User's blog

Category: CRM predictions

  • CRM in 2022: Trends and Predictions

    Another year has left the party and a new one has just arrived. Curiosity invades our thoughts, wondering what will bring 2022 in all aspects, including CRM (well, at least for us CRM-obsessed people!). In this article (which has already become our annual tradition), we’ll show you what’s in store for Customer Relationship Management. Let’s begin!

    Image by Vlad Deep via Unsplash

    CRM will be More Social

    This trend continues to be strong, since it was also our CRM trend for 2021. With over 3 billion active social media users around worldwide, there’s no doubt businesses need social media strategies to expand brand exposure, reach, and engagement; as well as bringing new leads. When CRM integrates with social media channels, businesses can capitalize on social media information to understand customers in order to provide them a better customer experience, as well as obtain market insights. Moreover, businesses can be able to create improved product offerings, and reply to queries and comments from customers in a more efficient and fast way.

    Other benefits of a social media and CRM integration are allowing businesses to publish relevant content, getting immediate customer feedback to improve the company’s services, and empowering the customer support team.

    CRM Software will be Powered by AI

    This one is another 2021 CRM trend that continues to gain traction. Although CRM software is fully functional and powerful by itself, it takes the game to another level when integrating with Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-driven CRM systems allow businesses to store, manage, use, and gather better data to make business decisions that are required to be fact-driven and fast.

    AI-powered systems have many benefits for businesses: tailor-made interactions and experiences for improved customer engagement and retention; customer segmentation based on specific criteria; more manageable lead management; intelligent recommendations throughout the sales funnel’s stages for better decisions; and increased team productivity and efficiency (with functions to make phone calls; schedule meetings, follow up leads, among others).

    When CRM integrates with social media channels, businesses can capitalize on social media information to understand customers in order to provide them a better customer experience, as well as obtain market insights. (Image by Jeremy Bezanger via Unsplash)

    CRM Systems that are Voice-Enabled

    Voice technology is quickly turning into a crucial part of customer relationship strategy. A voice-enabled CRM Software enables customers to process transactions via phone by identifying customers by their “voiceprints”, which ditches the need of entering PINs or passwords.

    Your sales team can take advantage of this by updating data in an efficient manner, keeping track of conversations, and automated messaging. Furthermore, it allows businesses to capture more data and gain more meaningful insights from it. With the latter, businesses are able to make better predictions.

    CRM Systems will be IoT-Enabled

    The Internet of things (IoT) has become a huge game-changer when it comes to CRM technology. IoT integration gives CRM systems broad insights regarding customer behavior. This makes possible to respond better and quickly to customers.

    Also, companies can identify customer dissatisfaction, which allows them to act in a proactive manner for loyalty retention; service representatives are able to solve problems faster and successfully; and businesses are able to fix errors in products before customers can be aware of them.

    Undoubtedly, CRM keeps improving and becoming more integrated with other technologies. And now, more than ever, with the challenges that arose from times changing quicker than ever, we are sure that other exciting trends will continue take place within this decade.

    Happy 2022, dear IC readers!

    To read the full article, click here.

    Are you considering to implement or improve Zoho CRM Workflow Automation in your business? Then click here for more information.

  • Experts’ Predictions for CRM in 2019

    Feb. 18, 2019 — Predictions… Who doesn’t love them? Recently, a group of CRM experts took a look into the CRM crystal ball (which we do hope exists) and made their predictions of what we can expect from CRM this year. Feeling curious? Then keep reading and take a glance at the future. You might be surprised!

    Image by Oleg Magni via Pexels

    AI and Automation

    According to Guy Yalif, CEO of Intellimize, more marketers will use artificial intelligence-based tools in order “to optimize conversion rates to yield better results than the current winner-take-all approaches that treat all prospects the same.” Yalif also mentioned that this year marketing leaders who don’t have much time on their hands will “use machine learning” for the automation of repetitive work that their teams do. Now that’s some help everyone could use!

    Customer Service

    Abinash Tripathy, founder and chief strategy officer at Helpshift, made a statement that, even at this time, seems somewhat bold:

    “2019 will be the death of the phone as a primary customer service channel, as digital customer service gains ground.”

    What’s the reason for this, you may ask? According to Tripathy, the transition from voice-based customer service to digital is moving faster, which will cause messaging-based services like AI and bot-based automation to flourish.

    Another prediction is the reorientation of customer service from reactive to proactive. “In 2019, we’ll see more companies resolving problems almost at the point of origin, often doing so without the customer even having to report it, which will lead to more uptime and, most important, happy customers”, said Bill Patterson, executive vice president and general manager of Salesforce Service Cloud. This sounds great, since we love happiness!

    Meanwhile, Devang Sachdev, director of product marketing at Twilio Flex, stated that customer service agents “will be able to focus on having more intelligent, authentic conversations with customers” instead of performing repetitive actions. According to Sachdev, businesses will use messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Apple iMessage as “new channels” to immerse customers into “conversations with richer experiences.”

    Data Entry

    Maximization of time spent in selling will be happening in 2019 thanks to automated data capture, according to Robin Grochol, vice president of product management at Salesforce Sales Cloud. This definitely sounds like a great opportunity, since sales reps spend an average of “64 percent of their time on non-selling tasks, like data entry.”

    Another CRM forecast for data is regarding Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Patrick Stokes, senior vice president of product management at Salesforce Customer 360, mentions that thanks to GDPR and the “very real possibility” of regulations like those in the United States and other countries, companies will “have to finally take control of their customer data” to ensure that it will be surfaced across teams in an appropriate way.

    Customer Experience and Brand Personalization

    These two topics have been around for a while now. From case studies to real-time social media interactions, brands have become more humanized, and predictions seem to support that trend.

    “Companies that prioritize experiences, both offline and online, will continue to differentiate through exceptional CX [customer experience]”, said Janelle Estes, chief insights officer at UserTesting.

    Estes affirmed that companies will invest in people, technologies, and processes to deliver “hyper-personalized experiences” in order to meet the constantly evolving expectations from customers, which are associated with the feeling of being known by a brand.

    As you can see, the future is promising for CRM, and we’re very jolly about that!

    Want to read more predictions? Read the full article here.

This site is registered on wpml.org as a development site. Switch to a production site key to remove this banner.