Microsoft Teams has rapidly become a staple tool for businesses, providing a central hub for communication, collaboration, and file sharing. Integrating it with your CRM system can further enhance its capabilities and improve your overall work efficiency. In this article, we explore the importance of MS Teams integration with CRM and how it can benefit your business. We will also analyze the most popular ones and provide step-by-step instructions on how to set the integrations.
What is CRM?
CRM system is a software that allows you to automate and facilitate business processes. The CRM market is growing and improving every year, and all companies are trying to install the systems themselves: from small ones with 2-5 employees to large ones. Of course, the platforms themselves and their functionality are different. But their core is the customer base.
The system allows you to better build interaction with customers:
- Automation of business processes will allow you to process requests quickly and without errors
- Working with the client base in a single platform simplifies its segmentation and launch of personalized offers
CRM systems help organizations increase sales and employee efficiency. They clearly show analytics for the sales funnel and put all work processes in order. And that’s not all!
Here’s what CRM can get you:
- Record the history of relationships with all the current and potential clients of the company
- Plan a schedule and set tasks for the day
- Automatically generate online reports
- Integrate a CRM with email, social networks, and calling systems
- Manage finances
- Calculate cost of services, etc.
Overall, CRMs perform operational routine tasks: create documents and online reports, generate necessary tasks, send emails to customers, calculate the cost of services using a built-in calculator, remind of important dates, and automatically performs the necessary actions (for example, invoices or renews contract). The possibilities are truly endless and depend on the platform you choose.
Why do you need to integrate CRMs with Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is a unique tool for collaborating, communicating, and sharing data across an organization. One of its key capabilities is a seamless integration with native and 3rd party apps. And CRM platforms are no exception. But why would you need this integration?
1. Improved communication
Teams and CRM integration allows for seamless communication between team members, customers and leads. This can help improve response times, resolve customer issues more efficiently, and improve overall customer satisfaction.
2. Efficient work
Integrating Teams and CRM can eliminate the need to switch between multiple tools and platforms, streamlining the workflow and reducing the risk of errors.
3. Better collaboration
Teams and CRM integration allows team members to collaborate on customer interactions, cases, and leads in real-time, improving the overall quality of service and support and increasing customer satisfaction.
4. Increased productivity
By integrating Teams and CRM, teams can access customer data, reports, and analytics from within Teams, eliminating the need to switch between multiple platforms and saving time.
5. Enhanced data management
Integrating Teams and CRM ensures that customer data is updated in real-time, improving the accuracy and reliability of customer information.
This looks great in theory. Now let’s take a look at real examples of popular CRMs and how they integrate with Microsoft Teams.
→Download: Microsoft Teams & Salesforce Integration Guide
Dynamics 365 CRM
What is Dynamics 365 CRM?
Dynamics 365 is a set of intelligent business applications that help you run your business. There is more than a dozen of apps that fit into your needs for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and much more.
Dynamics 365 CRM can help you keep track of the sales pipeline, accounts, and customers and collaborate on sale deals with your team. This includes Dynamics 365 for Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Project Service Automation, and Filed Service. Regarding the sales process optimization, Dynamics 365 Sales provides you with information about your prospects and customers. So, your team can plan and forecast the next interactions.
Ideal Collaboration to build relationships
As a part of Office 365 Product, Dynamics 365 CRM gives you an amazing experience to connect data from different platforms. For instance, you’re able to get insights from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and track profiles and insights as part of an account, contact, lead, and opportunity record. Next, you’re able to optimize sales processes with multichannel communications such as softphone dialer or Outlook email templates.
Boost productivity of your sales managers
With Dynamics 365 CRM you’re able to reduce the number of manual tasks by getting suggestions to automate new records creation. In addition, with AI technologies you will be able to get proactive guidance such as internal relationships, icebreakers, next best actions, and much more.
Adapt to rapid changes
Control revenue with a flexible forecasting solution to avoid any risks. Build interactive dashboards and reports to track your sales team performance and deliver more effective coaching. Moreover, you can use a flexible and no-code tool to quickly implement the next best action recommendations for your team.
How to integrate Dynamics 365 CRM with Microsoft Teams?
As usual, you can add Dynamics 365 as a new tab in the right team. By doing so, you will be able to collaborate on any information, such as customer accounts, opportunities, and more without leaving Teams. After connecting Dynamics 365 you can select Entity Selection or View Selection.
1. Entity Selection
By choosing Entity Selection, you can add any records to your channel tab. If you’re an owner, you will be able to edit records right from Microsoft Teams. Changes will be synchronized with the customer engagement app in Dynamics 365.
