Tag: sales reps

Data – How do we utilize it in our CRM?
Staying ahead of the competition means that businesses must continuously find new and innovative ways to improve their customer relationships and increase their customer base and market penetration. One way to do this is by using big data tools within your CRM system. This article explores the relevance of big data and data science to businesses and discusses how businesses can benefit from utilizing big data tools within their CRM systems. We will also look at some of the applications where big data is being used today to streamline the business pipeline. Data allows us to understand our business and customer interactions on a deeper level, so it is essential for businesses to utilize all of the data they can, in order to create a successful business strategy.

So let’s start as expected – at the end. Why are we driven to explore different channels through which to drive change? Why drive change, to begin with? What is the end goal of it all?

Well, to a business, the obvious end goal is revenue and profitability, and as we all know this is directly correlated to our ability to stay relevant to our customers throughout a prolonged period of time. Therefore, we must be capable of adapting and reacting to the changes in our customers’ needs, our competitive landscape, and macro changes in the market as a whole.

The question most executives will ask themselves next, after understanding and accepting that change is inevitable, is – how do we establish a process that will enable us to make strategic decisions in an effective and educated manner?

Well, as with every decision we make, we must have a sufficient understanding of our business environment so that the decisions we make and strategy we choose are relevant. Otherwise, we risk deciding upon changes while disregarding the actual need of our customers due to misinformation on our end.

Establishing a deep understanding of the market within which every business operates is oftentimes directly correlated to the quality and quantity of communication channels the business has with its customers. As customers are the defining factor that ultimately makes or breaks the market – not only do they have the problem, they are the ones who decide the value of each business’s solution to the problem.

So first, we must understand how we are going to create reliable communication channels with our customers. Technology has made this increasingly easy for businesses with the use of CRM systems. These systems track and capture all data regarding the customer and log every interaction the business has with every customer. Effectively generating a comprehensive and accessible database. (Checkout – Text message archiving strengthening Organizations )

The most important aspect in creating these channels is that we want the data points tracked to be different to create as complete an image as possible for us to work with. In practical terms, this means capturing various types of interactions with customers, be it email, voice, messages, support interactions, etc.

So now that we have established a reliable information channel regarding the market we are working within and we have the information enabling us to make a decision, this is exactly where data exploration can come in handy.

The next step is understanding and tracking the lifecycle of our customers so that we can make the educated decisions we’re after. This lifecycle is affected by many different factors and thus is difficult to analyze. This is where we start benefiting from big data! The idea is that with the advanced analytics software available to us today we can gain incredible insight into the lifecycle of our customers and answer hard questions regarding ways we can improve and streamline our process: (for further example checkout Intelligence ci empowering sales teams)
- Why doesn’t an individual become a customer?
- What are the commonalities between our long-lasting customers?
- What new markets have we been gaining traction with the most?
- what are the most effective ways to communicate with customers?
- Where are the most relevant pain points customers are experiencing with our product or service?
These are all points that can be solved by tracking and analyzing various components of the data over time. Therefore, we must lay down the foundation that will allow adequate data capturing so that we can then monitor both the organic changes that occur in the market and diagnose the effects various actions that we take as a business have on our success rate – overall driving better and more effective business decision making across multiple business facets. (For further reading on the topic – Are you really making informed decisions? )
June 14, 2022
A Guide to Integrating Microsoft Teams and Cellular Phones
The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of various communication platforms including Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Slack. The need for a complete workspace offering that has chat, videoconferencing, application integration, and storage features to seamlessly transition into the new work-from-home normal allowed companies to experiment with different platforms.

Among the most preferred business communication platforms was Microsoft Teams that exploded in popularity during the lockdown. The daily active usage of Teams went from 32 million in March 2020 to 250 million by July 2021. As employees felt more convenient collaborating on Teams, regular meetings and conference calls were conducted on the communication platform.

Now, having experienced the numerous productivity benefits of Microsoft Teams, organizations want to continue using the platform and are even considering using Teams as their primary phone system, replacing their existing legacy or cloud PBX system.

