No Unified Communication platform would be complete without a wide range of integrations. Through powerful APIs, users can connect previously separate platforms and applications to create a seamless user experience. But to get even more specific, an incredibly critical integration for any UC solution is the marriage with Customer Relationship Management solutions. By combining CRM and UC, businesses are able to better communicate with their customers and clients.

Jive Communications has just recently announced their latest CRM integration, this time partnering their platform with the ever popular Zoho CRM. This integration enables existing Jive Communications users to link their CRM platform directly with their UC solution, enabling better, faster and more precise communications.

Jive Meets Zoho

Through this new integration, Jive Communications has made their industry-leading business VoIP features available from directly inside Zoho’s uniquely powerful CRM solution. The idea is to save agents time and frustration, placing all of the information and functionality that they need to serve customers, right at their fingertips.

This integration brings with it the expected functionality of a UC and CRM integration, including:

  • Agents can see who is calling before they answer
  • Every call can be tracked with auto logging
  • Click to call
  • Note taking for agents
  • Schedule appointments directly from a pop-up in the CRM

Overall, agents can save critical time, enabling them to better focus on the client that they are serving, and provide a more personalized experience with extra data and information. This integration also helps ensure accurate reporting on every interaction thanks to automatic call logging.

So, why Zoho?

The intersection of CRM and UC applications makes perfect sense, and shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the industry — in fact its one of our essential CRM integrations. However, what’s more curious is why Jive and Zoho are patterning specifically. Without direct insight from either provider it can be difficult to tell, but at the surface level, this marriage  makes a lot of sense. Both Zoho and Jive place a strong focus on the user experience, and providing a simple, easy-to-use platform that empowers your business.

Mike Sharp, CPO at Jive Communications, explained the partnership in their announcement:

“Zoho CRM is a phenomenal tool for businesses, and like Jive, Zoho is dedicated to helping users save time and effort in their business processes. We’re thrilled to partner with them to offer this integration for our customers and Zoho CRM users,” said Mike Sharp. “Helping our clients remain competitive and use their Unified Communications services and data to grow and improve their relationships and operations is our end-goal, and this integration perfectly helps those efforts.”

Zoho had similar sentiments to share as well, according to Chief Evangelist at Zoho, Raju Vegesna:

“Businesses today demand increased efficiency and customer engagement,” said Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho. “Our tools provide powerful insights and crucial information to business users, but when integrated with Jive, our CRM application’s abilities are magnified. With Jive and their award-winning channel program, we can provide a smoother experience and workflow to more businesses, as well as a broader view of their customer interactions.”

The two providers felt that they each offered a complementary service, working together to enable businesses to provide the best support and experience possible to their clients.

Two Peas in a Pod

Both Jive and Zoho are cloud-based platforms, both are scalable to fit the needs of any business, and both aim to provide rich context for efficient connections. Zoho, specifically, delivers marketing, sales and customer care apps through a single cloud-based platform, making it easy for any business to gain an upper-hand on their context rich information, while Jive offers a complete platform that makes communication as simple as possible.

In fact, Zoho has more than 30 million users around the world, which is no small feat. It makes perfect sense that Jive would look to include Zoho in their already extensive list of integrations — and vice versa as well, Jive stands as a strong partner for Zoho, enabling the provider to offer even more value to its massive user base.