2. View Selection
Also, you can add available views as a new tab. Just choose your own or organizational views and track any activities and changes right from a Teams channel. Thus, you will be able to work with your team members on customer information and share files right from Microsoft Teams.
3. Have conversations with colleagues
Easily start a new conversation right from a channel tab or set up a video meeting. Mention your team members, communicate on key deals, and quickly react to any changes. On the other hand, you can collaborate with your colleagues from Dynamics 365 app. On a record page, click on Collaborate and display a list with all the connected Teams channels.
Dynamics 365, Microsoft’s own CRM system, offers a seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, allowing users to access customer information, create and collaborate on deals, and track progress in real-time
Salesforce CRM
What is Salesforce?
Chances are you’ve already about Salesforce CRM. It’s a cloud-based software to connect marketing, inside sales, commerce, and services into one platform. With Salesforce you can manage your contacts, opportunities, create sales reports, automate marketing campaign, and much more.
Contact Management
With this cloud-based platform you can collect all needed information about your customers, such as activity history, any communication you’ve had with them, and even detailed information from social media.
Opportunities and Account Management
Collect any information about sales deals with customizable sales dashboards. Track where each prospect is in terms of sales process stage, product interests, and any upcoming actions that need to be taken.
Marketing Automation
With AI technologies you can identify new customer segments, forecast marketing conditions, and, in general, improve lead management and prospecting. This allows you to target the right customers at the right time and increase your efficiency.
Salesforce and Microsoft Teams integration
By connecting Salesforce to Microsoft Teams, you get your team members the possibility to mention and interact with Salesforce records directly from Microsoft Teams environment.
For example, with Teams and Salesforce integration, you can mention any Salesforce records in a team channel or chat. Next, you’re able to easily preview the records without leaving Teams. Finally, add Salesforce record right to your Teams tab and simplify your collaboration on opportunities and accounts. Read more about Salesforce and Microsoft Teams integration.
Would you like to know how to improve collaborative processes at scale? Integrate Salesforce with Microsoft Teams templates :
- Get a team to collaborate around accounts
- Collaborate around opportunities with Teams templates
- Work with Teams files right from Salesforce
HubSpot
What is HubSpot CRM?
HubSpot is another amazing platform. At nBold, we really love it, and we use HubSpot for our sales and marketing management process. It is a web-based platform where you can manage all your data. Based on Inbound methodology, HubSpot provides you a single platform to attract visitors, convert leads, and close sales deals.
With Hubspot CRM you’re able to improve your customer relationship management by organizing and tracking your leads and customers. Let’s look at its key capabilities:
- Collect users contact information, including the company’s data, last activities, product interests, pipeline visibility, and much more
- Synchronize your Gmail and Outlook to automate email strategy
- Build automation workflows with HubSpot lead scoring to provide your customers with useful information at the right time
- Create sales and marketing report by collecting data from your website with many analytics tools, and much more
How to connect HubSpot with Microsoft Teams?
You can start by connecting HubSpot and Teams using the HubSpot app in Teams. This will allow you to access HubSpot data and features directly from Teams.
Then, find and install the HubSpot app in the Microsoft Teams App Store, and once it’s done, you’ll need to authorize it to access your HubSpot account. Simply follow the on-screen instructions to complete the authorization process.
Then you can start configuring the integration. You can choose which HubSpot data you’d like to display in Teams and set up notifications for specific events.
You’ll be able to access HubSpot data and features directly from Teams, streamlining your workflow and improving collaboration. You can also create workflows in HubSpot directly and add Microsoft Teams actions.
Cross-channels collaboration
Microsoft Teams can be connected to HubSpot CRM, Marketing, Sales, and Services Hubs. All information from your HubSpot Workflows, such as emails, names, job titles, etc., will be tracked in Teams. Thus, your sales managers can find the most up-to-date information right from the Teams environment.
Increased productivity
By using Automation Workflow, you can provide crucial lead and customer details to the right team members. Thus, they will spend more time nurturing and less time on finding contact data. For example, you can build a workflow to manage Microsoft Teams notifications. Thus, your team members will be notified through a team channel each time when a needed trigger is updated.
Real-time communication
Add the action “Microsoft Teams notifications” to any HubSpot contact, deal, ticket, etc., so your colleagues will be automatically notified about important activities. Start new conversations through channel posts, set video meetings, and share data without wasting time.
And if you want to have advanced Teams & HubSpot integration, you can explore nBold CRM solution.
It will allow you to get custom fully equipped workspaces in Teams for any relevant opportunity created in HubSpot. Each team incorporates guidelines, file templates, folder structure, boards of tasks, and key data. Step up your sales game with improved cross-team alignment and save money on CRM licenses for read-only users.
