As technology continues to revolutionize communication, businesses are in a constant race to keep up. One of the most effective solutions in recent years has been Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). CTI combines computer and telephony systems, offering businesses the opportunity to optimize their customer service operations and enhance the customer experience. Computer Telephony Integrations (CTI) – The Future of Customer Service

Improving the Customer Experience with CTI

One of the most significant benefits of CTI is that it offers agents access to customer information and interaction history during a call. This information is pulled from a CRM system and displayed on the agent’s screen, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the customer and their needs. This results in a more personalized and informed customer experience, as agents are better equipped to handle customer inquiries and resolve issues.

Boosting Efficiency with CTI Technology

CTI automates repetitive tasks, such as dialing and transferring calls, allowing agents to focus on more value-added activities. It also eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing the risk of errors and saving time. Moreover, CTI provides call center managers with real-time visibility into call volume, wait times, and agent performance, allowing for informed decisions about staffing and resource allocation.

Enhancing Data Management with CTI Solutions

CTI integrates telephony data with a CRM system, offering a centralized view of customer interactions. This data can be analyzed to gain valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can be used to improve marketing and customer service strategies. Additionally, by integrating with a CRM system, CTI enables businesses to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, including email, chat, and social media, providing a more comprehensive view of the customer journey.

Optimizing Call Routing with CTI Integrations

CTI allows for sophisticated call routing based on factors such as skill sets and availability, increasing the chances of connecting customers with the right agent quickly. This results in reduced wait times and improved customer satisfaction. Furthermore, CTI can be used to route calls based on specific criteria, such as language, product knowledge, or customer history, providing a more personalized experience for customers.

In conclusion, CTI is a valuable tool for businesses looking to optimize their customer service operations and enhance the customer experience. With its ability to automate repetitive tasks, provide real-time visibility into call volume and agent performance, and integrate telephony data with a CRM system, CTI is a solution worth considering for businesses of all sizes. Go to www.loyally.eu/marketplace for our products.

Loyally is proud to announce its partnership with Trengo. Both Dutch companies saw an opportunity to strengthen each other in the customer contact market. Where Trengo focuses on funneling all communication channels into one convenient platform, Loyally focuses on integrating and migrating data from other systems to make it work smoothly in Trengo

About Trengo

Trengo is a B2B SaaS startup from Utrecht, founded in 2015 by Patrick Meutzner and Marcel van de Weerd. Trengo’s software enables company employees to easily collaborate and efficiently communicate with customers across all communication channels from a shared team inbox.

With Trengo, you find all your internal and external information in one place. For example, if a customer sends an email or Facebook message, it will arrive in the same inbox. Super clear! Within Trengo, you also collaborate with your colleagues and take notes as needed. Trengo also uses live chat tools for websites. This tool allows you to chat with website visitors in real time, allowing you to respond very quickly to (potential) customers.

About Loyally

Loyally, founded in 2017, is a specialist in developing CTIs, Computer Telephony Integrations, and data migrations. Loyally makes sure that companies that use different systems, such as CRM, communication or financial systems, can see their data easily and clearly in the leading system. This saves a lot of time for the customer as everything can be seen and found in the lead system, but you don’t lose the strength of each individual specialized system. Loyally has clients like Mollie, Zeeman, Cannock and Leen Bakker in the Netherlands and operates globally for large US, European and Australian companies like Rack Room Shoes, Iptiq and GCPay.

Future

Both companies are very enthusiastic about the partnership and find each other in the common goal of making customer contact as easy and therefore as qualitative as possible. Where Trengo collects all communication from different channels in one platform, Loyally collects the data in the background from different systems to make it as easy as possible for the helpdesk employee to help a customer.

Loyally and Trengo are working toward a world of happy customers.

Computer telephony integration (CTI) for Five9, or “pop-up” technology, allows contact center agents to access customer records and manage customer data during interactions. As soon as the agent logs in with the customer, a pop-up will appear on the agent’s screen with the customer’s contact history and information that the agent can view and edit. The result is greater efficiency and more effective customer support interactions. Five9 CTI provides agents with customer data, purchase history, and information about previous interactions, all delivered instantly to the Five9 agent desktop or desktop Five9 preconfigured CRM integration.

Understand your customers to personalize interactions The cloud contact center uses a built-in CRM integration that integrates the contact center software with the CRM system to provide a seamless and integrated experience. Integrations are designed to help agents understand who their customers are and their history of interactions with the company, the problems they are facing, and in some cases, make recommendations on the best course of action needed. made for customers.

