2. Who Am I?
John Mertic
Contact Info
http://jmertic.wordpress.com
Twitter: @jmertic
jmertic@sugarcrm.com (
SugarCRM )
jmertic@php.net ( PHP )
Community Manager for
SugarCRM
http://www.sugarcrm.com
http://www.sugarforge.org
Twitter: @sugarcrmdev
3/24/2011 @2011 SugarCRM Inc. All rights reserved. 2
27. The future…
Better plugins to solve common needs
Joint SugarCRM – Asterisk community
Want to be a part of it?
Contact me at jmertic@sugarcrm.com
or DM at @sugarcrmdev on Twitter for
more information
So let’s start from the beginning. What is CRM?CRM stands for <CLICK> Customer<CLICK> Relationship <CLICK> Management
So CRM is not about technology butall about Customers, YOUR Customers.
CRM help YOU grown and retain YOUR customersSo, what are the different ways YOU grown and retain YOUR customers?
Often times, CRM is thought of just a tool for salespeople to watch over their customers like little sheep.While that is one facet of what CRM is all about, it is a very narrow view. CRM isn’t limited to a single area of your organization, nor is it limited to a certain vertical market.So while classically CRM is thought to be for sales people selling stuff, it’s also used for….
Healthcare, in the management of patient health
Construction, for resource and project management
And even in education, across primary, secondary, and collegiate schools.
So if we’ve determined that CRM is always about the buying/selling or producer/customer relationship, where is it going?The answer is xRMxRMstands for <CLICK> Anything<CLICK> Relationship <CLICK> Management
So where CRM is about Customers, xRM’s all about connections
And more specifically about building and foster those connections.So think about connections in the examples I’ve shown.
So we know what this guys wants
Here, we are managing the connections between healthcare providers and patients, along with the care they have or are receiving and their health history.
Here, we are managing a project, from scheduling crews to coordinating subcontractors
And here, we are managing the student relationship with educators and classes.So you can see with the growth of CRM into xRM, we are looking at more of a platform approach rather than an application approach.
So now we’ve looked at where CRM is today, but what about telephony. Well it started out as…
…communicating over magic wires controlled by people plugging and unplugging things.
And now takes advantage of the internet to deliver voice packets over long distances thru many different devices. Telephony software like Asterisk has enabled this to happen over time.
And this is where Telephony and a modern CRM platform, such as Asterisk and SugarCRM are natural friends. <CLICK>As every organization leverages telephony solutions in their daily activates, whether customer service, scheduling meetings, etc.
So today, Asterisk comes with a simple out of the box integration with SugarCRM. One of the oldest integrations inside Asterisk.But this so 2000 in terms of CRM / Telephony integration. What do customers want now a days?
They want:<CLICK> Click to Call<CLICK> Handling Incoming Calls thru an agent<CLICK> Inbound campaign management<CLICK> Measure call metrics.So let’s look at example of solutions in these areas.
For click to call, we are looking at the ability to click a phone number inside of Sugar to call someone. This is possible with several add-ons on SugarForge, one such one is the Sugar Dialer by Richlode Solutions, which adds an icon next to each phone number across the application to launch an Asterisk client to make an outbound phone call.
The next area is handling incoming calls. We have a customer, Affinity4, who has done this very well using a desktop agent that launches SugarCRM to provide the call center agent details on the incoming caller based upon the caller ID data collected. Let’s watch<VIDEO>The helps the agent quickly process the incoming caller’s information.
Let’s say you want to run a promotional campaign for a service you are offering, and want to measure the effectiveness of it. While traditionally you could have the call center agents ask the caller directly if the are calling about the promotion and have them mark in their record if they do so, a better solution is to have a block of 800 numbers at the front end that can pass the fact that a caller is calling a specific one to Sugar and then have Sugar to the heavy lifting. Let’s watch.<VIDEO>Now you can easily measure campaign effectiveness using the Campaigns module in Sugar.
Finally, in a call center setting especially, it’s nice to measure the performance of the agents handling the calls. Since Asterisk can provide all the details of a call back to Sugar, you can pull together the data easily for both agents and managers to review. Let’s watch<VIDEO>
So while there are many integrations being done between SugarCRM and Asterisk, this is definitely a growing space as everyone’s needs here are different. So I see two things in the future of this relationship.<CLICK> A stronger set of plugins to solve these common needs that are simple to install and get going with, and<CLICK> A joint community for helping people solve these needs in a way that is best of breed solution<CLICK>If you are interested, please contact me