Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)

Dec 14, 2024

Computer Telephony Integration is the technology that helps you link your phone systems to other business applications like a CRM and business phone system. It’s not a product, but rather a feature of in popular contact center tools. This is done to enable workflow automation. In a contact center, this makes customer interactions faster, allowing agents to focus on solving customer issues and keeping software inputs to a minimum.

What is Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)?

Primarily a CTI connects phone systems with other software applications like CRMs and any additional helpdesk tools like knowledge bases and training documents. This automates many tasks like pulling up customer data, routing calls, logging call outcomes, and other call details. This means that the agent can focus on simply solving the customer’s issue.

Here’s how it works:

A customer calls the support number and their call enters the system.
CTI software retrieves relevant customer data and displays it to the agent via a screen pop-up on the screen.
After the call, the software automatically logs the interaction into the CRM.

If customer information is pulled up automatically, the agent has instant access to the caller’s profile, their product, and their previous concerns. Once the call is completed, the agent only needs to review the pre-filled information in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, before submitting the report. This quick access helps curb average handle times and also reduces after-call work for the agent.

Why CTI Matters?

Having a strong and dependable computer telephony integration is important for any contact center that’s trying to optimize call times and agent utilization. It also has lasting implications on customer experience, which in our opinion is the most important metric of all.

Better Customer Experience: Instant access to customer information and history makes it possible for agents to provide personalized customer service while staying efficient. From the get-go, this sets any call up for success!
Higher Productivity: With CTI software removing the tedium from call handling, agents can focus on doing meaningful work, i.e. helping the customer. This simplification speeds up issue resolution, making it possible for call center agents to handle more calls in their day.
Reduced Mistakes: By automating the process using CTI, a contact center reduces the chances of errors in information lookup and data entry. In outbound calling, the probability of reaching an incorrect number also goes down significantly.
Scalability: Trying to scale without proper CTI is a game of catch twenty-two. More calls need more agents and more agents need more calls to stay profitable. For scalability, you need automation in place, to handle more calls while keeping hiring to a minimum. CTI is fundamental to this.

CTI Features

CTI software comes with neat features and benchmarks that make it useful for call center use cases.

Key Features of CTI

Screen Pop: As soon as calls connect, a CTI gives the agent immediate access to caller data. This helps provide contextually relevant service to the caller.
Automated Dialers: For sales and other outbound communications, an automated dialler is a godsend. When combined with a CRM, the agent has access to client information right before a call is made. These diallers will dial numbers to the next prospect immediately after one call is ended (you can program time buffers). This cuts down on idle time and improves agent performance as a result.
Call Routing: A CTI manages call routing in a really intelligent manner. Using the customer information, their product, and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) responses, a CTI can route calls to the most appropriate agent. No need to waste time transferring to the right department. This increases the likelihood of agents closing the customer issues fast, which significantly increases the chances of First Call Resolution as well.
VoIP Integration: By integrating with VoIP software, the CTI adds phone controls to the agent’s interface. This gives the agent quick access to phone functions like manual dialing, call logs, and duration.
Omnichannel Support: A software with CTI can integrate with CRMs, this will allow agents to access inbound and outbound communications across all channels, not just phone calls.
Call Monitoring: During the call monitoring process, a good CTI ensures that your management team has all the relevant data points without having to go through every single recording and transcript. This gives better top-level insight into overall quality levels at the agent and process level.

Best Implementation Practices

As with any contact center technology, a cookie-cutter solution is not enough. Implementation depends heavily on the use case and the desired outcome.

Assess your Needs

If you work at or run a contact center, chances are that you already have software with computer telephony integration at your center. The reason that you would want to change the CTI provider would likely stem from low customer satisfaction or low efficiency. Changing the CTI can then be a part of a large technology upgrade at your organization.

Choose the Right Solution

As we said earlier, a cookie-cutter solution may not be ideal. You will likely need something that fits your needs and use case. Something that integrates with your tools and business systems, while being flexible enough to add more software later on. Today cloud-based and hybrid setups are the most popular setups. This means that you also need to have deployment in mind, as to what the final setup may look like.

Monitor Performance

Once you have rolled out a new solution, it is time to monitor the efficacy of the tool. This means testing screen pop load times, the accuracy of transferring calls, call forwarding, and other features. See how your primary call center metrics look since the adoption of this new tool and then dig deeper into specific CTI issues that may be a bottleneck.

Success with CTI

A computer telephony integration software, or larger software suite with CTI as a feature can be transformational to how a contact center operates and the kind of service it provides. In this age of personalization, CTI can help create a better customer experience by enabling quick access to customer information. This is particulars, interaction history, and product usage. With the ability to collect and tag call outcomes, with detailed transcripts and notes automatically; these systems free up agent time.

A Solution that Automates the Rest

Phonely comes in as the last piece of automation required beyond CTI, and that’s the agent. Using artificial intelligence, Phonely helps you automate the entirety of your phone calls. From information lookup to outcome tagging; and literally everything in between. Phonely can answer an inbound call or call a list of numbers for you. Phonely can conversate with the caller naturally, and collect details. Better yet, Phonely integrates with all the major contact center tools. Set up an account with Phonely and take your computer telephony integration to the next level.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does CTI improve productivity?

CTI automates repetitive tasks and provides instant access to customer data. This ensures calls are directed to the right agents, allowing agents to focus on resolving issues efficiently.