Deploying a CTI solution with skillsbased routing is one of the best ways to improve first contact resolution (FCR) and improve customer loyalty. Five9 CTI queries your CRM, locates a match, and instantaneously populates that data onto the agent`s screen, enabling the agent to quickly address the customer`s needs.

Improve customer service experience

The problem: Calls to call centers or call centers tend to be associated with negative stigma. First, do an interactive voice response (IVR), listen to the prompts. Then dial a certain number or talk to the machine regarding your problem. This is something many of us go through and it usually takes a few minutes to get to a live dealer. When you finally reach the dealership, you often have to repeat your personal information as if the company doesn’t know who you are. Not a great experience.

Solution: With CTI, an automatic pop-up will appear to identify the customer based on your phone number, along with additional details like address, email, company, etc.). Agents can now make interactions more personal as the agency’s desktop or CRM system provides additional information about the customer allows for personalized interactions.

Problem: Navigating an agency’s desktop or CRM system can make it difficult for employees to multitask while on the phone with customers, making them very distracting and inefficient. . This will then affect the average processing time to last longer than it should.

Solution: With CTI this gives the agent direct access to the root cause of the call and less time spent identifying who the customer is, directly reducing the average handling time ( AHT). The sooner agents have accurate information, the quicker customer issues can be resolved, allowing agents to be more supportive on calls allows for personalized interactions

Problem: Customer expectations continue to rise. Businesses should continue to look for ways to improve customer service experiences as more personalized experiences are expected.

Solution: With an automated display for your agents, customers are greeted with a more personalized experience. Knowing exactly who a customer is and why they’re calling helps agents understand and provide the empathy needed to improve the customer experience.

With an automated display for your agents, customers are greeted with a more personalized experience. Knowing exactly who a customer is and why they’re calling helps agents understand and provide the empathy needed to improve the customer experience.

RingCentral’s cloud-based solution and integrating it with other systems and apps makes it easier for contact center agents to work Increase job satisfaction and employee satisfaction by providing the tools agents need to perform better at work. Improves job satisfaction. RingCentral’s cloud-based software can simplify the work of agents.

Contact center agent productivity levels are directly related to how happy agents are at work. Management can take steps to ensure their employees are happy on the job, and therefore more productive. RingCentral offers innovative cloudbased solutions that can make the job of agents easier, which can improve their experience and productivity levels. Happy employees are more productive employees. The question is, are your contact center agents happy? If not, what can you do to improve your work experience, increase your productivity, and thus your bottom line?
Contact Center agents need to look forward to check-in at work and feel proud and accomplished in their work. This improves workplace engagement and makes you as productive as possible.

Offer the right tools
Leveraging modern tools in the contact center should be the first step toward boosting happiness among agents.The appropriate communications platform can simplify, streamline, and focus agents` jobs. This will cut down on manual work and increase productivity.

• Agents currently have to toggle between 8 apps a day. Give them a 360 degree, unified view of the customer with integrated tools and applications, so they can see the customer profile, history and context all in one easytoaccess place.

• Real time agent assistance and guidance is critical to improving FCR and keeping agents happy. Invest in AI-driven tools that tell agents what to say based on customer intent and how to say it effectively

• Effective enterprise-wide collaboration tools enable agents to quickly get answers from organization-wide experts and provide a sense of belonging. Ultimately, agents need to be able to access all the data they need from one central location with minimal effort.

Making the Work Environment Pleasant

Although everyone in the workplace has a specific job to do, there’s no reason why the workplace shouldn’t be a pleasant environment at the same time. Agents look forward to working every day to feel happier and more motivated to do their best work, and a fun work environment can be an effective way to promote that. this. One way to make work more fun is to introduce chemistry games, such as competitions, badges and leaderboards, in action. This concept involves applying elements of the game to the workplace and is increasingly being used by organizations to drive employee engagement. Companies have the potential to improve employee satisfaction by 50% by using better QM and applying gamification. (Metrigy WEM Benchmark 2021) According to Zippia, a workplace that includes video games increases employee happiness by 89%. This makes agents more productive and also helps to reduce agency turnover rates. More than two-thirds of workers said they would stay at work for at least three years if they used gamification in the workplace. Making the contact center a fun place to work will make employees feel more motivated to be a part of the company.

What is Freshdesk and how to integrate it.

Freshdesk is customer support software that is cloud-based. It features multiple support channels like telephony, email, social media and chat.

