Consumers have become more competitive and erratic as a result of the rise of social media and new emerging technologies. Buying patterns and preferences shift in reaction to their tastes, trends, and digital environment. And this is a decisive factor in the relationship between brands and clients.

With the growth of online shopping, brands have had to redefine their engagement strategies and by extension contact centers.

Contact centers are becoming more advanced and they are also being impacted by several new technologies. Today we talk about Omnichannel and consumer 2.0. The telephone, a more conventional but still commonly used channel, has not escaped this resurgence and that’s where CTI or Computer Telephony Integration comes in.

What is CTI Integration?

CTI or Computer Telephony Integration is a technology that was developed in response to the need for companies to connect their telecommunications networks with their computers. CTI incorporates voice, dial, video, or voice-over-IP phone technologies that establish new and better ways to communicate.

In technical terms, it is a combination of advanced audio, data communication, and voice interface technologies that allows interactive calls to be conducted over IP or the internet. This allows communication from any location around the world to be conducted through one call center with no difference in quality, productivity, or cost between a normal inbound call or an outbound call.

Historical Context

In the early ’90s, the first CTIs were introduced in businesses. However, it wasn’t until the end of the decade that they were really known as a must-have technology. Because of its versatility, which required businesses to produce a shape feed, it was seen as a completely separate solution at the time.

Then the industry moved from a Call Center method of manually labeling phone numbers, where it was impossible to check who the caller was, to different Call Center Software that allows thousands of different features as technology advanced towards a customer-centric era.

This is when CTI technology and tools come into effect, easing the workload of contact center agents and optimizing efficiency while also improving the customer service quality.

CTI integration tools

It’s easy to assume that call center CTI technologies can only be effective when there is a large volume of phone calls.

On the other hand, this technology is useful for all forms of campaigns and these are the most important CTI integration tools:

Information Pop-up display

The agent can see a pop-up display on his computer with the customer’s phone number while using CTI.

By simply clicking on the window, he can answer the call. Prior to this key, the customer’s file in the CRM will open immediately due to the identification of the customer’s number.

As a result, the file shared with the client with the incoming call number will appear immediately in the agent’s CRM display, ensuring customized and high-quality customer service while also avoiding waiting time.

One-click contact

The agent can reach one of the clients from files within the CRM, pick the customer he needs to contact and make the call directly by pressing a button.

The call will be sent through with the contact center technology, and it will be of the highest quality. Since the agent will have all of the knowledge about the individual who was called, as well as the ability to make extra comments or simple changes.

CTI linking to the CRM

From a technological standpoint, a Contact Center is an improved form of a Call Center since it incorporates new internal and external networking mechanisms in addition to voice, such as email, voice, social media, and webchat.

When you link CTI to CRM tools, your contact center can use it to efficiently manage high-volume calls while monitoring all communication operations via CTI integration.

What are the benefits of CTI integration?

Thanks to client file reviews, the CTI has a totally new approach and a higher level of customer care. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to advantages, and here are the most crucial ones for contact centers:

Enhanced productivity

The technology does indeed allow you to limit your calls to save between 10 to 20 seconds each time. CTI cuts call time by around 10% in a contact center, where it is standard procedure to shorten calls.

Furthermore, CTIs enhance the development of statistics that enable the study of the interdependence between the output of the call and the time spent on it, in addition to other functionalities such as reporting.

CTI can enhance your productivity through:

• Phone System
• Voice
• IVR
• IMS
• SMS
• Profiles Integration
• Communication Access

Management and monitoring of the activity

For contact centers, CTI provides supervision and reporting interfaces. In fact, the supervisors in contact centers can have access to a tool that helps them to display accurate data on agents’ results on all calls taken and in real-time.

As a result, you can have metrics and data such as:

• Number of picked up calls,
• Rate of missed calls, total contact time,
• Length of agents break,
• Monitoring agents’ results during phone calls,
• A measure of agents’ or teams’ success over a set period of time,
• User patterns that can be used to gauge customer loyalty,
• Assigned calls to the agent who are ideally qualified to respond to the caller’s request ( according to language, geographic location, etc);
• Following the progression of a customer’s lifecycle.

So, when an agent is having difficulties, the supervisor can provide immediate and accurate assistance. These numbers are obtained so that business owners can organize staff better by executing a plan based on these metrics.

Reduced Operation Costs

Indeed, Contact Centers can improve their financial performance by enhancing consumer relationships and lowering operational costs. CTI requires systems to be integrated with unified control of customer experiences. The internal call center system is then redesigned to improve capacity and customer loyalty.

Every day, contact centers accept a vast number of calls, which necessitates the use of multiple agents to effectively address them.

Putting callers on hold or dropping any of them will result in higher prices and a loss of business. These costs can be greatly decreased with CTI and the production of comprehensive statistical data through :

• Shortening total call duration increases the number of contact minutes per hour and, as a result, lowers labor costs.
• Minimizing lengthy wait times for consumers in busy conditions when callbacks are automated.

One Dashboard to manage everything

Many contact centers of all types are also using management tools to further handle their client databases. One of them is CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications.

By incorporating customer relationship management functions (CRM, ERP, ticketing, etc. ). Your agents no longer have to juggle through various databases to locate information about the customer. Instead, all of the data is consolidated on a single and unified dashboard.

The opportunity to better satisfy the needs of these customers is a significant benefit of this form of CTI and CRM linking.

On the other hand, all various communication channels (phone, email, social media, and webchat) are all handled from a common interface, which is beneficial to the agents.

CTI allows client relationship managers to be more competitive with their agents. The positive influence on company competitiveness is clearly visible, as it is expressed in results, efficiency, and profitability. However, in order for this to occur, client relationships must still be regarded as essential activities.

In this regard, CTI integration is a major benefit as it supports and improves the user experience with the consumer. The routing of the call to the caller is streamlined, and the caller’s waiting time is shortened. CTI enables many solutions to be open, such as redirecting the client to a premium facility, moving prospecting calls to a manager in a specific industry, and so on.

Conclusion: What are customers expecting from your contact center?

Customers’ demand has risen significantly as a result of social media growth, and offering an unlimited number of choices when they reach, necessitates a company’s differentiation.

The best way to be one step ahead of your competition is by providing an excellent customer experience. That is an experience where your customer feels safe, comfortable, and taken care of.

In short, todays’ customers will appreciate:

• Personalized care
• Details and accurate information from the agent
• Maintenance of the dialog line, no matter the communication channel
• Resolution at the first contact

In conclusion by coupling telephony with business applications, CTI provides greater control over customer data in order to better interact with them and thus offer them a high-quality customer experience. But we live in the consumer era, which means being where the customer wants you to be.

NobelBiz Omni+ is a true Omnichannel cloud contact center solution that allows you to navigate easily and seamlessly between all communication channels (phone, email, social media, SMS, and webchat). Not to mention absolute mastery of customer data with easy integration to your CRM.