CRM software has established itself in the marketplace as the best option to manage customer information. It makes data more accessible across teams and eliminates the disparate systems of the past. But when it comes to customer journey, a CRM alone can’t cut it.

Without a solution to enable omnichannel customer engagement, CRM is like a reference library full of uncatalogued books. The information is all there, but it’s hard to find the exact data you need, and it’s difficult to use it to your advantage. To truly optimize your customer journey, CRM needs to work with your contact center solution.

A Brief History of Customer Relationships

CRM Gave You Content.

CRM systems enabled you to transfer the rolodexes and black books of the past to a digital database. This provided a system of record for basic customer information across the company and fostered the first database marketing initiatives.

Real-Time Data Gave You Context.

As technology advanced, the internet took hold and CRM systems moved to the cloud, customer information became more plentiful. It became even more important to store, manage and leverage your customer data. Access to real-time data allowed for tailored, individual customer marketing; this raised expectations and created a shift in the relationship between businesses and consumers.

Omnichannel Gives You Control.

Integrating your CRM with an omnichannel customer engagement solution enables you to achieve true customer engagement. With no requirement for an additional interface, agents have all the tools they need (including voice) in a single, known system. They can initiate and receive customer calls from within the CRM, leveraging customer data to maintain context throughout the entire conversation.

Advanced routing options further facilitate this. By integrating with a customer engagement solution, your CRM gains robust ACD capabilities. Integrating CRM data into the contact center enables the ACD to factor the current state of your business—contact center agent availability, skill proficiency—as well as the state of your customer—warranty status, membership level, ticket status.

This means agents can route customers based on skills, language, availability and priority—or using a mix of applicable criteria to ensure your customers are matched with the best resource at any given time. Additionally, agents can transfer customers to other agents when needed—all without loss of context. This empowers agents to anticipate customer needs, meet expectations and control the outcome, which gets your customer to the right person—every single time.

The Future of Customer Journeys

“When CRM is integrated with all other enterprise systems, this provides organizations the data needed to tailor customer conversations—and ensure their consistency,” according to the Aberdeen Group report Next Generation CRM: Moving From A System Of Record To A System Of Engagement. The right contact center system can log interaction details, including recording and timeline, right back into your CRM—improving upon its purpose as a system of record.

PureCloud for Salesforce

The PureCloud for Salesforce app embeds PureCloud call controls into the Salesforce interface. With aggregated data pulled from back-end systems, agents have detailed customer information at their fingertips within a single interface. To learn more about how PureCloud and Salesforce make a powerful pair, visit our PureCloud and Salesforce Integrations page.