Freshdesk is customer support software that is cloud-based. It features multiple support channels like telephony, email, social media and chat. The user interface of the inbox of Freshdesk and detailed filtering options makes it easy to stay on top of support tickets. The service level agreement (SLA) feature allows your team to define and track support resolution times. With the customer portal, you can customize and create a database of self-service articles. Nowadays Freshdesk is more than just a ticketing system.

The integration between Freshdesk and computer can be applied at different levels. The most simple one is the connection between the phone and the Freshdesk interface. But there is so much more possible like

The marketplace of Freshdesk.

The Freshdesk marketplace has over 200 apps and we’re their premium partner for CTI applications

Today, the Freshdesk marketplace is more than just a place to find and install integrations. It’s a way for developers to build on top of the platform and bring their own ideas to the Freshdesk ecosystem. And that’s what Loyally does as a premium partner. Over the last several months, they have given the developer portal a makeover and added some cool power-ups to our SDK by bringing in support for oauth, backend apps, data storage, notifications and more.

Check out our CTI applications for Freshdesk here: Genesys, RingCentral, Five9 and more on our website: www.loyally.eu/products.

Why make use of computer telephony integration?

There are a few reasons why CTI will help your helpdesk center or call center big time.

1. Time. All information of the customers is available on one screen. Your client calls, the computer telephony integration recognizes the telephone number, so the helpdesk agent knows which clients calls and automatically all the information of that client, that is known in other systems like, CRM, financial and ERP systems, will pop up in the central display. Which makes that helpdesk agent is able to help the client much quicker.
2. Customer experience. It’s not only time that makes a huge difference by using CTI for your company. Nowadays it’s important that the customer likes your company and the way you threat them. Companies are rated by customers everyday and one single mistake of the helpdesk can have bad influence on the image of the company. This counts also the other way around, if a customer will be helped perfectly, with his or her question, this will have a positive influence for your company. By using computer telephony integration the helpdesk agent can help the customer quick and accurate which lead to a positive image of the company and a great customer experience.
3. Lower costs. Less time for helping a customer means less FTEs. Productivity goes up and costs go down.

Would like to have more information about CTI’s and what we can do for you? Contact us

WHAT IS CTI?

Computer telephony integration, an abbreviation for CTI, is a way to control the functionalities of the phone with the computer. Which means that all telephone calls, which simply go through the PBX or a key system telephony, can be made via the desktop and the telephone is no longer needed. As a result of which contact can be carried out via a central location from behind the desk.

Computer telephony integration is a way of data integration. We simply send the data from the phone directly to the desktop. The way we do this is with APIs. So if you’re asking yourself if CTI is possible with your PBX phone of key system technology? Yes, when there is an (correct) API it is possible.

The integration between telephony and computer can be applied at different levels. The most simple one is the connection between the phone and the desktop interface. But there is so much more possible. As more data of different systems can be integrated too. Think of CRM systems, financial systems, stock systems and ERP systems.

So if you’ve got a helpdesk or a call center; all information is available at one central place. Everything is connected.

Why make use of computer telephony integration?

There are a few reasons why CTI will help your helpdesk center or call center big time.

1. Time. All information of the customers is available on one screen. Your client calls, the computer telephony integration recognizes the telephone number, so the helpdesk agent knows which clients calls and automatically all the information of that client, that is known in other systems like, CRM, financial and ERP systems, will pop up in the central display. Which makes that helpdesk agent is able to help the client much quicker.
2. Customer experience. It’s not only time that makes a huge difference by using CTI for your company. Nowadays it’s important that the customer likes your company and the way you threat them. Companies are rated by customers everyday and one single mistake of the helpdesk can have bad influence on the image of the company. This counts also the other way around, if a customer will be helped perfectly, with his or her question, this will have a positive influence for your company. By using computer telephony integration the helpdesk agent can help the customer quick and accurate which lead to a positive image of the company and a great customer experience.
3. Lower costs. Less time for helping a customer means less FTEs. Productivity goes up and costs go down.

Would like to have more information about CTI’s and what we can do for you? Contact us

My first trip to India, my first trip to Chennai as a partner of Freshworks, started with a short flight from Amsterdam to London Heathrow, a 25-30 minutes transfer to the flight to Chennai and an amazing taxi drive through Chennai in the early morning of March 12.

It was the beginning of an amazing, sometimes puzzling, but overall very inspiring week amongst more than 100 partners from all over the world and enthusiastic employees of Freshworks.

