SAN JOSE, Calif., - May 9, 2007 - Cisco® today announced, with the support of salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), the availability of the Cisco Unified CallConnector for salesforce.com. The fully integrated Cisco Unified Communications and Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) solution is designed for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), branch offices, and remote workers. Its easy-to-use call-control features help increase the productivity of all users, from salespeople wishing to easily document customer interactions to customer service representatives looking to deliver an improved customer experience.
"Cisco and salesforce.com have brought together Internet telephony with on-demand CRM to help change the way SMBs connect with their customers," said Kendall Collins, senior vice president of marketing, saleforce.com. "The Cisco Unified CallConnector for salesforce.com will help enable any company to directly integrate their communications system with their Salesforce applications - at no additional cost."
For inbound calls to Cisco Unified IP Phones, screen-pops within the Salesforce application provide users with a complete view of the customer's history, such as recent activity, outstanding follow-up tasks, sales opportunities, or service-level agreements. Virtually anything that users would like to track can be set up with a few clicks of the mouse. Cisco integration with Salesforce applications makes outbound calls more effective and efficient as well. Users searching for a contact can click on a phone number in the application and automatically initiate the call.
"Because bankers must spend their day multitasking, any product that eliminates the time to retrieve files or phone numbers and makes recording data easier and with more precision is highly valued. Given this technology, we are able to do what we do best: serve our clients and generate new business," said Randy Cameron, senior vice president, Zions Bank Correspondent Banking Group. "The Cisco Unified CallConnector for salesforce.com has improved the productivity within our business. Because it's bundled as part of our sales management system, our professionals can now use the click-to-call feature to dial a customer's contact number with a single click of the mouse, take call notes and create follow-up tasks all from the same customer files and records."
The integration of Salesforce on-demand CRM and Cisco Unified Communications solutions makes it easy and cost-effective to extend productivity to home-based workers and remote sales offices. With a Cisco Unified IP Phone and an Internet-connected computer, users can see the same screen-pops and real-time customer information from any location, and can initiate outbound calls automatically with the most current contact information.
"The Cisco Unified CallConnector for salesforce.com represents a natural evolution of delivering Cisco Unified Communications combined with Salesforce on-demand CRM applications to provide even greater flexibility and visibility to our customers," said Peter Alexander, vice president of worldwide commercial marketing for Cisco. "The joint solution offers SMBs a complete user-friendly solution for improving employee productivity and delivering superior customer service."
Channel Partner Referral Program
Cisco channel partners have an opportunity to gain additional revenue streams after they become salesforce.com referral partners online. Once a partner generates a sales lead, it is then submitted to salesforce.com through an on-demand portal using the Salesforce Partner Relationship Management (PRM) application, whereby salesforce.com can secure a subscriber. Upon securing the subscriber, salesforce.com then pays the Cisco channel partner a percentage of the subscription sold for the referral. Referring leads to the salesforce.com on-demand referral portal is simple, and requires minimal data entry in Salesforce PRM.
Price and Availability
The Cisco Unified CallConnector for salesforce.com is now available at no cost and can be found at www.cisco.com/offer/salesforce and on the AppExchange at www.salesforce.com/appexchange.
For more information on the Cisco Unified CallConnector for salesforce.com, visit www.cisco.com/go/salesforce. For more information on the salesforce.com partner referral program, visit www.salesforce.com/cisco.
