What is CRM integration?
What are the different types of CRM system integrations?
Benefits of CRM integrations
The advantages of contact or call center CRM integration
How to integrate CRM platforms: Your options
RingCentral CRM integrations
CRM integration FAQs

CRM integrations

CRM integrations combine your customer relationship management solution with other software to give you seamless workflows and greater capabilities. RingCentral’s communication solutions boast native CRM integrations for all the most popular platforms.

  • Get a 360° view of every customer, on every call
  • Boost agent productivity across every channel
  • Create seamless, personalized customer journeys
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Manager working on a CRM dashboard with data visualizations and customer data flow
CRM integrations are how businesses like yours get even more from their customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. By seamlessly combining those platforms with other software and tools, you can make your business-critical processes more efficient and even add new capabilities to your CRM.
There’s a reason most businesses invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system—it’s a strategic tool that leads companies to success. It’s key to understanding your customers, learning how they interact with your business, and creating data-driven strategies to increase employee and customer satisfaction. While CRM systems are good on their own, though, you can only really make the most out of them when they’re integrated with the business apps you use daily.
RingCentral offers native integration for CRM platforms including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk. You can seamlessly combine your AI-powered cloud communications capabilities with your CRM, and deliver more memorable customer experiences, as well as improving productivity in your internal teams.

What is CRM integration?

CRM integration is the process of connecting various third-party applications and management tools to your main CRM software to combine different data, roles, and functions into a single platform. The main goal of CRM integrations is to provide companies with a holistic picture of business processes, team members, and, of course, customers.

Call and contact centers utilize this technology to enhance customer experience and improve agent performance across all voice and non-voice channels: phone, live chat, email, online communities, social media, and more. Contact or call center CRM integration makes it possible for call center agents to gain complete access to customer account information and history, deliver personalized customer service, take advantage of smarter call routing rules, increase first-contact resolutions, and more.

What are the different types of CRM system integrations?

You could integrate almost any business app or software tool you use with your CRM. Integration with CRM, after all, is about combining the capabilities of the solutions you already use and making your day-to-day work more streamlined and effective. There are some types of CRM integrations that are more common than others, though, due to the breadth of benefits they provide businesses:

Individual communication channel integrations

Combining an individual communication channel with your CRM adds the capabilities of that channel to the platform containing all your crucial customer data. Some of the most useful channels to integrate with a CRM, include:

  • Email and calendar: Creating emails is a typical part of the workday. By having an email CRM integration (like one with Gmail or Microsoft Outlook), agents don’t need to switch tabs or apps, thus simplifying communication with customers and even teammates. Additionally, most email services have built-in calendars that help in creating, organizing, and keeping up with appointments. Integrating email and calendar into your CRM allows you to manage all schedules made from various platforms, so you don’t miss anything on your docket.
  • Phone and messaging: An integrated phone system with Interactive Voice Response (IVR), auto and predictive dialers, and recording functionality can help support teams and salespeople in handling outbound and inbound call queues. Meanwhile, connecting your instant messaging platform will make it easy for team members to achieve real-time communication with colleagues, all without moving to another messenger service.
  • Video: The rise of remote work has meant increasing demand for an alternative to face-to-face interactions. This is where video chat comes in. By integrating video calling capabilities with your CRM, staff members can host webinars, join calls with teammates, and invite prospects for virtual meetings and presentations directly from your CRM system. A single click of a button can launch a video conference with any contact.

Contact center integrations

Of course, integrating individual communication channels with your CRM assumes you haven’t already invested in a holistic contact center solution like RingCentral RingCX. If you have, then integrating all your channels into your CRM can be much simpler. If—like RingCentral—your contact center provider offers native integrations for CRM tools, it can be as simple as a few clicks guided by on-screen instructions.

Marketing integrations

Targeting customers across several digital channels (social media, email, display ads, and more) can be a laborious process. With marketing automation software, you can automate a lot of the processes involved, including the implementation and tracking of marketing campaigns, gathering and analyzing data that can be used for improvement, and creating a sweeping perspective of the entire customer journey. Integrating that software with your CRM makes all the vital customer data stored on your CRM readily available to inform and guide your marketing campaigns.

eCommerce store integrations

Customer interests and demands are always changing, and it is crucial for businesses to find ways to create an easy, hitch-free purchasing experience. With the right eCommerce platform and ERP CRM integration, your finance experts and sales reps can better understand your customer journeys and acquire in-depth data about their preferences and behavior as well as information about completed or abandoned orders.