With no certainty over the full return back to offices, work from home and hybrid workspaces are here to stay. Organizations are looking to be more strategic and take advantage of the situation while ensuring work doesn’t get interrupted. They’re looking to add solutions that make remote work feel normal and connected.

While video conferencing and video calls work great for meetings and work sessions, regular cellular phone calls have become the preferred communication means among colleagues, and with customers and prospects. This drives more and more organizations and companies to look for a holistic solution that integrates their landline and cell phone communications onto one platform. For example, this brings organizations to consider replacing their legacy PBX systems with Microsoft Teams. The next natural step in the ‘evolution’ is that along with replacing the telephony infrastructure, they are also looking to integrate their communication processes and infrastructure with other systems, such as the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, call recording and analytics software, and add other capabilities.

The final result of this evolution should include:
- A centralized Microsoft Teams phone system for all employees (office, home, worldwide) with one business number per user, replacing the existing PBX
- Local and worldwide cellular connectivity with the same business number as that of the Teams phone system
- Recording of all business or work-related phone calls – landline, cellular, and via Teams
- Text (SMS) and Whatsapp communication on the employee’s business number
- CRM integration of all Microsoft Teams and cellular communication. For example, call recording, SMS and Whatsapp to automatically appear in the customer’s or prospect’s CRM records
- A complete coherent centralized managed communication system integrating the organizational address book (Exchange / Outlook / Active Directory / Custom), allowing calls, conference and collaboration with Microsoft Teams.
A good example could look like this:

While envisioning a company-wide implementation of new systems to improve processes seems like a good strategy, like any other strategy, if not implemented properly, it can hurt productivity.

To begin proper integration of Microsoft Teams and cellular phones and encourage end-user adoption, technical requirements have to be met and best practices have to be followed.

Research

Organizations have to research the benefits of switching to Microsoft Teams for all voice communications and take into account the financial impacts for the business and the forecast for improvement in productivity across the board.

When there is compelling statistics and evidence that switching to Teams will benefit the organization, processes such as readiness of the organization, designing and planning the new system, testing the system, deploying, migrating users, and ensuring users are happy with the changes have to be prioritized in order.

The Process of Migrating to Microsoft Teams

A six-step process to migrate to Microsoft Teams is recommended. By following the process, organizations can effectively migrate to a Teams phone system while reaping the benefits.
1. Readiness Test
Reviewing the network health is essential before starting the migration process. Organizations should consider their current phone system and the problems that would be solved by the implementation.

It is not mandatory for Teams to have every feature of the current PBX and hence rarely-used features should be left out. When most companies don’t ever use all PBX features, there is no point in including features that aren’t going to used.
1. Designing and Planning
When you’ve reviewed how to effectively implement the solution and are 100% convinced in your analysis and actions, you can plan and design great things for your organization.

Your experts should understand network topology to ensure you move forward with the Microsoft Teams telephony migration. Your IT department should figure out the dialing configuration with a suitable communication partner that can aid in the process.

Replacing the legacy PBX system requires working with a strategy that is outlined with the necessary steps to move to Teams phone integration. There are many benefits of migrating to a cellular voice call over VoIP including no call delays, network coverage issues, cellular network mobile data availability, etc.
1. Testing
When you’ve designed and planned the environment for migration, you have to test the phone migration system. A handful of users with new numbers can test the new system functionality to ensure everything is configured properly.

The testing phase is extremely important to go through to identify flaws in the implementation and correct them before all phone numbers are ported to the new system.

Organizations should take advantage of the built-in analytics functions available on Microsoft Teams to make sure the settings are properly configured. When it is shown that the platform configuration is reliable and can handle separate calls without drops in quality and other issues, the testing phase is considered a success.
1. Deployment
The new voice call system facilitated through Microsoft Teams has to be enabled. For starters, the Teams phone system should be activated alongside the existing PBX system to avoid any

disruption in communications and business processes.

