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FrontRunners 2022
Genesys Cloud CX™ cloud contact center software transforms your customer experience. It connects data across teams, tools, interactions so you have actionable insights to address customers problems with ease on any channel, at any...Read more about Genesys Cloud CX
Bitrix24 is an online workspace for small, medium, and large businesses. It features over 35 cross-integrated tools, including CRM, tasks, Kanban board, Gantt chart, messenger, video calls, file storage, workflow automation, and m...Read more about Bitrix24
FrontRunners 2022
LiveAgent is an online Help Desk solution for e-commerce businesses at the small and midsize levels. The platform offers live chat application, ticket management, online self-service portals, and change and license management, all...Read more about LiveAgent
CloudTalk is a contact center management solution that enables businesses to streamline communications with teams and customers using virtual call systems. It allows executives to manage inbound/outbound calls, extract interaction...Read more about CloudTalk
Squaretalk is a cost-effective, scalable, and simple-to-use cloud communications platform that gives your sales and support teams tremendous tools to boost efficiency and productivity. Your sales and support representatives will ...Read more about Squaretalk
3CLogic is a leading cloud contact center platform modernizing enterprise communications for employees and customers. Built on AWS, the solution provides advanced and scalable speech-enabled offerings for leading CRMs, including S...Read more about 3CLogic
Huawei eSpace Contact Center is a cloud-based contact center solution that caters to various industries such as education, finance, healthcare, government, manufacturing and energy. The solution supports sharing of resources,...Read more about Huawei eSpace Contact Center
NICE inContact is cloud-based call center software that helps businesses to maximize the quality of leads and minimize the cost of client interaction. The solution comprises many features required to process inbound support reques...Read more about NICE CXone
NewVoiceMedia’s tight integration with Salesforce is reflected in its AppExchange 5-star rating and the large number of positive reviews. The solution is designed to work in tandem with Salesforce capabilities and data to deliver ...Read more about Vonage Contact Center
Ringio is a cloud-based call center management solution that features a CRM dialer, call routing, analytics and more. It’s used by sales teams in many industries such as healthcare, media, non-profit and banking. The system c...Read more about Ring.io
Cloud Voice for Microsoft Teams from UniVoIP Why Use Microsoft Teams as a Phone System? ● You already have M365, so maximize your existing Microsoft investment - and cut costs drastically. ● True Unified Communications - busine...Read more about UniVoIP
Humach is a cloud-based call center solution that provides plug and play customer service functionalities to businesses across various industry verticals such as health care, retail, financial services, consumer products and more....Read more about Humach
Ytel Contact Center is a cloud-based integrated marketing suite that caters to SMB call centers and businesses with dedicated phone support teams, helping them manage multi-channel communications. The solution offers features...Read more about Ytel
RingCentral's leading cloud contact center offers skill-based routing, agent management, real-time insights, and more to empower your employees to deliver better customer experiences. With the right tools, your agents can meet you...Read more about RingCentral Contact Center
PanTerra Streams provides UCaaS communications and collaboration for mid-market to enterprise level businesses. It's the only all-in-one call, text, conference, fax, web meeting, and file sharing cloud communications solution. I...Read more about PanTerra Networks
MiCloud Connect (formerly ShoreTel) is a cloud-based VoIP phone system that offers collaboration and conferencing tools to enable information flow within the organization. The solution enables system administrators to manage use...Read more about MiCloud Connect
FrontRunners 2022
PhoneBurner is an outbound call center solution that allows users to log in from their computer and make calls from the connected phone, using imported or admin-provided lead lists. The system offers functionalities that include p...Read more about PhoneBurner
Five9 is an all-in-one cloud contact center solution for inbound, outbound, blended and omnichannel contact centers world-wide. Powered by Practical AI, Five9 enables agents to provide customer experiences across phone, emai...Read more about Five9
Convoso’s all-in-one contact center platform generates and converts leads faster using multiple communication channels. The cloud-based solution offers multiple dialing modes (predictive/power/preview) along with two-way texting, ...Read more about Convoso
Ameyo is a customer experience management solution that helps businesses leverage their call center resources to improve customer satisfaction. The software is available both in cloud-based and on-premise deployment options. ...Read more about Ameyo
Imagine you’re an agent at a busy call center: you’re fielding dozens of phone calls a day with customers you’ve never met, and you want to make a good impression on all of them. Don’t you want to be as prepared and efficient as possible?
