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

Online, February 18, 2014 (Newswire.com) - ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple phone systems and unified communications (UC) solutions, today launched an integrated solution for the world's number one CRM application, enabling customers to have comprehensive business intelligence with 360 degree views of sales, marketing and customer service interactions.

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 enabling higher productivity and more effective collaboration of sales, support and marketing organisations for greater customer satisfaction and better business results.

The application - named ShoreTel for Salesforce - provides powerful integration between Salesforce and the ShoreTel on-premises IP-PBX system and ShoreTel Workgroups. Now, users can handle all of their business communications within a single application, whilst 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 with call details and audio recordings tied into Salesforce customer accounts, together with prompts for agents to schedule follow-up actions, can lead to closing deals faster and higher overall sales team productivity. The merging of communications and business data allows companies to build custom reports within Salesforce that give them unprecedented insight into their operations."

In addition to improving sales team productivity, the application integration enables first-call resolution for customer service employees, by providing a comprehensive history of previous customer interactions 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 integration allows users to measure the ROI effectiveness of marketing campaigns, by tracking all customer touch points during the buyer's journey.

Robust Features

Key features of the application integration 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 centre agents

Workgroup agent login and state management

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 optimised customer service experience

Fully customisable 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 is available now.

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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.

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ShoreTel and the ShoreTel logo 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:

Joy Francisco
Asia-Pacific Connections for ShoreTel
joy@apconnections.com
+65 6334 9045