See how it works
Zoho CRM App
What is Zoho CRM?
Zoho CRM is an ideal tool for small and medium-sized businesses. It is an online service that allows you to minimize the “human factor” in regular tasks and reduce the involvement of sales staff in the process, through automation, real-time alerts, and built-in gamification. ZOHO CRM is an electronic sales assistant based on artificial intelligence that will help you make more balanced and accurate decisions and predictions.
The service allows you to set up your own security model, restrict access by IP, track user activity and create regular data backups. In addition, you can extend the core functionality of Zoho CRM through integrations with third-party applications: Google Drive, DocuSign, MailChimp, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Google Ads, and more.
Microsoft Teams with Zoho CRM
Instead of sharing each dashboard with individual members or collating them into a presentation, you can connect Zoho CRM with Microsoft Teams.
Go to Microsoft Teams Store, search for Zoho CRM app and add it as a new tab to the right channel. Thus, you will be able to select any dashboard and pin it as a new tab to collaborate with your team members.
In addition, you’re able to include records from Zoho CRM as cards in a conversation with your team members. Thus, your leads, contacts, accounts, and deals module will be displayed.
Pipedrive for Sales Management
What is Pipedrive?
One more great CRM is a Pipedrive. With Pipeline, you can bring better and more engaged leads and convert them into deals. With a flexible and easy interface, you can customize your pipelines in stages to visualize your processes.
The great thing about it is that every call and email are automatically tracked, thus you will get a transparent view into the past and future of every sale. As in other CRMs, you can build workflows to streamline routine tasks, such as sending follow-up emails. Finally, you can gather insights into your business and measure performance against set goals.
How to integrate Pipedrive CRM with Microsoft Teams?
To integrate Pipedrive with Microsoft Teams you will need to go to the Tools and Integrations section right in the Pipedrive app and choose Microsoft Teams Connector. Thus, you will be able to schedule Teams video meetings right from Pipedrive. In addition, bot integration will allow you to get updates on Teams about all deals, activities, and organizations.
You can also create workflow automation that will send notifications to Teams. Send a message to a channel or a private message every time an event is triggered. This way, your team members will stay notified and focused on any important changes.
Microsoft Teams for sales management
If you still have not found a CRM system suitable for your organization, you can use different software from Microsoft. Integrate them with your Microsoft Teams and get an efficient system for managing sales and storing customer data. Let’s look into it with real examples.
Microsoft Lists to collect customer data
Microsoft Lists is a simple and flexible space where you can create your customer lists and work with large amounts of data. Here you can store all customer information and sort it using various functions. For example, note here the name of the firm, its size, product preference, the start date of contact and estimated closing date, and more. Read more about all the interface options here.
Microsoft Planner to track daily tasks
With Planner, you can track tasks for your sales team. Here you will see handy cards where you can add due date, comments to the task, checklists, attach files, and much more. With the help of various boards, you can easily track the dynamics of your team’s development. Read more
Microsoft Yammer to stay up to date on news
Add any community as a new tab to your sales team. This way, your colleagues will be aware of all the news from your team with the following needed tags feature. Read more about Yammer with Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Forms to collect customer feedback
Use Forms to collect product reviews and ratings for your service. With this, you can not only quickly and conveniently collect information, but also draw up reports, compare results between teams, and much more. Learn more about Microsoft Forms with Teams
CRM and Microsoft Teams integration with nBold
Finally, we would like to talk about nBold – the collaboration processes management app for Microsoft Teams.
With nBold you will be able to build your own Collaboration Templates Catalog to create dozens of pre-built teams.
Next, during template creation, you will be able to manage Teams governance policies, such as a naming convention, permanent membership, security settings, and much more.
Finally, using nBold APIs you can connect any 3rd party app right to your Teams with Teams templates according to your personal use cases.
Microsoft Teams templates with apps
As we told you before, you can use Microsoft apps to manage your sales processes. What if we told you, that you can build Teams templates with pre-configured tabs with apps? For example, build Planner just once to track the sales process. It will be automatically added to a newly created team from your template. The same goes for Forms, Yammer, SharePoint, Microsoft Lists, etc.
Connect 3rd party apps with Teams templates
Moreover, you can connect your internal app right to Teams environment with Microsoft Teams templates. Let’s see how it works with Salesforce. By connecting Salesforce with Teams, you will be able to:
- Get an automatically created team for new opportunities with all needed information from Salesforce
- Create teams in Microsoft Teams for each Salesforce CRM account with your own company template
- Sync all your high-secured documentation, such as invoices, contracts, or technical information between Salesforce and Microsoft Teams
Sounds interesting? Contact us and let’s discuss how nBold can fit into your organizational needs.