7 Innovative Ways AI in CRM is Revolutionizing Customer Relations

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has evolved into a cornerstone for companies, with over 91% of those employing more than 11 staff utilizing these tools. However, the exponential growth of unstructured data and the intricacies of modern customer relationships demand a more sophisticated approach. According to recent research, 40% of buyers seek a CRM platform tailored to their needs to enhance productivity and drive growth. Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI in CRM is revolutionizing customer relations with its ability to glean insights, automate tasks, and predict behaviors. Let’s explore 7 ways AI is enhancing CRM-

How is AI in CRM a revolutionary strategy?

High Volume of Unstructured Data

A vast amount of daily information is collected of a customer, thus there is a high volume of unstructured information (data) that should be used to gain valuable insights to predict customers buying behavior and plan business strategies. There should be a parameter, rules to organize and use these unstructured data into usable structured data. The most suitable and accurate way to this is by using AI tools.

Complex and Changing Customer Relations

Apart from the increasing volume of customer data, customer relationships have become more complicated with the increasing transactions. This complexity makes it harder to understand and analyze accurate customer patterns. Most of the sales representatives spend over half of their time in CRM trying to manage CRM tasks more effectively. Using AI in CRM can easily automate these tasks and offer valuable insights and thus overcome this challenge.

Saves Time and Costs

AI in CRM aids businesses in saving time and operational costs. The functionalities in AI-powered CRM that used to take multiple clicks, multiple screens to perform tasks can now be done on a single screen with few clicks thereby saving operational costs and time for customer service and sales. With AI in CRM, one can accurately predict customer behaviors, forecasting, etc., and thus can easily manage their strategies to target high prioritize customers.

Around 70% of CRM users are not satisfied with a CRM tool due to manual tasks performed in a process such as manual data entry or difficulty in using a CRM tool. Here are some of the applications of how AI in CRM can be useful:

Sales Predictive Scoring

AI in CRM can predict customers buying behaviors by analyzing customer data from their previous sales, demographics, activities, web data, geographics, etc. Businesses can analyze the difference in sales conversions to sales failures with AI predictive scoring methods.

Sales Forecasting

With sales forecasting, businesses can predict the buying patterns of customers and thus accordingly plan their marketing, sales strategies. Businesses can highlight the top lead sources, deals in the pipeline, define sales processes, etc. to improve operational efficiency and to reach sales targets.

Chatbots

For any sales queries or product/service requirements, the least response time is a must, and AI-powered chatbots fill this requirement. Chatbots respond to the queries within seconds and try to meet prospective customer’s needs automatically, if a chatbot’s communication is limited then they can transfer the conversation to the respective sales rep that can take it ahead from a manual interaction. Chatbots have been highly useful in reducing lead response time for a business and thereby enabling true sales automation.

Lead Management

With AI, leads can be automatically prioritized based on their intensity to purchase the product/service. Based on these prioritizations a business can customize and allocate the sales rep to leads that have higher chances of conversion.

Service Sentimental Analysis

In customer service, during a conversation, customer’s sentimental analysis is important to know how the customer feels about the current conversation and since due to face to face customer service is lesser used, AI-driven live customer sentimental analysis helps businesses in performing this task.

AI can access the live conversations during a call or a chat and would convert those chats into emotional states and sentiments, thus a customer service rep will know at which conversation the customer was unhappy and could solve the issue without asking any further questions related to the unhappy conversation. This also helps in tracking performance and training the customer service reps.

Customer Engagement

Today, businesses want to have a lengthy and engaging interaction with customers and for the same AI in CRM tools leverage this need. By gaining valuable insights on customer’s previous interactions, financial stats, personal and professional stats, buying patterns and behaviors, etc. an agent can highlight the insights during a conversation and thus helps them in approaching a customer more intelligently.

Next Best Actions

While interacting with a customer, the service rep can access the AI-based next best actions to solve customer issues. They can access the manuals, guides related to the customer’s problem and instantly access them or share them with the customer.

To conclude

AI in CRM will help a business to optimize various processes. Improving customer relations, stronger sales pitches, increase in customer retention rates, customer engagement, and more. AI creates a better experience for both customers and sales/service reps. So, AI in CRM as a combination leads to a more profitable business.