CRM overview

Contact has a built-in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database that may be used to keep track of customers’ interactions with the contact. The CRM is based around contact records in which customer details and contact histories can be stored.

Each customer is identified by criteria such as account number, telephone number and mobile number, and has data stored against them. In addition to standard information (such as name and address), an administrator can define up to 64 data records (“custom fields”) to associate with each customer. These records may be used to store industry-specific information for that customer.

When a company administrator enables the integrated CRM, CRM-specific items are added to the agent screens, allowing them to look up customers, make notes, and update customer-specific information using their agent web portal. Any previous interactions with the contact are also made available to the agent handling the item (based on the contents of the CRM).

When a call or non-voice item is received, the CRM tries to match the customer to a CRM contact record (for example, by using the caller’s CLI or sender’s email address to identify the customer), and pops up the record on the agent’s screen. This allows the agent to see information about the customer (such as their name, address, and VIP status) and any contact history. If the customer cannot be matched, the agent can search for the customer using other criteria (such as an account number or post code). If a CRM record is found, the agent can then associate the customer with that particular CRM record. If a CRM record cannot be found, the agent can create a new contact record for the customer.

All user interactions are logged within the CRM, and notes pages are created for each new interaction (inbound or outbound). During the automatic wrapup period, each agent is given time to complete the contact record. During this period, they can also use the CRM to schedule a follow-on call at a later date. Any edits to a contact record performed by an agent are saved for download or communicated back to the CRM.

Parent topic: Customer-related tasks