Teams use as a voice solution should be encouraged across the organization for business calls internally and externally. The new voice platform should be ready to solve most of the voice call challenges of the internal team and tie it up together with other daily applications for seamless operations.
1. Migrating Users
Migration of users to the new phone system powered by Microsoft Teams should happen gradually and in stages. The old phone system should co-exist and run alongside Teams to allow the migration to happen smoothly.

While the simple scenario to migrate users is to move them all together at the same time, most of the time it is a huge challenge as users may need to warm up to the new system before being able to comfortably use it.

However, the co-existence with the older system should not be for long and organizations should set a deadline to completely move all voice calls and related services to the new phone system.
1. User Experience
User experience is paramount to ensure a smooth migration. When users are prepared and happy to migrate to the new system while reporting fewer and lesser technical issues and quality problems, the better it is for the adoption and usage of the new system.

Organizations should take the feedback from their users and decide to make changes to the system that will improve the new phone system for everyone.

It is always a good idea to have your IT department ready beforehand to address any security concerns and helpdesk tickets from concerned users. By constantly getting feedback from users and addressing their concerns, you increase the probability of completing a successful implementation of the new telephony infrastructure.

A proven step-by-step implementation strategy such as the example above will drive the adoption of Teams calling. You will have all the tools necessary to assess your current situation, troubleshoot problems, enhance the new voice system by making modifications, and continue to innovate with a focus on improving productivity.

Microsoft Teams and Cellular Phone Integration with CRM Integration and Other Features

At Mobile2CRM, we offer a comprehensive solution that makes Microsoft Teams your default telephony system with added sophisticated communication and collaboration functionality. We help businesses and organizations integrate their CRM system with Microsoft Teams, add call recording and analytics feature to Teams, and permanently retire the existing PBX systems in favor of the new Microsoft Teams infrastructure.

The CRM integration allows users to add voice calls (landline and cell phone), text messages, and native WhatsApp communications to the CRM of their choice. Call recording feature includes recording voice calls and WhatsApp 1:1 communication. Integration of call analytics systems allows users to measure the effectiveness of their business communications to enable themselves to be more productive throughout the work hours.

There are other features that come with Microsoft Teams and cell phone integration including transcription of Microsoft Teams PSTN voice calls, click-to-call functionality where business calling is facilitated through CRM mobile apps or desktop for more convenience, regular cellular mobile calling with Teams number, multiple numbers per user, and using the same numbers irrespective of the geographical location.

As the work-from-home system morphs into a work-from-anywhere system, employees will want to stay as connected as possible while also being able to easily move from one place to another. With Microsoft Teams as the primary telephone system, many communication issues including constantly switching to new numbers are solved as users can have multiple numbers that don’t change when they change in their physical location.

VoIP-related complaints are common, especially by remote workers who experience issues with their mobile network coverage, call delays, and other technical difficulties. As a forward-looking organization, you have an effective solution at hand by implementing a cellular-native solution that uses the same number for your cell phone and Microsoft Teams.

You can close the communication gaps with the effective implementation of a new phone system that offers lots of beneficial features while offering integration with your favorite work apps for easier communication and collaboration. By having all your communications within one infrastructure, you can seamlessly access all threads with other users without having to constantly switch devices.

When you choose to use Mobile2CRM as your implementation partner in the migration to Microsoft Teams telephony system, user privacy is assured. Only business calls and text messages are captured without violating user privacy. All personal communication and other private conversations are respected and are not captured by the system.

Want to know more about the benefits of integrating Mobile2CRM and Mobile2Teams with Microsoft Teams and upgrading business, operations, revenues and cost savings?

