- Oct 30, 2018
- Category: Artificial Intelligence
In the 21st century, CRM is the primary resource of data in the sales industry. It is one of the best collection of data to understand your customers. With AI reaching in every sphere of human life, it’s high time to use its full potential in the CRM industry.
“CRM of today” along with AI implemented in some companies helps in:
Automation of tasks: Automation of repetitive tasks can be carried out with the help of AI. The technology can help executes tasks like data entry, call lists determination, updating the forecast, etc.
It can also analyze customer preferences and behavioral patterns and updates data accordingly. This result-oriented process gives better outcome as it matches the customer’s requirements. One can see improvements in productivity as automation can execute mundane tasks efficiently without any errors.
The routine tasks can be carried out more efficiently and faster using automation than by human intervention.
Virtual assistant: The virtual assistant, a combination of CRM and AI helps automate the responses of the customers, effectively maintaining the follow-up process. It captures the required data for further processing. Using the intelligence of virtual assistant tools businesses can generate quotes, responds to emails, book the calendar time with the clients and do much more. It can help to understand customer behavior by analyzing the data like sites visited, demographics, etc. The recent examples of such assistants are “Amazon’s Alexa,” “Apple’s Siri” and “Google assistant.”
In 2016, CaixaBank worked with IBM on a Watson based virtual agent to respond to customer questions. The agent delivered more than 60% accurate responses even exceeding 75%. This system got better with time as the assistant learned from human to handle different types of customer.
If it was not able to handle a specific customer, the call was transferred to a human agent. The information which the human agent ultimately conveyed to the caller is passed to the AI assistant. In this way, the AI virtual assistant has empowered CRM and made it more productive.
Accurate segmentation and generating priority leads: AI helps in precise segmentation. It is important, as without proper segmentation, representatives treat all the leads equally. This strategy proves costly for the sales team as there is no closure of deals. Whereas, sub-segmentation on the basis of behavioral and historical patterns gives relevant leads. This segmentation is called as the list segmentation which intelligently divides the contact list into a smaller number of lists. This lists further parse and filter the contact by demographics, industry and interaction content. The representatives can personalize the messages to their leads and customers based on specific group of audience who share similar preferences, interest and needs.
Leads conversions are higher in this scenario as one is “getting into the mind of the customer.”
After executing list segmentation, the representatives can:
- Send the prospects and existing clients, an email blast with personalized content.
- Reward the existing customers for customer loyalty.
- Inform them about a new product or service.
- Tailored messages are sent based on their responses.
Customer service and retention: Along with insights, AI helps in providing better customer service. Good service means, one has to be the first to respond to customers, have to understand each customer personally and finally offer the services at the leading prices.
There is detailed customer information in the CRM, which includes their behavioral and purchasing pattern. The representatives customize their interaction, as per the interest and requirements of the customer. This leads to better customer service and retention. For example, two person with the same designation in different industries will have distinct requirements. A VP of an electronics company will have different liking and interest when compared to the VP of a wine industry.This is simple but relevant filtering which improves the personalized content to be sent to each of the customers.
Training: AI helps in effective training of the team. Planning is done as per the insights gained from the data .Strategic decisions are considered and ensured so that the right training process is provided to the representatives to get the best deal.
Training is provided through analysis of the situation from CRM, customer profile information, policies, etc. Even the tone to interact with every customer is planned through this data. Tailored messages and answers are prepared by understanding the behavior of the customer. This results in better individual interactions of the team with the customer, increases productivity and maintain customer relationship.
CRM in the “near future”:
Personalization: Customers get delighted when they come to know that the seller can understand their requirements on a personal level. CRM is getting improvised with the integration of AI helping businesses to understand their customers better. This in return is allowing them to customize services that best meet customer requirements. CRM of tomorrow will not just provide data but will inform in advance who the “priority leads behave and think as individuals.”
The personalized content understands the thought process of the customers and as per that modifies the information to be sent to the customers.
Organizational structure changes: Improvisation in CRM is going to change the organizational structure in the near future. As executives get a better idea about their customer’s interests, requirements, the product team together with the customer service and sales team will contribute in closing the deal. The outcome, the company gets the best ROI.
Many organizations understand these structural changes which are going to affect them in the near future and are taking relevant steps in improvising this process.
Conclusion: AI is revolutionizing the CRM industry and AI-based CRM will be a $1trillion pie by 2021 as per IDC. It is providing effective tools for meaningful insights from the vast collection of structured and unstructured data which are often missed by manual scrutiny and analysis. The tools such as predictive sales, service chatbots, customized promotion activities for lead generation will further increase the productivity of an employee.
“CRM of near future” along with the combination of big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence will provide ultimate levels of lead conversions, customer satisfaction, and retention. Streamlining the process will help in spotting the “right prospectus” which is the main challenge for any company. Empowering CRM will make the process easier and simple. Companies will get the best ROI breaking previous records.