On Tuesday I visited the office of Freshworks, at Infocity, in Chennai. Not only because of the presentations of several ISV partners, but most of all to put faces to names I already knew, or at least half, and share ideas. It proved to be one of the most fruitful days of the entire trip. Being able to talk to so many (young) people, experience their enthusiasm, being able to explain what we, as a small Dutch company, can contribute to their tools and how we could expand, elaborate and grow with them. There was always a listening ear, an understanding nod and helpful suggestions.

The partner conference was rewarding, in the sense that it was more than worthwhile to travel half the world and be present there. Inspiring speeches, workshops, roadmaps, new products, demo’ s. It sometimes made me wonder who I was to be a part of this all. it also was exhausting at times, to hear so many ideas, so many plans. Not because of the quality of the plans and ideas, but because of my inability to see the forest for the trees at every moment.

Of course, there is room for improvement, but isn’ t there always? This does not go for the evenings (the gala and the beach party) of which I cannot reveal anything of course: What happens in Chennai stays in Chennai.

The week at Freshwork made me realize that we are just at the beginning of what will become an even more amazing trip towards realizing extraordinary cx for our customers and their customers

Jan Smulders

CEO Loyally

Salesforce: What is CTI? How Does it Work with Salesforce?

Although many businesses have hopped the omnichannel bandwagon in recent years, phone is still the most preferred channel of communication. A study conducted by North Ridge Group found that 56% of the respondents still prefer phone to reach out to the customer service desks because it’s effortless and easy.

This inference from the study suggests two possibilities
• Businesses still need to strengthen their presence across non-traditional touch-points
• Phone is regarded as the best medium to articulate one’s concern or pain-point even when alternative communication channels like text, chat or social media are becoming popular

This brings us to our discussion about CTI, a technology that connects hard phones to a computer system to deliver a smooth experience for all types of voice communication. This is particularly relevant for third partyintegration – such as Salesforce. However, before we come to that, lets understand – What is CTI?

Definition Of CTI & Its Application

CTI or Computer Telephony Interaction is a call center technology widely used by customer service teams to improve call center interaction. The technology essentially unifies computer with telephone system and can be configured at two levels –
• Desktop- CTI integration with desktop helps in showcasing rich data in the form of a screen pop up. This allows agents to view complete customer information even before the call is connected with the customer.
• Call Routing – Helps in identifying the caller and routes it to the right department or agent. Additionally, agents can also transfer the call to relevant agents/departments, put call on hold and even dispose the call.

Why CTI Is Relevant for Call Center Interaction?

Revenue and efficiency are two primary concerns for businesses today. Both these entities are tied down to call center interaction for a very good reason. If a customer gets a satisfactory answer or resolution to a query in the first call, it becomes the key driver of customer satisfaction, ensuring loyalty and trust. As a customer calls in, the agent does not waste any time to hunt customer information, everything is visible in a single view. Typically, the agent may view the following field of information about a customer-
• Personal information about the caller
• Account status
• Status of the ticket-open, closed, reopened
• Previous call logs
• Complete chat history

With instant access to the above information, not only the agent productivity increases and the first call resolution (FCR) rate of the call center is also high. It is estimated that a 15% increase in FCR results in a 57% reduction in repeat calls. This is good news since handling a query within the first call may increase customer retention by 96%.
To summarize our discussion, the relevance of CTI in terms of call center productivity can be understood as under –
• Saves Cost & Resources – CTI also leads to significant reduction in cost and improvement in resource saving for organizations in a variety of ways. This may include – reduction in CSR churn, reduction in the cost of customer database errors, reduction of telephone network toll expenses, reduction in liability cost etc.
• Reduction In Call Handling Time – Since the CTI display offers all the relevant information even before the call is connected, the agent is able to offer a quick resolution. The agent can wrap the call quickly and will be able to take more calls in a short amount of time.
• Reduces Aggravated Session – The customer no longer needs to repeat their query to an agent in subsequent calls, therefore, instances of aggravated call sessions are relatively lower.
• Positive Agent Experience – Since the agent is able to accommodate several customer requests in a short duration of time that too with minimal instances of irate, the agent experience is better. They feel empowered and do optimal justice to their jobs.

