What to connect to AmoCRM, besides messengers

Why messengers alone are not enough

amoCRM collects enquiries from Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram and Avito — that is the base almost everyone starts with. But correspondence with a client is only the beginning of a deal. Next you have to call, issue an invoice, ship the goods, count the conversion and remember to remind about the meeting. If these steps stay outside the CRM, the salesperson keeps them in their head or in a notebook, and some deals are lost at the seams between systems.

Every extra service outside the CRM is an extra window to switch to, to copy a phone number or an order amount into. The more such switches, the higher the risk of error and the longer an enquiry takes to handle. Connecting services to amoCRM solves exactly this: the whole history of the deal — calls, payments, documents — stays in one card. Below we go through, group by group, what is actually worth connecting.

Telephony: calls inside the deal card

IP telephony is the first thing connected after messengers. A call to the client is made straight from the deal card, and the recording of the conversation and its duration are saved automatically. The salesperson does not have to remember they promised to call back on Thursday — the task is already in the CRM. The manager does not have to ask “did you call this client” — the call history is visible at once.

Without telephony, part of the deal's data is missing from the CRM: it is unknown how many times you called, what was discussed, why the client did not answer. This gets in the way of both analytics and quality control — assessing a salesperson's conversation against a checklist is only possible when the call recording is attached to the deal. So linking telephony and the CRM is not about convenience but about the sales department having a client history at all, rather than fragments in different places.

Taking payments and handling documents without manual forwarding

The second most important block is services for issuing invoices, taking online payments and exchanging documents. The salesperson creates an invoice right in the deal, sends the payment link to the client in the same messenger the conversation was in, and sees the status — paid or not — without calling accounts. This matters especially where the decision is made quickly: while the client is looking for where to send the bank details, they may change their mind.

Electronic document flow works on the same principle: the contract and the completion certificate are generated from a template with the deal's data and go to the client for signature without manual filling. For the sales department that means less routine and fewer errors in figures and details — they are pulled from the CRM rather than retyped. Setting up pipelines for such scenarios is part of CRM implementation, where integrations with payments and documents are built in at the start rather than bolted on later.

End-to-end analytics: where the money comes from

Once enquiries come from several channels and calls and payments are visible in the CRM, the next question arises — which of this actually brings revenue. End-to-end analytics links the channel a lead came from with the deal amount and makes it possible to see plan against actual for each salesperson and service, not just a total figure for the month. Without it the manager sees the result but does not understand what produced it.

A breakdown by channel and salesperson shows where the pipeline sags: enquiries come in but do not reach payment, or there are many calls but few closes. A revenue forecast and alerts when things deviate from plan give you time to react before the month ends. This area is covered in detail by sales analytics — it is built on top of data already collected in the CRM from telephony, payments and channels.

Quality control of calls and chats

A separate category is services that listen to calls and read chats in order to assess a salesperson's work. This is not about recording for the sake of recording but about a review against a checklist: did they say hello, did they ask the right questions, did they propose a next step. Such control reveals not only weak salespeople but also the typical reasons deals fall apart.

It is also worth looking for blown deals — situations where a deal is formally in progress but in fact abandoned or slipping past the CRM. Systematic quality control calculates a score for each salesperson and makes deal reviews concrete rather than based on the manager's impressions. This area is described on the page of quality control and relies directly on the recordings from connected telephony.

Stock, products and 1C

If a company sells physical goods, the CRM needs access to stock levels and prices, otherwise the salesperson promises a client something that is no longer in the warehouse. An integration with an inventory system or 1C shows current stock right in the deal card and pulls line items into the invoice without manual entry. This saves time on every order and removes a frequent cause of conflict with clients — the gap between what was promised and what is actually available.

In the live GetGate project five product groups are counted automatically this way — that is data about the result of integrating stock with the CRM for one particular company, not a general norm. For retail and wholesale with a wide range such a link is usually more important than for services, where what is sold is a specialist's time rather than units of goods. So the decision to connect stock is worth making on the basis of your own sales model rather than by default.

Email and SMS mailings

Not every client is ready to pay or sign straight away — some deals close over several touches. Email and SMS mailings tied to the CRM go out automatically at a particular pipeline stage: a payment reminder, a greeting, an invitation to come back after a pause. The salesperson does not have to remember who to write to and when — the system does it according to the scenario.

Such mailings are useful where the deal cycle is long or the client comes back later, for example with repeat purchases. For quick deals with a short cycle the effect of mailings is usually lower than that of the speed of the first reply. So it makes sense first to assess the length of your own pipeline and only then decide whether this service is needed at all.

Website forms and booking calendars

Lead capture forms on the site pass the enquiry into the CRM at the moment it is filled in, with no delay for forwarding by email or manual entry by a salesperson. Calendars for booking a meeting or a consultation work similarly: the client chooses a time themselves, and the deal and the task for the salesperson are created automatically. This is especially noticeable where enquiries arrive outside working hours.

In the GetGate project 27% of enquiries arrive in the evening and at weekends — they used to be answered only the next morning. Forms and calendars do not close that gap by themselves, but they record the enquiry immediately, and it can then be handled by a sales robot while the salesperson is away. More about how this works is in the section sales robot.

What to connect first and what later

Start with what loses money here and now: telephony and taking payments are needed by almost any sales department from day one. End-to-end analytics becomes important as soon as there is more than one channel and you need to understand which of them pays for itself. Document flow and stock are connected when the volume of deals makes manual work with paperwork or stock levels a noticeable drain on time.

Email and SMS mailings, capture forms and calendars are usually added at the second step, when the main flow is already collected in the CRM and it is time to improve conversion at particular stages. In the live GetGate project automation frees up about an hour of a salesperson's working time a day — that is not a universal norm but the result of a specific combination of services for a specific process. So the set of integrations is worth assembling for your own pipeline rather than copying someone else's list wholesale.

How to assemble this into one working sales department

Connecting a service on its own is not hard; what is harder is making sure they do not duplicate each other and do not create extra fields and tasks. We start by reviewing the client's sales department: we look at where enquiries are lost, which data the salesperson needs in the moment and which only the manager needs for a report. Then we assemble the pipelines for that process and connect the channels, telephony and the necessary integrations — this is described on the page CRM implementation.

If the sales department still has no rules and no clear next steps for a deal, it makes sense to connect services in parallel with putting those in place — otherwise the new integrations will sit on top of the old chaos. That is handled by building a sales department. And to have more enquiries in the CRM rather than merely handling them more conveniently, there is a separate area — customer acquisition. Other material on working with CRM and sales is collected in the blog.