ShoreTel Supercharges Business Intelligence for the World's #1 CRM with End-to-End Integration of Communications Platform

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple phone systems and unified communications (UC) solutions for the cloud and premises, today launched an integrated solution for the world's #1 CRM application, enabling users to have comprehensive business intelligence with a 360 degree view of sales, support and marketing customer interactions.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131118/MM19469LOGO)

By integrating two mission-critical platforms – the communications platform and a company's critical enterprise application – businesses now have comprehensive reporting on the effectiveness of all communications and customer interactions. ShoreTel's single source view provides insights that enable higher productivity and more effective collaboration of sales, support and marketing organizations for greater customer satisfaction and better business results.

The applications – ShoreTel for Salesforce and ShoreTel Sky® for Salesforce – provide powerful integration between Salesforce and the ShoreTel on-premises IP-PBX system, the ShoreTel Sky cloud-based phone system, ShoreTel Workgroups, and ShoreTel Sky Contact Center. Now users can handle all of their business communications within a single application while having the ability to collaborate in real-time.

"Finally, phone data is aligned with business data in the CRM system. By integrating the ShoreTel communications platform with Salesforce, one of the most valuable business applications, customers gain new insights, more effective collaboration, higher productivity and better business results," said David Petts, senior vice president of worldwide sales at ShoreTel. "Automatic logging of all sales activity, regardless of a sales person's location or device, together with prompts for agents to schedule follow-up actions can lead to closing deals faster and higher overall sales team productivity. For example, a road warrior using a mobile phone with ShoreTel Mobility software will still have the activity logged."

Unique to ShoreTel Sky for Salesforce, customers can automatically log all calls, voicemails and SMS activities for enhanced transparency across all channels of communication.

"We love our ShoreTel system and the integration with Salesforce was one of the key reasons we purchased the system," said Risa Edelstein, director of marketing at Echotape. "Our customer service and sales teams are using the application integration to improve productivity and increase collaboration between our US and Canadian offices and remote agents. The ability to reach more customers each day is driving better business results."

In addition to improving sales team productivity, the application integrations enable first call resolution for customer service employees by providing a comprehensive history of previous customer interactions from across the company. As customers are transferred to the department that can best help them, records of their interactions go along with them, eliminating the need for redundant retelling of the issues. Similarly, the integrations allow users to measure the ROI effectiveness of marketing campaigns by tracking all customer touchpoints during the buyer's journey.

"The ShoreTel integration to our CRM system furthers our goal of creating a 360 degree view of the customer," said Joseph P. Larizza, chief administrative officer at Fieldpoint Private. "It's very powerful to have call data married with business data. It also enhances our employees' ability to stay connected with the information they need when they are working remotely."

Robust Application Features

Key features of the application integrations include:

• Support for next generation browser-based CTI on any device or OS; no desktop client software required
• Click–to-Dial – start a call from within Salesforce anytime a phone number is available
• Presence monitoring and collaboration features including transfer of workspace across devices
• Enhanced reporting including off-line activities and ShoreTel Mobility call tracking
• Single sign-on for call center agents
  • SCC agent single sign-on and global availability state management (for ShoreTel Sky)
  • Workgroup agent login and state management (for ShoreTel premises customers)
• Packaged dashboards and metrics so businesses can immediately take advantage of highly integrated transactional data
• Workspace transfer – service agents are able to transfer the entire user workspace along with the phone call for an optimized customer service experience

Additional features unique to ShoreTel Sky for Salesforce customers include:          

• Complete record of all calls and voicemails, including SMS activity, in the CRM so the customer is able to conduct analytics and reporting on all their communication interactions
• Voicemail transcription – voicemail messages are transcribed into text and added to the matching contact record
• Point to point SMS messaging from the CTI and Salesforce

Additional features unique to ShoreTel for Salesforce customers include:            

• Fully customizable softphone layout
• With ShoreTel Call Recorder, all call recordings are appended to call activity records allowing customers to conduct analytics and reporting on all their communication interactions
• Full support of multi-party voice conferences within the CRM softphone
• Built-in workflow integration allowing for popping of entities based on attached call data (e.g. screen pop of cases based on account number entered in front-end IVR)

ShoreTel for Salesforce and ShoreTel Sky for Salesforce are available now.

Related Links & Conversation

• Subscribe to ShoreTel's blog.
• Follow ShoreTel on Twitter and Facebook.
• Read ShoreTel Customer Success Stories.
• Bookmark this Unified Communications Glossary.
• #ShoreTel, #UC.

About ShoreTel, Inc.
ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR) is a leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems and unified communications solutions. Its award-winning on-premises IP-PBX solution and cloud-based hosted phone system eliminate complexity and improve productivity. Recognized for its industry-leading customer experience and support, ShoreTel's innovative business phones, application integration, collaboration tools, mobility, and contact center applications enable users to communicate and collaborate no matter the time, place or device, with minimal demand on IT resources. ShoreTel is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has regional offices and partners worldwide. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com.

ShoreTel, the ShoreTel logo and ShoreTel Sky are trademarks or registered trademarks of ShoreTel, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.Salesforce.com is a trademark of salesforce.com, inc. and is used here with permission. All other trademarks, trade names and service marks herein are the property of their respective owners.

Media contact:
Katie Maller
408-962-2786
[email protected]

SOURCE ShoreTel