PhoneBurner Chrome Extension for Launching Dial Sessions

1. Summary

Jeff Osness introduces the new PhoneBurner Dial Session Companion browser extension for Chrome and Edge. The extension lets users launch PhoneBurner dial sessions from CRM platforms that may not have native support. He demonstrates how it works with HubSpot, where users can select records, launch a dial session, keep the CRM and PhoneBurner screens synchronized with the follow-me widget, and log call activity back to HubSpot when activity logging is enabled.

He also explains the extension’s different support levels across CRMs. In Close, the extension functions as a full integration using the CRM API. In Pipedrive, it works through optimized page scraping, allowing dial sessions and follow-me navigation but not activity logging. In Zoho and other CRMs without custom extension support, it runs in a generic scan mode that attempts to extract contact details from the page. The video emphasizes that the extension expands PhoneBurner’s dialing capabilities across many CRMs and that larger organizations can request deeper support for specific systems.

2. Tags

Chrome extension, Edge extension, Dial Session Companion, CRM integration, HubSpot, Close CRM, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, dial sessions, follow-me widget, activity logging, contact syncing, API integration, page scraping, sales dialing, productivity tools

3. Cleaned Transcript

Hello, this is Jeff Osness, the Principal Evangelist over here at PhoneBurner, and I have something exciting to share with you. There is a new Chrome extension available to anyone using Chrome. It is also available on the Edge browser as well. This Chrome extension is called the PhoneBurner Dial Session Companion.

What this does, once you have installed it or added it to your Chrome browser, is give you the ability to launch a PhoneBurner dial session from several locations and from several CRMs that are not necessarily supported out of the box with PhoneBurner.

A lot of you may know that we integrate with Salesforce and we integrate with Zoho and platforms like that, where you can actually launch a PhoneBurner dial session directly from that CRM. There are also many CRMs that have used the PhoneBurner API to add that functionality directly to their systems.

But this Chrome extension extends the power of PhoneBurner to many other CRMs that have not traditionally had the ability to launch a PhoneBurner dial session directly from that CRM.

So, let me walk you through it. Let me show you what is possible here.

First, let me jump over to HubSpot. In HubSpot, there is a PhoneBurner integration that allows you to sync contacts from HubSpot over to PhoneBurner, and then you can launch your PhoneBurner dial sessions from the PhoneBurner UI. However, that is not always the best option for you.

What this Chrome extension does is allow you to select records in HubSpot and then use the extension to launch a HubSpot dial session. Once I click that button, all of those records that I just selected are now going to be queued up and placed into a dial session, as you see here.

Now I can go through and configure my dial session. What is really cool about this, let me go ahead and move this over, is that once I get connected and start dialing, the contact that I am calling and seeing within the PhoneBurner UI is also going to be the contact that I see in the HubSpot UI. They are going to stay in sync. It is going to follow along with me.

You may have noticed this little widget in the lower right-hand portion of the page. That little widget helps keep everything in line. It is the follow-me widget that is part of this extension.

In addition to following along, I am going to go ahead and click live answer and end this call so I do not have the sample contact chirping in my ear. In addition to following along with HubSpot, when you activate activity logging in PhoneBurner, because we already have that built on the PhoneBurner side, every time you log a call or disposition a call in PhoneBurner, that activity will then log back to HubSpot.

Let me show you what that looks like. It takes about 25 to 30 seconds. As you can see here, the little widget just showed that there has been a call. The last call outcome was set appointment.

Now, let us go ahead and minimize this and refresh HubSpot. You will see that the call activity has, in fact, logged to HubSpot.

When I am done with my dial session, whether I take that dial session to completion or end it early here, what I will want to do is click stop on the little follow-me widget. That allows me to navigate in HubSpot without the extension trying to take me back to that specific contact.

So that is how it works in general out of HubSpot.

There are a few other options with HubSpot. You can dial from a specific list. If you have created a list in HubSpot and you want to dial from that list, you do not have to go look up that list. That will be available in this little widget once you have authenticated with HubSpot.

You can also launch dial sessions from companies and deals. When you are dialing deals, the contact record is going to be displayed on the screen. If you are dialing from companies, you will have the choice: do I want to dial the company record, or do I want to dial the contacts related to those companies?

So there are some really cool options there.

I also want to point out that you will notice in the upper right-hand corner of the extension, it says level three full integration. What that means is the extension has consumed the HubSpot API and is actually using the HubSpot API in order to get the full contact details, all of the phone numbers, and the email addresses needed to begin that dial session.

Of course, you can also see that we are using that API to get the HubSpot lists in order to launch that dial session.

But why do we say level three full integration? That is because this extension can support multiple CRMs.

Let us jump over here to my next tab, which is Close CRM. From Close CRM, if I open up the extension, it is going to see that I am now on Close.com, and this is a level three full integration. What does that mean? It means I can select records here from Close and launch a dial session. It will follow me along, and it will log activities back to those records in Close, very similar to what you just saw on the HubSpot side.

Let us jump over here to my next tab, which is Pipedrive. We have not built a full integration with Pipedrive. What you will see here is that this one shows up as a level two. What does that mean? That means we are not using the Pipedrive API at all, but we have done a little bit of work to improve or optimize the way we scrape a page.

You can come in here to a contact list like this, select those records, or not select those records, totally up to you, and then we will scrape that page and launch a dial session. In most cases, we should be able to find all of the names, phone numbers, and email addresses needed to launch a dial session without a problem.

Let me show you what that looks like. I click scrape. This is the first time I am doing it from this specific Pipedrive account and this specific browser, so let us go ahead and give it permission. Now let us let it scrape.

What it did is go through there, grab all of those contacts, and launch them into a dial session. We have 17 records, and we are now going into a dial session. You are going to see that not only are we calling through those contacts, but it is going to do the follow-me function as well. As you see, when I click no answer, this moves on to the next contact or next person in the list.

So anyway, it is very similar to HubSpot, but no activities will be logged with Pipedrive because we are not actually using the API. Someone using Pipedrive right now would have to log those calls manually.

Now, if you are a large organization looking to take advantage of this and you would like those activities logged, let us know. We can update this. We just have not had a reason to update it yet.

Let us go ahead and end this dial session, stop the follow-me, and let me show you another CRM.

Now I am jumping over to Zoho CRM. We happen to have a full integration with Zoho already. You can just install the PhoneBurner app in Zoho and launch dial sessions from Zoho. But I wanted to go here just to show you one more option with the extension.

This extension will notice that I am on Zoho, but we have not done anything custom for Zoho. We have not tried to optimize scraping, and we are not using the API as far as the extension is concerned. Why? Because we already have an integration. There is no reason to rebuild it here.

That is what you will see on any CRM where we have not done a full integration and have not done anything specific for that CRM. It will show up as a level one generic mode.

What will happen when you click scan and launch dial session is that the extension is going to scan that page, try to extract names, phone numbers, and email addresses, and place those into a dial session. If possible, it will also try to navigate you from contact to contact as you are making those calls.

In my experience, it has been about 50/50. So, if you have a CRM that you use and you would like to see whether you can use PhoneBurner with it, give the extension a try.

If you are a large organization looking to take advantage of PhoneBurner in a particular CRM, let us know, and we should be able to add support fairly quickly.

Anyway, like I said, this is something really exciting. This extension is the best extension to get for your Chrome browser right now, allowing you to launch PhoneBurner dial sessions from all kinds of unique and useful CRMs that are not already supported by PhoneBurner.

Thanks for taking a moment to watch this video, and happy dialing.