Contact us at [email protected]
November 22, 2021
Work-life balance comes at a price. That’s why we need smart work-life integration

For decades, employees have been struggling to balance their work and private lives. Factors that contributed to a bad work-life balance were more responsibilities at work and / or at home, longer work hours, and having children, to name a few. Having a good work-life balance results in less stress, lower burnout rates, and an increased sense of well-being. During the last decade, employers have come to realize that providing environments that support work-life balance for their employees not only benefits the well-being of their workforce, but also results in lower absence and churn rates since employees would be more loyal and productive. Employers and HR departments implemented various strategies to promote the work-life balance concept, including telecommuting and flexible work hours (flex working).

At first glance, this approach seems to make sense and worked well in some cases. For instance, the Australian Telework Advisory Committee (ATAC) found in 2012 that telework reduced OPEX (rent, maintenance, parking, travel, etc.), increased efficiency, made the workforce more inclusive (adding rural areas-based and disabled workers), and made employees happier with their work. However, in many cases, it also had a reverse effect. To enable employees to work from home or flexible hours, the line between private and work life became blurry. Work and non-work activities started to overlap, especially with the use of digital tools such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. As a result, it became hard for employees to set boundaries, stick to work hours, and prioritize activities.

Employers, on the other hand, found out that not all employees have the same work-life balance goals. HR departments were tasked with finding out what the objectives of each employee were and how the company could help to determine them, such as working remotely a couple of days per week or changing their daily work schedule. Overall, companies struggled to combine policy, support for the individual employee, and cultural change (David Clutterbuck, April 2003).

Fast-forwarding to 2020, the work-life balance changed almost overnight when the COVID-19 pandemic made its presence felt around the world. Suddenly, all non-essential workers started to work from home (WFH) during consecutive lockdowns. The availability of information and communication technologies made it possible for them to perform the tasks normally done in the workplace. Although some employees preferred WFH to keep a better work-life balance, some employers were concerned that productivity would decline in a time when many companies are struggling to survive.

In the time of Covid-19, coordinating work and family demands by setting boundaries to maintain a physical, temporal and psychological equilibrium has become even more difficult. This conflict between work and personal life demands has magnified emotional exhaustion. It has become possible to keep these domains separate from each other. That’s why we have seen a shift from work-life balance to work-life integration. By integrating work and non-work activities, spending time and energy to conduct these activities in parallel has become manageable. But to integrate these different domains, employees must be able to manage the time, location, and quantity of work. A flexible work arrangement will integrate work and life and enable the balance between them.

Technology has a positive impact on work-life integration, making it easier to manage work and private life by creating an in-office culture while working from home to boost productivity.

Technology helps employees work smarter by connecting them with their team across borders and collaborating on projects. The right digital tools do not only have a positive impact on the work itself, but also increase output and boosts revenues for the company. These digital tools must therefore be smartly deployed to make the work environment seamless across spaces. This must also enable employees to find new ways to separate their business from their private life and communications. This means that the company must support phone communications as well as corporate resources by deploying digital tools to automate operations and adapt to the current situation, including access to the corporate CRM, call recording, and other systems.

With no time to prepare or plan (hardly any organization had factored a global pandemic into its business continuity planning), organizations had to provide these digital tools almost overnight in March 2020, putting technology interfaces in place to support working from home while deploying policies, practices, and processes to ensure work-life integration. Companies had to deploy a different set of IT capabilities for collaboration (chat, voice, virtual meetings, screen-sharing, teleconferencing, etc.) and for access to the corporate network using remote access services. More importantly, the digital tools must also allow for establishing a work schedule/routine had to that avoids blending home time and work time.

However, with remote workers using their own or company-issued laptops and smartphones, separating private and business calls and messaging interactions has become an issue, not in the least due to the stringent privacy laws. For example, recording business communications and entering them into the CRM or call recording system is a challenge since the employees use their devices – including their cell phones – outside of the corporate network and telephone system. To address this issue, a solution such as mobile2CRM is called for. Such a solution only captures – records and stores – business-related or service/support-related conversations in the CRM and call recording systems for later references and more analysis using more sophisticated AI-based BI systems for example without any privacy violation issues regardless of whether the employee uses a company-issued or they use their own BYOD phone. It is a powerful digital tool for solidifying work-life integration, benefitting both employers and employees.

