Getting started on Salesforce CTI (Computer Telephony)

Salesforce CTI — Computer Telephony Integration — turns Salesforce service cloud into the best call centre or sales centre system.

A CTI is an integration between 2 systems e.g a phone and a CRM, that allows information to be sent between them.

Salesforce is already the best customer service tool and with the CTI, your agents are able to make and receive calls within salesforce.

Top 5 best Salesforce CTI providers:

1. HelloDuty: Offers the most robust CTI tool for America's, Pacific, Europe and Africa. It's fairly priced and has an excellent customer support team and has won multiple awards.

2. Genesys: Popular with large organisations. Due to the complexities required in setting up, might require a large team of developers and architects.

3. Twilio: Best offering in API capabilities across multiple regions. Will require extra developer setup to get it up and running.

4. AirCall: Popular with larger organisations as the cost per agent is significant. No extra developer setup is required.

How the Salesforce CTI works

Salesforce CTI is simply a developer SDK that helps service organisations access Salesforce services on their adapters.

You can set up the HelloDuty adapter by following this documentation. The following handshake occurs between Salesforce and the adapter,

1. A call is received by your provider, e.g Twilio or Africa's Talking.

2. The call is routed to HelloDuty flows.

3. Using the HelloDuty flow, you can create a Salesforce Activity or Lead. You can also build an IVR system.

4. One completion, use the HelloDuty Enqueue block to add the call to a queue of choice.

Choosing a Salesforce CTI provider

A great Salesforce CTI provider has to have the following capabilities:

Customer support: Your CTI provider will broker the connection. Great customer support is important to ensure calls don't fail.

1. Reliability: A small CTI footprint. The CTI should load fast and easy without complications.

2. Setup: Setting up should be as quick as possible.

3. Cost: Ask on the cost per agent, the recording storage fees and the monthly termination fees.

Functional benefits of Salesforce CTI

There are many benefits of having a Salesforce CTI, here are 5 amazing benefits:

1. Click-to-dial: This eliminates all copy and paste errors by agents.

2. Record pop up: Salesforce CTI has functionality to find and open your contact or lead automatically based on the phone number.

3. Automated activity logging: A good Salesforce CTI automatically records a Salesforce Activity of the calls that were made or received.

4. Call recording & storage: You can store call recordings against the call logs or translate these to text with Salesforce Einstein GPT.

5. Call skill routing: You can route calls to the right agents using Salesforce skills.

Operational benefits of Salesforce CTI

Operationally, a Salesforce CTI will benefit an organisation in the following ways:

1. Faster time to resolution: Your Salesforce Agents will spend less time looking for records.

2. SIVR — Smart Interactive Voice Response: Use Salesforce Data to resolve issues on the IVR before agents answer the call.

3. Automated lead/contact creation: Your callers can automatically be created as a lead or contact with tasks to follow up.