Number lookup in a CRM: what a native connector needs

This page is not aimed at users but at the people who build the software: at product management and heads of development in CRM and ERP houses.

The challenge you probably know

At some point a customer asks whether your software can show who is calling. After that the tender asks. And then the question is on the table that product management would rather not answer: do we want to learn telephony for this?

Whoever goes the whole way takes on a field that is not theirs:

• Subscribing to telephony events and managing their state — still ringing, answered, transferred, hung up.
• Normalising phone numbers. The same number arrives in five spellings, and the dialling codes of the world are not a table you write once.
• A separate connector per phone system — and keeping up with every version.
• And after that: support for somebody else’s technology. If it does not ring, the customer calls you.

That is why most do not do it. It is also why it exists at the big vendors and not at the others.

What we actually ask for

Far less. We need one endpoint that returns a contact for a phone number — and nothing else from you.

What information we need

To turn your interface into a native connector — one that speaks to your system directly rather than to a nightly copy — we need the following. The first five are compulsory, the rest make the connector better.

Compulsory: without these five it does not work

• The address of the interface and its protocol — REST, SOAP, JSON-RPC, OData. We do not mind which; we do mind whether it is documented.
• How to authenticate. Account and key, OAuth, basic — and above all: whether the customer themselves can create that access without calling you about it.
• How to search for a phone number. This is the one question it fails on. A call that delivers contacts page by page is not enough: we cannot leaf through twenty thousand records while somebody waits.
• Which fields hold the name, company and customer number. If one of them does not exist, say so — then the line stays empty instead of being guessed.
• How a link to the record can be built. From the identifier the lookup returns there has to be an address that opens the record in your system.

Very helpful: what makes the connector noticeably better

• A normalised number field. If your system keeps, alongside the number as typed, a version without separators and without a plus, the search becomes reliable instead of character-exact. Tell us what it is called — this single point makes the biggest difference.
• All number fields, not just one. Landline, mobile, direct dial. Otherwise somebody calling from their mobile is not found, even though the number is in the record.
• A field enquiry at runtime. Can your system be asked which fields it has? Then we ask it instead of knowing it — and a connector survives your next version and your customers’ own adjustments.
• A search across the name. For the search box in the tile: partial word across person and company name, in one call.
• Which kinds of case exist. Lead, ticket, order, project — and how to find the open ones for a contact. Important here: cases often hang on the company while a person from that company is calling.

For writing back, if you want it

• How to file a note — on a contact and on a case. If your system knows its own activity types (phone call, note, task): which one fits, and what identifier does it carry?
• How to create a contact. Which fields are compulsory, how are first and last name separated, and what happens to a company name for which no company exists yet?
• Whether a second, writing access is possible. Then the reading account stays demonstrably without rights, and your log shows what came from the portal.

And the three questions that save time later

• How does your system tell apart “not reachable”, “wrong login” and “missing right”? Three causes that have to become three different sentences for the user — otherwise they read “error” once and spend an afternoon searching.
• Does a writing call need anything extra? Some systems demand a security token before every write and answer without one exactly as they do for a missing right.
• Where are the limits? Calls per minute, timeout, maximum number of hits. We ask at the moment the phone rings — every tenth of a second counts there.

Effort and cost

1 to 2 weeks

899.00 €

Why we cannot simply build it ourselves

Because we can only read what your system gives out. An interface that delivers contacts page by page but cannot be asked for a number is of no use at the moment the phone rings.

2 out of 14

What it brings you

• Your software is opened more often. Every recognised caller carries a link into your customer record. The click goes to you.
• A sentence for the tender. “With our software the employee sees who is calling.” That otherwise appears only at the big vendors and is increasingly taken for granted.
• Telephony in your offering without telephony in your house. No Cisco contract, no certification, no call detail records.
• No support for somebody else’s technology. If it does not ring, that is our call. You stay with the subject you know.

How it goes on from there

1. 1You send the documentsOr we read your documentation
2. 2We build the connectorOne to two weeks, nothing to change at yours
3. 3Your customer enters their accessIn the portal, themselves, without us

What you do not take on

So that the line is clear — this stays with us:

• The connection to the phone system and everything hanging off it.
• The tile in the Webex client, its publication in the App Hub and its upkeep.
• The rights in the portal, the log and the billing with the user.
• The first call when something does not ring.

If your interface cannot do it today

Then we say so — and we write it publicly that way too. A system that cannot answer a phone number appears in our catalogue with exactly that sentence instead of a tick. That is not a threat but the way we work: we claim nothing about somebody else’s software that we have not checked.

If you want to change it, the first step is a twenty-minute conversation — and the list above.