Add Voice and Video to Salesforce.com with WebRTC

Salesforce.com (SFDC) is a market leader for CRM that is designed to manage contacts, leads, and accounts. Over the past decade, SFDC has evolved to become a critical business application in many organizations. Its scope has increased and many senior managers are literally driving their entire business plan based-on the funnels and forecasts stored in the application.

The problem with CRMs

To get the full value of any CRM solution, employees must populate all matters that are relevant to the business. This typically includes customer contacts, lead status, funnel management, forecast and prospects status. Once a business begins this process, it doesn’t take long for users to look for new ways to expand the scope of their activity and results. That means more data entry across more activities. And if the data is in separate systems, it becomes a cumbersome process logging emails, calls, meetings, and other information. Fortunately, there are solutions to this problem.

SFDC recently announced that they will be releasing a key feature called ‘Lightning Voice’ that will allow users to connect with prospects faster with click-to-call, auto-logging calls, and call forwarding. But this solution does not offer real-time experience with video calling.

Our Solution is not ground-breaking, but the savings is!

Decades ago, CRMs were developed for large organizations because small companies could not afford them. And because they were built on premise-based PBXs, with hours of custom development, large enterprises could not afford to change them either. While other organizations tried to develop voice integration solutions, few businesses took the bait because the programs required a lot more money and work to connect to PBXs.

Then, SFDC completely changed the CRM world with a cost effective, browser-based cloud service. The CRM was affordable for both large and small customers because it became simple to deploy and was user friendly. Now GENBAND is doing the same for real-time integration with WebRTC. GENBAND’s Kandy plugin solution makes it as easy to manage a voice or video call as it is to manage e-mails. Their solution is not new but the ability to do it easily and cost effectively is both innovative and exciting.

The Kandy Salesforce Plugin integrates voice, video and messaging with SFDC’s tools to allow users to collaborate with their colleagues and customers from any SFDC web page. There are no specific applications or PBX needed. Even if a user is working remotely nothing changes; calls are logged in the same manner. The plugin also offers integrated activity tracking so managers can track how customer engagement activities drive results. Additionally, sales personnel can focus on selling rather than wasting their time on cumbersome administrative work and going back and forth between systems.

The Plugin features:

• Inbound call look-up with screen pop

• Log call activity automatically in customer contact page

• Invite customers to a scheduled video call (via link in email)

• Quick add contact

• Quick memo adds

• Multiple call management

• Basic call control

• Call log integration

GENBAND’s SFDC integration is supported by current versions of Chrome, Firefox and Opera without the need of a plugin. If users prefer Internet Explorer, Safari or another browser that does not support WebRTC, a plug-in is provided the first time the user connects to GENBAND’s communication services. Once the plugin is downloaded it is saved and becomes transparent to the user.

The Real-Time experience

When a call is received, the plugin behaves like a soft phone, presenting an alert with buttons to answer or decline the call. It also presents a screen pop of the name and profile photo (if available) of who the incoming caller is. If the call is accepted, it displays the typical call controls and automatically populates your SFDC activity logs with each real-time event. Additionally, unknown incoming callers can be added as a contact with just one click.

Upon entering a contact or customer profile page, the plugin recognizes any identities or phone numbers within the page and allows the user to simply click-to-call the contact. Inviting customers to a video call is also a great and simple feature that not many CRMs have. Each party only need to be connected to the internet and a multi-media computer to engage in a video call.

Integrating voice capabilities with your SFDC CRM is a simple process that takes very little effort. The great part about it is it’s also possible to connect it with your business PBX to let it handle calls. And if you are an existing Telogiks customer, you may be able to use this capability right now.

Want to learn more about the many capabilities of our applications? Contact us for more details!

Source: GENBAND