When it
comes to AI and customer
relationship management software, major vendors aren’t messing
around. In the last few years, Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle have all
acquired or developed sophisticated AI technology to help businesses derive
better insights from their data.
Using
data gathered from your CRM to drive insights and make the most informed
business decisions isn’t a new concept, and you’ve likely been doing it as long
as you’ve had a CRM.
If
you’re an enterprise business, you probably have a team of analysts whose
entire job is to dig through data to offer the best suggestions for growing
your company. But if you’re a small to midsize business, it’s likely that you
don’t have that luxury. That’s why the growth of AI in CRM should have you
excited.
With an
AI-powered CRM, you’ll have access to deep data analytics in a fraction of the
time of doing it manually. An AI-powered CRM allows you to use predictive
analytics and natural language processing (NLP) and will help your team save
time on repetitive, tedious tasks.
1.
Boost ROI and supercharge lead scoring with predictive analytics
In
2019, Gartner found that there’s growing interest around predictive
functionality from marketing technology (full content available to Gartner clients). A CRM with
built-in predictive analytics helps businesses in a lot of ways (the amount of
saved time alone makes it worth it), but predictive lead scoring might be chief
among them.
Predictive
lead scoring is a tool that uses an algorithm to look at all of the data
(contacts, job title, revenue) you’ve collected in your CRM and external data
found in the wild (your website, email marketing efforts). It will then score
these leads to give you a better idea of where they fit in your sales funnel
and then determine whether leads are qualifiable or unqualifiable.
This
tool looks through all your data to find trends about client behaviors to
provide your sales representatives the leads that are most likely to close.
This occurs within a fraction of the time that it would take you to manually
score leads.
If you
have a great manual lead-scoring method in place, you don’t have to throw that
away. You can still benefit from predictive analytics by sifting through the
results with a fine-tooth comb when it does the scoring for you. You may even
gain new insights into your customers that you can use to modify your manual
methods moving forward.
Some
companies have never done any lead scoring. If that’s you, you can play
catch-up by using the predictive analytics tool that an AI-powered CRM will
provide.
2. Get
inside your customers’ heads with natural language processing
Natural
language processing (NLP) uses AI to decode and analyze large chunks of written
or spoken words to understand the sentiment, tone, and meaning of the message.
It’s been around for a while but is starting to be used in customer service to
help businesses maintain great relationships with their customers.
NLP can
help businesses derive insight from the most common channels of
engagement—phone, email, and live chat.
This
tool is particularly useful for businesses with teams dealing with escalated
customers. Handing the contact off to the correct team before you have that
first call might be the difference between a customer staying with you or
leaving as soon as their contract is up.
Even if
you have a small team, being armed with knowledge about how customers are
feeling will help to start the interaction with your customer from a place of
understanding. This will help you handle or de-escalate situations with your
clients and will lead to higher retention.
3. Save
time and money with an AI-powered CRM
An
AI-powered CRM eliminates more mundane and tedious tasks such as inputting and
cleaning customer data, so convenience should be a factor when you’re deciding
if you need a CRM with AI capabilities. The sheer amount of time saved when you
employ AI can be staggering; the tasks that take you hours, instead take
minutes.
If
you’re using a CRM to its full capabilities, you’re already keeping all your
customer data up to date and running routine audits to ensure the data stays
clean.
This
all takes time. A lot of time.
With
the level of automation an AI-powered CRM provides, your employees won’t have
to spend time inputting new customer data into your system. It will
automatically input all the relevant data (name, revenue, job title, etc.) once
a potential lead comes in from any of your sources, which could be from filling
out a form or signing up for a newsletter.
Think
about it. Even if inputting new data into your CRM takes your most efficient
employee three minutes, multiplying that by 100 entries means five hours lost.
Multiply that by every employee you have and that’s days or weeks per year that
is spent solely on data entry.
This is
just one instance of how an AI-powered CRM can save you time. With the
automation granted by an AI-powered CRM, you free up your time to do what
really matters—closing deals, meeting with potential new leads, and making sure
your customers are happy.
Want
more information about CRM software?
Even if
you’re not quite in a place where you can fully utilize an AI-powered CRM, you
shouldn’t sleep on them. They are cutting edge and offer capabilities and
advantages that you won’t yet find in traditional CRMs.
If you
have a ton of client data to sift through, a large team that struggles to input
customer data into your current system, or you frequently deal with unhappy
customers, you might want to consider getting an AI-powered CRM.
That
said, check out 5 Popular Free
and Open Source CRMs if you’re on a tighter budget and don’t need to
utilize the features that an AI-powered CRM provides. If you’re searching for a
CRM with excellent customer service ratings, look no further than 4 Best CRM
Solutions With Excellent Customer Service and Support Ratings. And
lastly, check out our 2019 buyers
analysis, if you’re curious about what other businesses are looking
for in CRM software.
As
always, feel free to give our expert advisors a call at (855) 998-8505
if you need any assistance in choosing the right CRM software for your
business.
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