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James Thomas
James Thomas

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Using CRM hooks in a small office

I work as an administrator in a small office supporting 64 churches and 120 ministers in our region. I handle the calls that come in requesting information and/or services that we provide. We don't have call center (e.g. Sales or Support) so there isn't a need for Customer Relations Management software, but it is important to me to keep a history of conversations and questions to better support the callers. Fortunately our VOIP phone system uses configurable CRM hooks that send caller information to whatever software you want to use for that purpose.

Using PHP to capture the caller information (typically the phone number, caller ID, date and time of call), data is pulled from a MySQL table in a table using the mysqli object in PHP. I created routines that pull up all records in descending date order to create a history of the calls from that number as well as a simple form for me to take notes of the current call to post as a new record to the table when the call is over.

An unexpected outcome of this process has enabled me to identify sales calls, scam calls, etc. as the calls come in so I can allow those calls to go to voicemail, thereby reducing my call volume that enables me to provide more support to our region.

It's a small, not robust, app that gets what I need done. I'd like to hear about similar projects from the group.

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