CCaaS & CRM: What Should You Expect from Your Integration?

As customer expectations evolve, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement around bots, workflow automation tools, and generative AI.   

However, while these solutions do have a significant impact on contact center performance, it’s important not to overlook the basics.  

Ultimately, for agents to deliver exceptional experiences to customers, they need access to the right data.   

That’s where CRM integrations come in. Integrating your CRM solution with your contact center platform ensures agents have the insights they need to personalize, optimize, and enhance every interaction.   

But not all integration options are alike, so what should you expect from yours?  

Flexibility: Support for Custom and Leading CRM Solutions

There are hundreds of different customer relationship management platforms and solutions out there, not to mention countless proprietary systems built in-house by contact center leaders. If your contact center vendor offers access to CRM integrations, it should support any system you use.   

Look for a vendor that offers a range of pre-built connectors and adapters for well-known solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft, Oracle, and Zendesk. However, make sure you’re also paying attention to the vendor’s ability to support custom CRM integrations.   

For instance, Five9’s Agent Desktop Toolkit Plus gives businesses access to a selection of REST APIs, reference UIs, and additional tools for different contact center needs.   

A Comprehensive Environment for Data Management

The great thing about integrating your contact center with a CRM solution, is that it provides teams and agents with a centralized environment for storing critical customer information. However, not all solutions offer the same level of end-to-end data control.   

Whether you’re migrating your contact center to the cloud or investing in new tools and services for your customer service team, having a unified database can be extremely useful. The ability to connect insights from your CRM, ACD, workforce engagement management platform and other tools can give you more granular insights into opportunities for growth.  

Five9 is helping contact centers to unlock the full power of their data, after acquiring Aceyus in 2024. With Aceyus, Five9 can build on the value of CRM integrations with expanded and more robust data consolidation capabilities.   

True Omnichannel Integration

Speaking of creating a unified data landscape in the contact center, the only way to ensure you have full visibility into your customer journeys and interactions, is with an omnichannel approach. If your CRM integration only allows agents to update customer records with data from messaging apps, or access screen pops during voice calls, the benefits of the connection are limited.   

A truly comprehensive integration should bring the power of your CRM and contact center platform across a range of channels. It should empower agents and supervisors to leverage the integration whether they’re using email, messaging, or mobile services.   

Plus, it should also ensure that even smart assistants and bots can automatically update customer profiles, based on their self-service interactions with consumers.   

Intuitive Agent Desktop Features  

The best CRM integrations for CCaaS platforms don’t just streamline the flow of data in your workplace. They also empower agents with a selection of valuable tools that can help them optimize the customer journey. Some of the most valuable features to look for include:  

• Click-to-call integration: This ensures agents can immediately contact a customer or receive calls from within the CRM workspace, boosting workplace efficiency.   
• Call history and recording: With integrated recording and history tracking, agents can save time on updating customer profiles, and automate the wrap-up process.  
• Screen pops: Screen pops that automatically surface data about a customer ensure agents can personalize and customize each experience, increasing satisfaction rates.   
• Security: Security features, like single-sign on and access control permissions help to ensure you remain compliant when dealing with sensitive customer data.   
• A unified workspace: An effective integration will pull all of the tools your agents need into one single-pane desktop, eliminating the productivity drain of constant tab switching.  

Excellent User Experiences (for Agents and Supervisors)

Adding a CRM integration to your contact center platform can be an excellent way to optimize team productivity, centralize critical data, and deliver more personalized customer service. However, the benefits of these integrations are only evident when everyone can easily use the connected tools.   

A leader in CRM integration will work with you to develop a customized contact center solution that adheres to the needs of your agents and supervisors. They’ll help you build and customize the perfect employee dashboards, and even leverage other integrations to create automated workflows for teams.  

Plus, they’ll ensure supervisors and contact center leaders can consistently manage, optimize, and control the experience, with an intuitive admin panel. These panels can give business leaders an all-in-one environment for real-time analytics, historical reporting, and account configuration.  

Endless Scalability

Finally, an excellent CRM integration for your contact center should be able to adapt and evolve as quickly as your contact center. It should scale easily as you add new channels and employees to your contact center strategy and integrate with a wider range of tools for CX optimization.  

For instance, working with a contact center vendor like Five9 on a custom CRM integration allows companies to leverage the benefits not just of their existing software, but also generative AI tools, intelligent interaction analytics, and journey orchestration features.   

Companies can even align their CRM integrations with their workforce management tools and use insights from previous interactions to improve resource allocation.  

Make the Most of your CRM Integration

A CRM integration is a valuable addition to any CCaaS platform. It empowers you to access and store the data you need to deliver truly memorable experiences to your customers. However, not all CRM integrations are alike.   

Ensure you’re choosing a solution that’s scalable, flexible, customizable, and capable of providing your teams with the resources they need to unlock their full potential.