Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are powerful tools that allow your business to stay organized and productive. Also known as customer experience software or sales automation tools, the primary function of CRM is to provide each department cross-visibility access to marketing, sales, and customer data to remove silos and enhance collaboration.
In a recent survey, sales professionals said they see AI boosting their performance even further beyond traditional CRM software. 66% say AI-powered CRM can help them provide a more personalized experience and understand their customers better. On top of that, 63% of sales leaders say AI makes it easier for them to compete with other businesses in their industry through predictive analytics and data-driven insights.
By analyzing customer data and insights, departments can make better business decisions to drive results. This blog post will look at how AI-powered CRM improves customer experience, among other things.
How to use an AI-driven CRM to improve your customer experience
So, how exactly does a CRM enhance the customer journey? With access to improved business data and a complete view of their behavior, you can better serve your customers’ needs and build lasting and strong relationships. AI-powered CRM extends a CRM tool to transcend traditional CRM functionalities, encompassing advanced analytics, predictive insights, and machine learning capabilities.
Why does the customer experience matter?
Your clients aren’t just buying a product or a service; they are also buying an experience. For your business to grow its profits and remain successful, it needs to secure customer satisfaction and loyalty. In recent research that looks at how AI is transforming work, Microsoft surveyed hundreds of early users of generative AI. Key findings showed that 70% of users said generative AI helped them to be more productive, and 68% said it improved the quality of their work. Also, 64% of salespeople surveyed said generative AI helped them to better personalize customer engagements and 67% said it freed them to spend more time with customers.
AI–powered CRMs analyze vast amounts of customer data to provide deeper insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. This information helps businesses personalize marketing campaigns and tailor product offerings by leveraging predictive analytics and machine learning to enhance engagement and optimize sales strategies.
Staying in touch with AI-driven customer engagement
Staying in touch with customers is one of the best ways that CRM can improve the client's digital experience. A well-organized CRM lets you communicate with customers regularly, informing them about promotions and special offers relevant to their preferences. By monitoring their activities and interactions with your brand, you can target them with the right message and personalized services on the proper communication channels at the perfect time, fostering long-term loyalty.
Personalize communication with customers to offer something they need
When customers feel like you are speaking to them directly, as opposed to a generic group of people, they are more willing to listen. Personalized emails are significantly more effective at capturing recipients’ attention. By tailoring content to individual preferences and behaviors, marketers can achieve a 26% higher open rate, according to a 2024 article in Forbes. This approach ensures that emails are more relevant and engaging, leading to better results. The more data your CRM collects about your customers, the easier it will be to provide a personalized, positive customer experience.
AI can automatically segment customers into different groups based on their behavior, preferences, and demographics. This ensures that each customer receives relevant and personalized communication. AI can also analyze customer sentiment from their interactions, such as emails or social media posts. This helps businesses understand customer emotions and tailor their communication accordingly to build relationships and engagement.
Providing instant responses with automation
When customers have a question or a problem, they want an immediate response. Waiting too long, or worse, not responding at all can destroy your chances of retaining customers, deepening relationships, or converting inquiries into sales opportunities.
With a modern CRM, you can create email, text, and chatbot workflow templates to quickly address frequently asked questions and avoid negative customer experiences due to communication delays. As with all customer communications, these interactions are stored in your CRM for easy reference and reminders.
AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants provide immediate assistance to customers, ensuring around-the-clock support. To ensure customer satisfaction, a service-level agreement (SLA) for inquiry response times is important to define and monitor. You can easily monitor adherence to SLAs with CRM dashboards, which assist with the management of sales associates and customer service agents.
To further assist with quickly responding to customer inquiries, AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand and interpret customer questions and needs in real-time to automatically identify the most relevant responses. AI can also analyze the content of incoming emails and generate appropriate responses based on past interactions.
AI-driven sales optimization for increased efficiency and revenue
According to CSO Insights, a staggering 34% of a sales professional’s time is consumed by non-selling activities, comprised of data entry, report generation, and customer information management. These time-consuming tasks rob sales teams of precious hours that could be spent on revenue-generating activities. To overcome these hurdles, organizations are increasingly embracing automation and AI to streamline processes, liberate sales teams from inefficiency, and propel them to unprecedented success.
