As businesses fiercely fight each other to remain competitive and stay ahead of the game, they must pay more attention to the likes of customer care and loyalty, more than they have ever had to. To help with this, customer relationship management (CRM) software works alongside the efforts of humans to provide a better solution for customers.
Technology is advancing at a rapid rate, however, and the likes of artificial intelligence (AI) is having a noticeable impact on virtually anything. CRM is no exception to this and, today, AI is augmenting CRM software to help optimize business operations.
How AI is Changing and Helping CRM Efforts
These are five key ways that AI is helping to compliment CRM efforts.
1. Automation of routine tasks
The obvious application of AI not only with CRM, but in most places where data is involved, is the automation of repetitive and mundane tasks that eat up your valuable time. Data input, processing, retrieval, and the updating of forecasts are all CRM tasks that can be efficiently handled by AI. As CRM tools begin to learn more about your customers, the AI behind the scenes will be able to implement new processes and recommendations, too.
2. Improved lead customization and prioritization
Smart AI algorithms can automatically segment your customers and audience based on information such as gender, geographical location, buying habits and history, and other granular data points. Given that CRM tools are already highly customizable, the use of AI here carries with it a whole host of obvious benefits, such as highly detailed personalization that will better resonate with your customers.
3. Better and time-sensitive customer service
AI-backed CRM tools will be able to work around-the-clock to deliver a robust service that will help you not only gather and process granular-level data, but help you build customer profiles that can be targeted. With AI-built customer profiles, your physical staff can spend more time providing customer service not only more efficiently, but when it is most required by the end-user based on data gathered by AI.
4. Optimized sales strategies
With the automated collection and processing of data and the data analysis potential of AI, your business can create accurate customer profiles that can tell you which products your customers are most likely to be interested in and purchase.
It is the predicting of such customer behavior that enables companies to take personalized actions and optimize the sales process. These personalized actions not only lead to more sales, but they can create a positive image around your company that leads to long-term customer loyalty and a higher exposure to your target market.
5. AI with CRM supplements your team
When AI is integrated with CRM, it can help plan strategies for increasing sales, following up on leads, and closing deals. It does this by helping your team make sense of data and predicting what the next strategic step may be, and that the right processes are being followed by your team at all times, from the identification of a lead to the closing of a deal. Additionally, With AI, CRM tools will be able to perform advanced analytics of situations by looking at data, customer profiles and accounts, and company policies. In fact, it even has the theoretical potential to listen in to sales calls and analyze what words and phrases are being used, or what elements of a conversation cause the tone of the customer’s voice to change.
All this automated insight and analysis on part of AI can help your team identify problems and provide valuable insights to aid the creation of tailored communications with customers. Again, particularly in sales, the value of personalization cannot be understated, and it can have a huge impact on your prospects of closing a deal.
CRM is About to Get a Whole Lot Smarter
It’s not as if CRM wasn’t already great, too! With AI, though, it is about to get a whole lot smarter and become any serious company’s best friends when it comes to customer management, retention, and the overall sales process.
AI is set to have a profound and measurable impact on almost all aspects of our world. Customer relationship management is no exception to this.
