Salesforce Phone Integration: Features and Best Options

As customer conversations are full of context, it doesn’t make sense to miss the slightest detail while you focus on tasks like manually logging phone calls or taking notes for later.

You need to be mentally present and proactive in conversations to uncover in-depth insights into customers’ expectations. Salesforce phone integration solves this by connecting your phone system to Salesforce CRM, ensuring your sales and service teams spend more time talking to customers than logging activities and updating notes on the CRM.

Why Salesforce Phone Integration Matters for Teams

Salesforce phone integration offers several advantages, especially for team use cases.

Helps agents save time

With Salesforce phone integration, agents call prospects or customers directly from within the customer relationship management software, saving a lot of time. You also get features like auto-logging and click-to-call in addition to real-time call transcription.

Sales and service professionals are no longer compelled to take notes, allowing them to be fully attentive and to focus on the context of a customer interaction and guide the discussion in their favor.

Increases call accuracy and responsiveness

The system facilitates automated call routing, letting customers reach the right agent the first time. The phone’s integration with Salesforce also gives you instantaneous access to customer data that advises and makes suggestions for agents on how to deliver the right solutions.

Since agents have direct access to customers’ data and previous conversations, they’re well-equipped to give people the solutions they expect. Overall, this improves first-call resolution rates in your call or contact center.

Streamlines reporting across sales and support

Whether you make inbound or outbound calls, reporting is crucial to optimizing the areas that need improvement. Centralizing this reporting in your CRM is highly beneficial, as it gives you a holistic picture.

Integrating your phone system with Salesforce gives you a unified view to assess call volume, resolution rate, talk time, customer satisfaction score, and other sales, support, or customer success metrics.

When you combine all this data into the existing Salesforce dashboard, you can make better decisions. These decisions improve sales forecasting and support coaching, increasing your effectiveness on the outbound and inbound sides.

Improves customer experience (CX)

The customer’s data and previous conversation, combined with their recent activity or action, open up ways to strategically personalize service. Your customer doesn’t need to repeat their details multiple times to follow up on their request, which has already frustrated them.

Everything is available on the CRM, including previous call transcriptions. This lets you move customers toward their query resolution faster, improving CX and encouraging customers to reach out without hesitation for any support issues.

This is an unparalleled advantage. Customers get the best from support to experience your product or service as you intended, and it keeps them in your revenue pipeline longer.

Enhances compliance and call quality

A phone system integrated with Salesforce comes with built-in call recording and monitoring. Its data storage is secure, avoiding unauthorized data tampering. The system supports various compliance regulations, such as the Payment Card Industry or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

The integrated system also complies with SOC 2 and other compliances crucial for the regulated industries.

Salesforce Phone System Integration Features

Below are some notable Salesforce phone system integration features that make call management workflows easier for sales and support teams.

• Click-to-call and embedded dialer: You get the ability to call a prospect or a customer directly from any Salesforce record. This reduces the time lost in misdials and lets you skip the manual dialing workflow to connect with a person in a click.
• Automatic call logging and transcriptions: Salesforce’s integration automatically records the caller ID, time, duration, and outcome of a call. The transcription occurs in real time and is available for instant documentation and coaching. Salesforce Service Cloud Voice transcribes calls live so that its Einstein AI can analyze them and suggest the next best action. Managers can also jump into live conversations to supply necessary insights for the communication flow if needed.
• Screen pops with customer context: When customers call service professionals, their records pop up on the agent’s Salesforce. These include notes from prior interactions and relevant account details.
• Intelligent call routing and interactive voice response (IVR): Incoming calls get routed to the best available agent based on parameters like account owner, previous interaction, case type, or time of day. This usually facilitates IVR, allowing a caller to self-navigate to the right department.
• Real-time coaching and agent assist: Based on the keywords identified on the call, the phone system offers assist cards to help reps navigate tricky situations. For example, when a prospect mentions a competitor’s name, a battlecard will inform agents about your strong points compared with a competitor. Service managers can also join live calls to offer real-time coaching.
• Call disposition and workflow triggers: The system automatically categorizes call outcomes and sets up follow-up tasks on Salesforce. For example, if a prospect requests a call back in two days, it will automatically set this task for the agent, helping them deliver on their promises.
• Mobile access: VoIP Phone systems like Nextiva integrate easily with Salesforce and offer mobile applications for calling and logging on the go.

