Unified Communications Featured Article

8x8's UCaaS and SaaS Integration Offers Major Customer Service Benefits

By Laura Stotler
TMCnet Contributing Editor

Automation is a massive competitive differentiator in the customer service and customer experience arena, and can make or break a sales opportunity. Unified communications (UC) solutions provide organizations with the tools to streamline and personalize their customer relationship management (CRM), but automating components of the customer experience and sales cycle elevates UC to a new level.

That’s where software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) enters the picture, enhancing UC and UCaaS solutions with a rich layer of features and value while removing a good number of human errors from the equation. UCaaS and SaaS integration proved to be a major competitive differentiator recently for Cartelligent, a company specializing in car buying and leasing services.

The company historically required its sales agents to take manual notes about buyer preferences and call activity and then input the information into a CRM system. That process was prone to errors and omissions, not to mention a huge waste of time and resources at the busy company. Luckily for Cartelligent, the company’s communications provider, 8x8 (News - Alert), took steps to integrate its UCaaS platform with Salesforce’s SaaS CRM solution. Cartelligent hopped on board as an early adopter, and the result is massive automations, savings and value for the company.

"Our representatives can greet the customer and immediately know what kind of car he or she is looking for," Jessica Carstens, marketing and operations manager for Cartelligent, told TechTarget about 8x8’s SaaS integrations. "And if sales managers want to know if a lead has been called, all they have to do is look in Salesforce, which will show the call lasted for this amount of time and what was discussed."

Cartelligent’s entire sales team workflow is now automated thanks to the UCaaS and SaaS integrations, enabling 30 sales representatives to keep detailed logging, tracking and reporting records to offer improved customer service and of course, close more sales. An upcoming generation of the 8x8/Salesforce integration will include real-time analytics, providing critical variables like the number of times sales agents interact with customers before converting a lead to sales. The insights would also help companies like Cartelligent compare the outcomes of leads generated from web searches to those stemming from other channels.

As UCaaS/SaaS deployments move from smaller companies like Cartelligent to mid-size and large enterprises, solutions will likely be deployed via a hybrid delivery model, through which more complex voice services remain on premises and adjunct solutions like messaging and conferencing are delivered through the cloud. And more service providers like 8x8 will be managing service delivery, adding enhanced features and ensuring customers are gleaning the most value out of their UCaaS and SaaS integrations.