Help desk integrations

There is great value in being able to provide fast, effective customer service on demand. Integration with CRM tools makes it easier to use your help desk solutions to demonstrate professionalism and sincere care for your customers. You can more readily organize support requests from all your communications channels, access history of previous conversations, track success, create reports, and more.

Website integrations

Website integration for CRMs means connecting your CRM with your site and, particularly, with web form software used as part of it. This type of CRM integration helps you keep your contact list and customer information stored on your CRM up-to-date. It also aids marketing and sales teams seeking to identify and capture leads.

Benefits of CRM integrations

Precisely what you get from integrations with CRM tools depends on which solutions you’re integrating. Choose the right CRM integrations for your business and you could enjoy one or more of these significant benefits:

Enhanced efficiency

One of the principal benefits of any CRM integration is the creation of more streamlined workflows. By combining your CRM with one or more of your other tools, you make it possible to complete important tasks and processes all in one place. No more app-hopping, and the wasted time (and potential lost data or errors) which that entails. Your team members, then, can work more efficiently and, to put it simply, get more done.

More consistent and accurate data

Integrating your CRM and other business tools also helps to break down data silos. Rather than having your sales pipeline data in one place, customer support information in another, and marketing details in yet another, you can establish a single source of truth. That means, in turn, that you can be more confident in the data-driven decisions you make.

Better customer experience

When you integrate your CRM with other tools—particularly with contact center solutions—it makes it easy to deliver a satisfying, personalized customer experience at scale. Agents answering customer queries will have all the information they need at their fingertips to provide the precise answer or resolution that customer needs, regardless of channel.

More sales

CRM integrations don’t only help with customer support, either. By integrating a CRM with your other solutions, you can also help your sales teams to close more deals. Potential leads are less likely to get lost if your web form is automatically integrated with your CRM. What’s more, your sales reps have easier access to relevant information and data to help them tailor sales techniques, overcome objections on live calls, and more.
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The advantages of contact or call center CRM integration

Those are the overarching benefits of integrating your CRM with any of your business tools. What, though, makes a contact center solution and CRM integration particularly beneficial?

Holistic view

Give your agents a comprehensive 360° view of data across the entire customer journey, allowing them to streamline workflows and deliver more personalized interactions that take less effort. Shorter average handle times (AHT) mean positive outcomes for customers and the business itself.

Unmatched accessibility

Equipped with an integrated desktop, agents have easy access to important tools and customer data to deliver first-rate customer support. A unified CRM solution translates to reduced agent effort, less time spent switching between separate applications, and better automation capabilities.

Improved performance

Improve agent and customer satisfaction by ensuring callers are connected to the best call center resource. When agents handle queries matching their skill sets, your business gets more first-contact resolutions and fewer callbacks, transfers, and follow-ups—freeing reps to handle call queues, SMS/chat questions, and more.

Data-driven processes

Combine data from your on-premises or cloud-based contact center with your CRM software to make better business decisions. Removing manual updates from the equation reduces errors and allows agents to access accurate, up-to-date customer information.

No-fuss deployment

Avoid delays, eliminate additional costs, and evade risks with a pre-built contact center solution. Because there is no need to build custom integrations from scratch, small business owners can expect deployment within hours—not days or weeks.

Ease of use

Reduce training times by utilizing an integration platform agents are already familiar with. Team members can continue building sales pipelines, working on lead generation efforts, and streamlining other core business processes without having to adapt to a new environment.

How to integrate CRM platforms: Your options

If you’re convinced of the benefits of CRM integrations, you’re probably wondering how to go about connecting your CRM with your other business-critical tools. In general, there are three main approaches you can take:

Build integrations from scratch

If you’ve got significant software development experience within your organization, you could choose to build integrations from scratch. That means creating custom code that serves the purpose of connecting your chosen tools. As well as being initially complex, this approach means the code has to be continually updated to keep up with upgrades and changes in the integrated software.

Use application programming interfaces (APIs)

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are connectors designed to allow different pieces of software or apps to communicate and work with one another. They’re designed to work in a standardized and repeatable fashion, unlike custom code. There are also specific services and platforms, like Zapier, which specialize in providing APIs for custom integrations.