CRM automates repetitive tasks such as data entry, scheduling, and follow-ups, freeing up employees to focus on more strategic activities. In fact, 43% of businesses report that CRM software reduces employee workload by 5 to 10 hours per week. And 50% of respondents say this time is saved by automating repetitive tasks.
AI-surfaced insights improve sales efficiency and effectiveness by prioritizing opportunities that are most likely to lead to a closed deal. By helping sales teams automatically identify high-potential leads and prioritize follow-ups, reps can spend more time tailoring sales pitches and speaking with prospects, resulting in improved conversion rates, faster sales pipelines, and increased revenue.
Centralized customer information for enhanced AI-driven insights
Storing all customer and prospect information into one database helps your company gain valuable insights. CRM provides your sales and marketing teams access to all customer interactions, like social media post engagement, website visits, form fills, email opens, and more. Having these insights stored in one area can help to align sales and marketing teams and understand which business initiatives are most effective.
In addition to improving sales, marketing and customer service, AI-powered CRMs can also help with operational efficiency and business profitability. AI analyzes vast amounts of historical and real-time customer data to identify patterns and preferences. Using these valuable customer insights, machine learning models can predict future customer behaviors to forecast demand and optimize supply chain needs, staff, products, and services accordingly for reduced waste, improved agility, and increased revenue.
Integrated ERP and CRM enhance customer satisfaction and increase loyalty
Organizations are starting to understand that integrated systems can help them stay competitive and keep customers happy. Alithya’s Professional Services 2023 Industry Survey found that 57% of companies are planning to prioritize investing in applications and integrations to serve their clients more efficiently and effectively. Furthermore, Nucleus Research reveals that companies integrating ERP and CRM systems saw a staggering 27% increase in customer retention rates.
Connecting customer insights with finance and operations eliminates data silos and enables cross-departmental collaboration, automated workflows, and real-time data for improved decision making. By becoming more agile, informed, and efficient, companies can serve their customers faster and more completely. In return, customers are likely to be loyal thanks to a supportive and seamless experience with your business.
How to choose the right CRM to improve relationships with customers
You need to implement the right CRM for your needs to provide customers with relevant content and a consistent experience while achieving your business goals. Here are some key factors to consider when selecting CRM:
- Identify your needs: Determine what features and functionalities are essential for your business. Consider aspects like sales automation, customer service, marketing automation, and analytics.
- Budget: Evaluate the cost of the CRM system, including initial setup, subscription fees, and any additional costs for customization or training.
- Scalability: Ensure the CRM can grow with your business. It should be able to handle an increasing number of users and data as your business expands.
- Integration: Check if the CRM can integrate with your existing software and tools, such as email, accounting systems, and marketing platforms.
- User-friendliness: Choose a CRM that is easy to use and has a user-friendly interface. This will encourage your team to adopt and use the system effectively.
- Customization: Look for a CRM that can be customized to fit your specific business processes and workflows.
- Support and training: Ensure the CRM provider offers adequate support and training to help your team get the most out of the system.
- Security: Verify that the CRM has robust security measures to protect your customer data.
- AI: Does the system incorporate advanced features such as AI and ML? We’ve discussed the importance of AI in modern business above, and you’ll want to make sure you choose a modern solution which incorporates these functions.
By considering these factors, you can select a CRM that aligns with your business needs and helps you manage customer relationships more effectively.
Alithya: your trusted partner for AI-driven CRM implementation
CRM, when coupled with AI, can offer your organization many benefits, while breaking down siloed marketing, sales and customer information. Whether it's harnessing the potential of AI-powered insights, optimizing industry-specific solutions, or unlocking the full potential of seamless data synchronization; Alithya's experts will ensure you get the functionality you need.
To learn more about which CRM is right for your business, contact us and see how we can help you bring your sales, marketing, and customer experience to the next level!