For example, a major financing firm was faced with its support center staff working from home. Calls still needed to be recorded, even on BYOD cell phones and tablets, while complying with employee privacy regulations. The firm used Mobile2CRM to protect its staff’s privacy by introducing a virtual business profile that included a virtual number, messaging app, and SMS on the cellphones of the support staff. This enabled them to record and later access the customer call recordings using their own cellphone. In addition, this functionality provided analysis and performance improvement tools, such as reports and call recording data. Apart from optimizing performance and increasing effectiveness, it also gave peace of mind that no personal information would be captured and recorded by the firm.

To make working from home, on the road, or any other out-of-office location effective and to support work-life integration, a solution that keeps business and private cellular communication completely separate is a must. The solution allows employees to better integrate their work and private lives while resting assured that their privacy is protected.

December 17, 2020
CRM is Not the Enemy – This is How to Boost CRM Adoption by Salespeople

When you talk to sales reps about CRM, you will often hear: “Yeah, it’s great for management, but I don’t see how it can benefit me.” Some will even go further and point out that recording everything related to their job in the CRM system is time-consuming and comes at the expense of valuable prospecting time. Coming from the “trenches”, we understand their perspective very well and would like to offer some new view points

Selling is not just a numbers game; there is a need for constative follow-up and on-going learning from the most successful salespeople. Let’s first have a closer look at what sales reps do to close deals. For one, they interact with potential and existing customers to follow up on leads and close new deals. This involves sending and receiving emails, making and receiving phone calls, setting up appointments, and making notes for follow-up. They also send out information, price quotes, and contracts. They are keeping track of meeting their KPIs and sales targets, and staying on budget. They also need to report on potential and closed deals, and their pipeline progress. That’s enough to make anyone’s head spin.

That’s where CRM comes in. A CRM system reduces the time they need to spend on mundane tasks, so that they can concentrate on what they truly like to do (and are good at!) – making sales. A CRM makes it easy for a sales rep to retrieve prospect and customer data and to create, classify, organize, and optimize sales collateral at a central place that can be accessed in the office, but also remotely when WFH.

A hurdle in making CRM sales rep-friendly is the use of a smartphone when being on the road or working from home. When sales reps are using their own (BYOD) or a company cellphone, the business-related calls and phone messages are normally not recorded and documented in the CRM system, which forces them to rely on their memory, scribbled notes, and time-consuming reports. To make their lives (and that of their managers) easier, a mobile-to-CRM solution is called for. Such a solution only records and stores sales-related conversations in the CRM for analysis without any privacy issues regardless if you, as a sales rep, use a company-issued or your own BYOD phone. Recording calls empowers the sales rep with growth opportunities as the data can be analyzed, and valuable lessons can be learned.

With the pandemic reaching a second and even third wave forcing governments to take lockdown measures, working from home (WFH) remains the new normal. Sales reps are now using their smartphones to make remote sales, since face-to-face meetings and business trips are much less common. During such calls, a lot of sales information is exchanged that should be recorded for follow-up. That’s also where a mobile-to-CRM solution makes a difference by automatically recording, tracking, documenting, and integrating business-related cellular calls, SMS records, and other forms of business communications, while respecting the privacy of the sales reps (and whoever else in their household is borrowing their cell phone to make a quick call).

So, if you are a sales rep, it’s good to know that CRM is your friend and that can indeed make your life easier!

Want to know more about how Mobile2CRM can help your sales reps too?

Contact us at [email protected]

November 18, 2020
Want to keep your sales up? Make every sales call count!
Picture this: your sales figures are lower than they should be, the measures you take to increase numbers are not working – and you have no idea why. To make this even more painful, this has been going on for quite some time now. Strange, because your salespeople are good; you made sure that they got comprehensive sales training, attended the annual sales kick-off, and you even arranged podcast sessions for them.