Native integrations

The easiest way to integrate a CRM with your other business tools is via native integrations offered by the provider of the software in question. Major software providers, of CRMs and other tools, often partner to provide their users with pre-built integrations, ready-to-go. All you have to do in most cases is to find the relevant integration—either through your CRM or the software solution you wish to connect with it—and follow some simple installation and implementation instructions.

RingCentral CRM integrations

To make it easier for your business to quickly harness the benefits of CRM integration, RingCentral offers native integrations for a range of the most popular platforms. Here are just a few examples:

RingCentral for Salesforce

Key features:
  • Enable telephony integration for your sales teams. Click-to-call right from the work queue and log in with an HVS disposition to move your sales cadence forward.
  • View a complete dashboard of your team’s performance that allows you to edit and customize RingCentral Analytics data as a native Salesforce report.
  • Enable screen pop-ups for every incoming call, giving support teams a 360° view of important customer contact information.

RingCentral for Microsoft Dynamics 365

Key features:
  • Never miss any kind of customer interaction across all channels with automatic phone call and text message logging.
  • Access all RingCentral text messages, voicemails, and faxes from one place.
  • Improve call efficiency through the click-to-call feature that allows users to start an outbound call just by clicking on the hyperlinked number within contact cards.

Zoho CRM with RingCentral Video

Key features:
  • Get the most out of your video meetings and webinars with automated activity tracking and comprehensive post-meeting statistics.
  • Save, store, and search past video, email, or call recordings to a non-attendee right from CRM.
  • Take advantage of automatic invites and instant meeting links to connect quickly with your contacts and leads.

RingCentral for Zendesk

Key features:
  • Make and receive calls across all endpoints: Desk phones, mobile phones, or the RingCentral desktop app.
  • Reduce the need for agents to switch between multiple devices and applications to access business functionalities and accomplish their tasks.
  • Free up agents by automating tedious tasks and creating smarter workflows that result in complete customer satisfaction.

RingCentral for HubSpot

Key features:
  • Make custom reports and get AI-driven insights backed by invaluable metrics into individual and team performance.
  • No need to download any software; simply call or send an SMS directly from your PC, Mac, and internet browsers.
  • Choose to manually or automatically log calls under several associations, such as contact, company, active deals, or tickets.

HappyFox for RingCentral

Key features:
  • Retrieve contextual customer information—like names and pending HappyFox tickets—automatically during a live inbound call.
  • Click-to-call from phone numbers featured in customer records or use the popover dialer for quick and easy outbound calling.
  • Raise a new ticket for every customer interaction or add voice recordings from a call to an existing HappyFox ticket.
Can’t find your CRM platform above? Don’t worry, RingCentral has partners who built additional off-the-shelf integrations with some of the best CRM providers on the market. We also offer application programming interfaces (APIs) and professional services to assist you in connecting any back-end systems, reporting tools, chatbots, and AI systems.
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Improve customer experience and contact center productivity with RingCentral RingCX and a CRM integration

Combining your CRM and contact center software is a decision you won’t regret making. From personalized customer experiences and enhanced analytics to smooth data syncing and optimized workflows, integrating delivers a myriad of benefits and upgrades.
RingCentral RingCX is an omnichannel contact center solution powered by AI and designed to help you boost customer and employee satisfaction. Integrate it with your favored CRM, and enjoy seamless workflows that take your customer experiences to another level.
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CRM integration FAQs
An integrated CRM is a customer relationship management platform that works seamlessly with your other software tools. Rather than being a—albeit very useful—standalone tool it becomes a fuller connected part of your overall tech stack. Such an integrated CRM helps your organization streamline workflows, improve productivity, and reap a range of other benefits.
CRM integration with a phone system delivers an array of benefits for businesses day-to-day. For instance, it means customer support agents or other members of staff have easy access to customer information if and when that customer calls. No longer do callers have to be left on hold, or repeat queries they’ve already explained before. All of that combines for the overarching benefit of improved customer experience.
CRM API integration is when you connect your CRM with another software application or platform via an application programming interface (API). APIs are purpose-built connectors that allow separate software solutions to communicate, share data, and work together efficiently.

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