What is Contact Center CRM?

A contact center performs the customer service function for organizations, assisting customers with inquiries from multiple service channels. Contact center CRM refers to the customer relationship management (CRM) application many agents use when serving customers. Contact center CRM systems store account information about customers, as well as the history of past purchases and contacts. This enables a better customer experience because agents are able to personalize interactions and refer to the system to understand what happened during past contacts.

Contact center CRM applications perform best when integrated with an organization's contact center software. This kind of integration brings additional capabilities that standalone contact center CRM systems don't have. For example, when CRM applications interface with telephony software, the system can match the incoming phone number to the CRM's database and "pop" the customer's information screen to the agent who takes the call. Integrations with contact center software also enable contact records, such as chat transcripts, to be automatically added to the contact center CRM system.

Contact center CRM systems and the cloud

The widespread adoption of hosted, cloud-based solutions has made integrated contact center CRM applications available to companies of all sizes, empowering them to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Companies such as Salesforce offer CRM systems that integrate seamlessly with NICE CXone contact center software through out-of-the-box interfaces. Cloud-based solutions have changed the way customer support is delivered worldwide.

The proliferation of cloud technology has made integration between contact center CRM applications and contact center software much easier than it was in the past.