So you’re beginning to feel the need to dig deeper and get to the bottom of this conundrum. Naturally, you decide to go right to the source – customer and prospect interactions. That should tell you where the problems are. Your CRM and call recording system are, of course, excellent resources for this, since all customer conversations are recorded and filed for analysis and follow-up. Sounds good – right? Not really…here is the problem – most of your salespeople are on-the-go and use cellphones to talk, send messages (SMS, text, etc.) to customers, prospects, partners etc. These interactions, and the valuable data they contain, are NOT recorded and NOT stored in your CRM, regardless of whether they use company-issued or personal smartphones.

There are two complex issues to examine here (and then some…):
1. Technical – Peer-to-peer cellphone call recording and CRM integration aren’t trivial, especially across operator networks and carriers, over multiple geographic regions, etc.
2. Compliance – The need to separate private and business calls in order to only log and record business calls to respect the various privacy laws
Once you use a mobile-to-CRM solution, you can overcome both of these challenges and only record and store business-related conversations in your CRM for analysis without any privacy issues regardless of whether your sales reps use company-issued or BYOD phones. This treasure trove of data lets you listen to the unfiltered voice of customers and prospects. You can now check, grade, and review all sales conversations, which enables you to identify areas for improvement.

It’s important to emphasize that you really need to make every call count. Only by listening to your reps will you be able to focus on what support they need to be successful. The insights gained from the mobile-to-CRM solution enables the successful coaching of your sales team instead of just (re)training them. Don’t get me wrong – sales training can be useful for teaching standard sales practices. But only continuous coaching based on real-world performance will empower each and every one of your sales reps to live up to his or her full potential. Since the recorded conversations between your sales reps and their customers or prospect reveal the real cause of your sliding sales, the sales coach will know exactly what to address to improve sales performance.

Want to know more about how Mobile2CRM can help with coaching sales reps?

Contact us at [email protected]
November 4, 2020
How to listen to the silent voice of your customers

Did you know that the majority of business calls between your organization and the outside world are now mobile-based? Just think about your employees in the field (your “road warriors”), who spend a lot of time on the road, at airports, in hotels, etc. Recent estimates are that they spend up to 60% of their workday on their cellphones talking to customers.

In itself, using cellphones to interact with customers is great for CX, is highly efficient, and gives your employees the flexibility they need to do their job. That’s the good news. The bad news? These conversations are not recorded and entered in your CRM, which means that you have a huge information gap in your organization. While customer communications via email, chat, and office landlines are recorded without any problems, the mobile conversations of your field staff (technicians, sales reps, real estate brokers, etc.) remain off the radar.

The answer to monitoring these “silent” conversations seems to be obvious, right? It’s called call recording. That’s easier said than done though. For one, as your employees are working from home (WFH) or remotely, they use their mobile phones for both private and business communications, especially if you have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy in place. Moreover, native mobile (peer-to-peer) communications are hard to monitor, and many IOS and Android apps block call recording software on cell phones. Last but not least, privacy regulations also come into play. That’s why companies rarely capture the critical mobile customer communications of their field staff.

So now what? Is there a way to record only the business calls that your employees make using cellphones without the need to provide them with a separate device? A way that allows for those calls to be recorded and entered into your CRM for analysis and follow-up? And that fully complies with all privacy laws and regulations?

Yes, there is such a way! The first step is separating business calls from private calls. This is accomplished by adding a virtual business profile to each of your employee’s mobile phones. Next you need to have the proper software solution that is integrated with your call recording system and your CRM, and can differentiate between calls made using the private profile and those made using the business one. Last but not least, such a solution needs to have quite a few standard features such as out of office / working rules, call forwarding, multi-numbers etc.

There actually is a solution that already does that. It lets you listen to the silent voice of your customers, and record all your mobile business conversations, without invading privacy or breaching any privacy laws or regulations. Especially “in the new normal”, you can have the complete 360^o customer view that you need.

Click here to learn more about this innovative approach!

June 23, 2020