The AI + CRM Integrated Contact Center: Driving Next-Gen Inside Sales Growth

What do the most successful inside sales teams have in common? How do top-performing outbound call center campaigns rake in revenue? Which contact center solutions are organizational leaders investing in to grow their business?

Of course, there’s no one single answer to these questions. Building a powerhouse sales team requires so many elements. Some structural, some cultural, some organizational.

But it’s the technical elements—the technology and all of the rapid innovation that comes with it—that seems to be the biggest gamechanger for inside sales organizations.

Inside sales teams investing in AI + CRM integrated cloud contact center technology are particularly poised to achieve the biggest ROI. Actually, they already ARE achieving big ROI!

A Future-Proof Competitive Advantage

As APIs become more powerful and machine cognition gets smarter, organizations are adopting cloud platforms to efficiently manage all of the contact center-based initiatives we’ve come to define as “inside sales”:

• Outbound call center campaigns
• Digital, voice, or omnichannel sales outreach
• Traditional telesales or telemarketing
• Virtual, remote, or on-site business development roles

By unifying all the solutions they need in a single cloud platform, inside sales teams are able to take advantage of fully integrated connectivity across their contact centers, CRM systems, and the latest AI and analytics apps.

This unified connectivity provides the competitive advantage that sets the highest-producing, highest-earning inside sales operations apart from the pack.

The following stats from Salesforce and the Harvard Business Review are a good indicator of why this kind of technology investment works

• Inside sales roles have increased by 7% since 2015.
• High-performing teams are between 2.3 times and 2.7 times more likely to have hired more inside sales staff than their underperforming peers.
• Companies using AI in their sales processes report: +50% increase in leads, a 40–50% cost reduction, and a 60-70% decrease in call time.

The Difference-Makers:

CRM Customer Journey Context, Enhanced AI Value, and More Benefits

Incremental investments in AI, analytics, and CRM integrations empower bottom-line focused businesses to reduce costs, stay efficient, deliver quality CX, and radically increase sales productivity—all through one comprehensive contact center platform.

Close rates, opportunity win rates, customer retention—inside sales organizations can expect ALL of these metrics to shoot up. Why? It’s all thanks to the enhanced value of AI when CRM-based analytics are leveraged in the contact center. Here are a few examples of the resulting benefits:

• AI-enabled IVR, bots, and self-serve channels free up resources. Sales reps, in turn, become more productive.
• Sales interactions are optimized with predictive modeling, pairing the right reps with the right customers at the right time to close more deals.
• Thanks to personalization and predictive insight, sales outreach becomes more proactive (and effective).
• Deeper insights into the customer journey give you a clearer understanding of how your customers feel about their relationship with your brand.
• These customer journey insights will open doors for attracting new business. They will also create unexpected opportunities to boost customer retention.

And these benefits are just the beginning!

But they don’t happen without careful consideration and guidance around what technology investments to make, when to make them, and how.

To get full insight on how high-performing business development teams stay on top—and get tips on achieving this success for your own team—read our latest white paper!:  Amplifying Inside Sales with AI & CRM in the Contact Center.

Want more info on the future of contact center AI? Check out our latest video.