Technology oriented environment is what we live in today, but the question is how well such innovations can be leveraged and how it will impact people’s lives. Moreover, technology is changing drastically the way companies used to market their goods and services and the way customers used to buy. Consequently, in this highly competitive environment, it is undeniably vital for companies to embrace technology to increase their sales force and add flexibility and scalability to function smoothly and, most importantly, to ensure consumer loyalty, after all, this is what the ultimate aim is for any company on the planet. Even consumers have multiple ways to link to a brand through web marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, mobile marketing, and ChatBots, bringing more relevance to sales people’s activities with other vital jobs.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), with its driving engine-Machine Learning (ML), is the technology that effectively allows companies to solve consumer problems that were previously left unaddressed by Salesforce. This has brought new significance to CRM, which Salesforce has already wholly controlled. In addition, these advanced CRM tools, along with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Analytics, have greatly improved data quality, creating a relative difference in how salespeople have dived into their sales pursuits.
As sales are becoming a very complex operation in which every company needs to put a lot of effort into, CRM solution leveraging Artificial Intelligence’s capabilities needs completely changed the way sales, and communication processes were previously carried out. A real maintained CRM depends upon the quality of data, and Machine Learning has allowed companies to conduct predictive analytics to uncover insights into opportunities, forecast results and closing times, recommend the next steps in the selling process and automate some of the customer service tasks, among others. This technology improves consumer loyalty and interaction, providing the best outcomes as it will continuously provide real-time feedback while learning with every move forward.
Below are five of the most noticeable forms in which AI can improve CRM.
- Increased Automation: Manual CRM activities were obstacles to adoption for many years. This also seems as if workers are representing CRM, rather than representing employees. But AI is changing that. AI and automation are the most common developments influencing CRM and transforming the essence of work. By taking care of administrative tasks, such as data entry and identification of irregularities, AI makes CRM more available to workers and hassle-free. Increased automation also helps with the visibility of the lead, streamlining workflows, and increasing the efficiency of teams.
- Progressive Data Collection: When assisted by AI-driven machine learning, CRM data is gaining new life. AI is well known for data sorting and identifying patterns, and CRM systems take advantage of this. Although old CRM systems gathered data without actually making use of the data, AI mixed with CRM eventually helps to make use of the data in those systems.
- Optimization of Sales Process: Legacy CRMs lack customization, and are not entirely intuitive to consider what drives consumer sales. AI baked into CRM helps organizations maximize revenue by assisting with market management, forecasting, upselling, and cross-selling. An AI algorithm can provide optimal discount rates for proposals to sales teams by analyzing past offers and features that culminated in a sales win. Specific models can forecast potential quarterly sales more accurately, which can further boost inventory and resource management. Certain algorithms may also classify current consumers who are more likely to upgrade past product purchases or buy a whole new product offering.
- Improvement in Personalization: AI helps CRM deliver a much more customized experience for customers. CRM combined with AI, starts providing the next best steps, warning users of future customer upselling, identifying customer service problems before they get out of hand, and helping CRMs communicate with marketing, sales, and support.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Creativity and collaboration continue to predominate in determining the ability of a firm to adapt and compete. AI-enabled CRM allows businesses to face the task of breaking down silos and promoting interdepartmental collaboration. AI will enable greater cross-collaboration between marketing and sales teams.