What Is Salesforce CTI and How Does It Help You?

Salesforce facilitates computer telephony integration (CTI), letting users make and receive calls directly from the CRM. This prevents reps from hopping between tools while ensuring no data leakages occur due to manual record-keeping on different platforms.

Salesforce Open CTI lets users build and integrate a third-party CTI system with its call center. The Open CTI is a JavaScript API that allows Salesforce users to make calls directly in Salesforce without installing any CTI adapters in their system.

Nextiva directly integrates with Salesforce to offer enterprise-level features in a phone system without enterprise-level headaches.

How Nextiva connects with Salesforce

Nextiva connects with Salesforce Lightning and Classic. The system lets you access a full telephony system inside the CRM, including voice, SMS, call logging, call recording, and real-time transcription. You get a unified platform and interface to manage call flows, outcomes, and reporting.

If you wish to connect Nextiva with Salesforce, your account executive can assist you. There are no additional charges for Salesforce phone integration. However, for Nextiva cloud PBX customers, this integration is à la carte and comes at an extra cost.

Nextiva’s Salesforce integration opens up several advantages for businesses, including:

• Call logging: The system logs call activity in real time while giving you the flexibility to edit notes rather than using the default ones.
• Task and record management: Nextiva’s NLP interprets keywords like “tomorrow” or “next week” as dates for your tasks. Based on the conversation, these tasks are created automatically and assigned to you with relevant due dates.
• Screen pops: One click brings up a customer’s record when an incoming call appears on your screen. If it’s from a new number, you can associate it with an existing record if they’re related.

Apart from Nextiva, there are various other Salesforce CTI providers. Let’s explore how they compare.

How Nextiva Stacks Up Against Other Salesforce CTI Providers

Here’s a quick overview of different Salesforce CTI providers, their key features, and the use cases where they might be the best solution:

Provider	Best For	Key Features
Nextiva	All-in-one CX and telephony	Click-to-call, IVR, CRM sync, call logs, transcription, AI coaching
Dialpad	Real-time AI assist	Transcription, keyword-triggered assist cards
RingCentral	Enterprise calling features	Omnichannel, analytics, compliance tools
Aircall	Quick SMB onboarding	Simple setup, screen pops, click-to-call
Five9	Enterprise outbound dialing	Predictive dialers, omnichannel, AI workflows

Nextiva is a decent Salesforce CTI if you’re looking for an all-in-one CX and telephony solution. Its softphone integrates with Salesforce to log real-time activities. The platform facilitates built-in speech-to-text and AI sentiment analysis. You also get a mobile app, NextivaONE, which supports on-the-go calling.

Since the above platforms leverage Salesforce’s Open CTI interface, the core experience, like embedded softphone and features like click-to-call or logging, will be somewhat similar. The fundamental differences lie in additional features or the scale of contact center functionality a vendor can cater to.

The best choice would depend on the use case. If you’re using it on the sales side, you might need an auto dialer functionality with voicemail drops. On the other hand, the services side would need advanced IVR and analytics. Nextiva’s Salesforce phone integration caters to both of these sides effectively.

Close the Salesforce-Telephony Gap With Nextiva

Regardless of the use cases, Nextiva checks boxes in terms of features and functionality that are crucial for outbound and inbound contact center teams. Its AI capabilities use NLP to auto-schedule follow-ups and streamline day-to-day tasks.

Nextiva offers enterprise flexibility with support for Salesforce Lightning, Service Cloud, and multiple deployment options. It’s a no-code implementation, which leads to faster time-to-value and easy maintenance.

Close the gap between Salesforce and your phone system for good. Explore Nextiva’s integration features and see how easy it is to enhance your inbound and outbound teams.