One of the best ways to set up your call center team for success in the environment described is by investing in a system with computer telephony integration (CTI). CTI is an important category of call center software: It enables phone and computer systems to work together for the benefit of your agents and your customers.
In this guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know to choose the right CTI system for your company, such as:
What Is CTI?
Common Functionality of CTI
Benefits of CTI
CTI Implementation Options
Integration Considerations
CTI, or computer telephony integration, is also known as “computer-telephone integration” or “computer telephony.” These terms may sound intimidating, but their basic meaning is straightforward: CTI is technology that lets you use a computer to initiate, manage and enhance your phone calls.
CTI is often used as a jargon term for describing integrations between a phone system and a customer relationship management (CRM) system that has already been deployed. These integrations add features to enhance both systems and help agents better handle interactions.
An example of how they do this is “screen pops”—a window that pops up on an agent's computer screen when they have an incoming phone call. That window displays information about the caller, e.g., address and interaction history, which is pulled from the call center’s existing CRM program.
This phone system-computer coordination is made possible through CTI. Though it’s most common for CTI to be used for CRM integrations, it is also good for other types of integrations.
For instance, many organizations now use CTI to allow their accounting software to interface with their phone system. Agents can call customers with unpaid invoices directly from their accounting software through functionality called “click-to-dial” (more details on this below).
To recap: CTI software acts as a bridge for the exchange of data and functionalities between a company’s phone system and other existing programs, such as CRM or accounting solutions.
Vendors offer a variety of functional breadth and depth in their CTI solutions. Here are some of the most common capabilities:
Screen pops | In addition to what we’ve already described, screen pops can indicate the priority level of an interaction with a caller based on customer history data from your CRM program. They can also use a customer’s Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system answers to display the purpose of a call (e.g., sales or support). |
Click-to-dial | This function adds outbound dialing capabilities to the databases of contacts you'd find in a CRM or accounting system. Agents can skip manual dialing and simply click a phone number on their computer screen to place a call. |
Caller authentication | CTI software screens incoming calls and uses the phone number to find a match in your CRM system. It can confirm the caller’s identity before the call even starts. |
Phone controls | Users can manage their phone controls through the computer instead of dialing buttons manually. These include the ability to answer, hang-up, conference, forward and transfer calls. |
Logging and notes | Basic information is automatically logged in the CRM system while the call is in progress, such as the time/date of the call and agent handling it. Agents can also add manual notes directly into the CRM or accounting program. |
Coordinated voice/data transfer | If a call needs to be transferred from one member of your team to another, this function allows all onscreen customer information (e.g., screen pops) to be transferred when the line is reassigned. |
Here are some benefits that explain how CTI can empower call center agents and companies to have more productive customer interactions:
CTI can be implemented in one of two ways:
It’s important to note that best-of-breed CTI software is a relatively niche offering. It could be a good option for companies with older phone systems who aren’t ready to buy a new one just yet, but still want to reap the benefits of CTI sooner rather than later.
The vast majority of buyers are better off with the second option: You’ll need an established phone system for calls to be able to work on your computers at all. It’s easier to implement a phone system that supports CTI from the start, rather than trying to retrofit or replace it later on.
Also worth noting: Some of the more basic CTI capabilities (e.g., click-to-dial and even screen pops, in some cases) can be achieved with a PBX system as an alternative to using CTI with a call center system.
Once you’ve decided on an implementation model, you can evaluate vendors. As we’ve explained, CTI is intended to be used with computer programs that call centers are already using, such as existing CRM or accounting systems. It’s important to ensure that any CTI vendor on your shortlist can interface with this existing software. You can usually find this information listed on vendors’ websites.