Do we have any NetSuite users out here? I have a customer looking to integrate their NetSuite CRM contacts with a yet-to-be-purchased small-biz VOIP telephony system. There are only a couple users and the goal is for them to be able to simply click a phone record in NetSuite to start a phone call to a customer. Or when they get a call they would like the system to do a lookup on the caller ID and pull up that customer record. They are open to suggestions on the telephony piece whether it be straight Internet VOIP (like Skype) or a small PBX (like Asterisk) pulling in SIP trunks. And I assume that we would interface using TAPI or CTI depending on the system.
I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this and have any tips or docs available to guide me through it. Thanks for the help.
We use NetSuite and have a Cisco Phone system. We do not do exactly what you are looking for as our integration piece is from a Customer Service stand point with Cisco's Unified Contact Center Express. Our process is basically a customer calls in to our Support line, is asked for their Customer Number and is then put into the Queue for the next agent.
From all my research during the phone system purchase I found that the Correct caller ID only comes accross 30% of the time. We wanted to do the same thing were someone calls in we pull the caller ID and then pull up their record. Come to find out that the number that come across would be a partial number or an extension for the caller but not the number we have in our NetSuite system. Caller ID is not as reliable as most think it is.
The way we solved this was to set up the IVR to ask the user for their customer number before they put them in the queue.
With that said it can be done but you may get more service calls on why the customer record isn't coming up when your user gets a call. For us the integration is a web script as the integration between NetSuite and Cisco is not done with TAPI.
Shoretel has exactly what you are looking for.
I really wish there was an Asterisk/Switchvox solution like Shoretel's.