ZENDESK: Do more with more: contact center integrations

WHO YOU ARE:

The Contact Center
Your agents are handling the difficult task of trying to please customers, one phone call at a time. Wait, you say, ’re a contact center—not a call center—and our agents are doing more than answering the phone. So much more.
Good-bye misconceptions, and hello reality. The contact center today is a multi-channel hub of customer support, and if it’s hard to blow customer satisfaction out of the water in one channel, then optimizing across multiple channels may feel like an insurmountable task.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT

Besides binge-watching episodes of True Detective, that is. (We don’t blame you.) But there’s a lot to think about when it comes to providing multi-channel support. Should you allocate dedicated or blended agents to each channel? How can you forecast for growth by channel, and create a consistent customer experience across channels?
You’re enmeshed in tactical day-to-day operations, walking the tightrope of balancing customer happiness with agent happiness, all the while optimizing for efficiency. Where is that elusive sweet spot where everyone and everything is humming along? An agent’s time on the phone is valuable—are they building relationships with customers or asking annoying, redundant questions? You need data and insight into your contact center to make decisions that will impact productivity, but where can you get this data? What are the right investments that will allow you to save time and do more?

KILLER APP COMBO

Zendesk Plus or Enterprise integrates easily with a host of voice and chat services, as well as the apps listed below, which are particularly suited for the contact center. Whether Zendesk is your foundation, or a piece of your customer service solution, the apps and integrations below are a great baseline to help maximize your support. It’s easy one-stop shopping.
Voice Integrations
No matter the level of sophistication of your voice requirements, Zendesk has a partner for you. The voice integrations allow companies to make the most of their voice channel by routing calls to the best-suited agents within Zendesk. Through softphones and screen popups, agents receive the call and a full customer profile and ticket history.
There are several great voice integrations for Zendesk: inContact, Five9, Asterisk, Avaya, Genesys, Cisco CAD and Cisco UC Platforms, Loyally, and Shoretel.

Loyally

Loyally’s provides cleaner, more complete and reliable data around phone numbers. Use this app to add personalization and eliminate the need for agents to ask time-consuming, detailed questions like how to spell a name.

Bringing you the Freshdesk CTI Framework

In the spirit of releasing the Freshdesk SDK and opening up the Freshdesk App Gallery, we’re excited to announce that we’ve launched our Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) framework. With this framework, you can integrate telephony with your helpdesk easily and effectively.

Our CTI framework looks to solve a multitude of problems in most online helpdesks. Whether it is a company wary of the risks of large scale data migration, or a small business reluctant to shift away from their trusted call center software, we aim to address all concerns by releasing a framework capable of building a telephony integration to suit their specific needs.

Once integrated, agents using the system will be able to attend calls, access customer details and history, and maintain context for conversations through the call, right from the comfort of Freshdesk.

In addition to the features mentioned above, the CTI framework will also allow for much deeper functionalities:

Converting calls to tickets

I think we can all agree that the core values of customer support were formulated over the traditional phone. Despite major advancements in modern customer support software, the phone channel still remains an integral part in online helpdesks. It is for this reason that we think the phone should never be a stand-alone element in any helpdesk. With our CTI framework, you’ll be able to convert conversations into new tickets or link them to existing ones. You can organize your support and tie all your support channels closer.

Unified Screenpop

Support over the phone channel can be tricky; agents walk a thin line between sounding too enthusiastic or too robotic. Walking on the right side of this thin line is made exponentially easier with context. With our Unified Screenpop API, you can spring up requester information and details on recent tickets automatically whenever an agent attends a call. Irrespective of whether you want to check ticket history, dig up older solutions or even just call your customer by their first name, we’ve got your back.

Attaching call recordings

Apps can be built to allow call recordings to be attached to tickets. Documenting interactions can help agents deliver better support experiences and help supervisors measure agent performance. It can also be useful for a number of other purposes – attaching a call recording to a private note to circulate across teams for training or reference, sending a generic call recording to a user for a workaround solution, and so on.

Adding private notes

Despite options to record every conversation you have, the habit to take notes during a call is something that cannot be replaced. Not only does it add clarity to your follow up calls, private notes will help you bolster intra office communication for when you might need help, or when certain tickets have to be escalated. Your apps can make shuffling screens or searching for pens during important calls obsolete by letting agents take notes directly in the call interface, to be automatically appended as private notes.

Customized Soft-phones

Different people  have different preferences. Some people are picky about fonts, some about colors, and some are picky about how their phone dialer looks. With our CTI framework, you can tend to everybody’s preferences by offering customized soft-phones within Freshdesk using iFrames. What this basically means is, you could configure your app to pop a soft-phone dialer within Freshdesk, as opposed to using our native UI. Give your app a richer feel by configuring these finer details.

You can get your integration featured on the Freshdesk App Gallery for killer exposure to Freshdesk’s global customer base, or use it internally for your organization. Getting your app up and running on the helpdesk is as easy as making a few configurations.

Be sure to check out existing telephony apps in the Freshdesk App Gallery here, or build your own app from our developer portal.