions, and shifting to cloud-based options such as salesforce.com. Advancements in cloud-based Telephony solutions, with their flexibility and cost-effectiveness, offer an attractive alternative to their premise-based counterparts.
What are the advantages of the cloud-based CRM-CTI match?
- Lower costs, improved agility, greater reliability, flexibility, and the ability to scale rapidly
Each of these advantages are critical in an industry where shifting markets and opportunities demand rapid change. In my next blog, I will dive into more depth around the business benefits of migrating and integrating your telephony and CRM solutions in the cloud.
Check out the white paper New World of Customer Expectations to learn more about:
- How cloud technologies have enabled the seamless integration between telephony and CRM
- Key considerations when moving your service operations to the cloud
- Real-world examples of customers achieving results with cloud-based telephony and CRM
