Let customers connect their own CRM in one click

An AI sales-coaching product is only as useful as the deals it can see. For the first months of the one we built, connecting a customer’s CRM meant copying an access key and walking through set-up with their administrator. That is fine for a pilot. It does not work for a product people sign up for on their own.

One click, read-only

We replaced it with a one-click connection. The customer approves access in their own CRM, and the product can only read: it never writes to the customer’s CRM. On 27 August the client connected their own account on the live system, and the first sync brought in 25 contacts, 25 companies, 4 salespeople and 31 activities. The same day, 35 updates went live.

Each connection belongs to its customer

• Bound to who approved it. The connection is tied to the person signed in when they approve it, not to a shared company key.
• Encrypted separately. Each customer’s access key is stored encrypted on its own.
• Every permission recorded. What the customer granted is stored, so there is never a question about what the product was allowed to read.

Customers choose what to share

Everything the product needs is pre-selected, and anything not strictly required can be switched off without the connection failing. The settings page then lists exactly what was granted and what was withheld, with a link to grant more later.

That last part matters more than it looks. When a feature has no data because the customer chose not to share it, the product says so and names what is missing, instead of showing an empty screen that looks like a bug.