Take a look around. Everything
around you is evolving.
You. Your business. Your customers.
But what about CRM?
Why should your CRM software be
stagnant? Is it an outdated one or the one with irrelevant features that you
don’t need? Is it why your relationship with customers is stagnant and
suffering? Do you know where your CRM software heading? Is it lagging? Is it
up-to-date with current trends?
There has been a lot of talk about
what CRM could be and what it couldn’t. However, as a business leader, you
would like to understand which trends are worth pursuing. According to Gartner estimates, global CRM is expected to grow at 13.7 per cent CAGR. The
growth, however, shouldn’t be holistic and integrate the evolving needs of
business too.
The businesses are recognizing the
value of data, their needs are evolving with time, and it is time the CRM is
used and embraced as a technology in all its potential and capabilities- which
is a lot more than just organizing customers’ information. So, what is it that CRM should do so that you
understand your customers’ expectations and market challenges, way before than
your competitors’ do?
So, we sit with a crystal ball
(okay, couldn’t resist) and predict what future trends are experts hoping in
for CRM. The idea is not to make your existing CRM future-proof but adaptable,
flexible, all-embracing and of course, keep your business a few steps ahead in
innovation.
The Long Overdue Overhaul
It is time that CRM is seen as a
business strategy and not just software –a strategy that understands not only
the business but also the customers. This twenty-three-year-old data management
technology needs a dire refresh while companies figure out the capabilities
within the system to earn rewarding relationships. A system that was initially
designed as an application to drive sales function and reduce costs should
undergo a transition and work towards building mutually rewarding customer
experience.
While customers are getting more and
more proactive and engaging the brands online and offline, existing CRM
doesn’t. In the foreseeable future, CRM software should be able to listen
socially and prompt engagement with customers on all levels. The command centre
should alert the stakeholders and filter the noise that there is. The search
intelligence, which almost every CRM is lacking, need to be enhanced and should
be able to perform just more than a simple string of keyword search. The
software should be able to categories the social content as well and push it
forward to the right set of people, be it sales, customer support, business
development or marketing.
Customers First
Yes, CRM systems were designed to improve the
businesses and reduce their costs. To retain their relevancy in future, the
customers and their needs should be at the centre point. The CRMs should evolve
to make the customer experience better and improved. Customer satisfaction and
the prediction of their expectation should be raison d'être for the CRM system.
A customer’s buying journey, the analytic tools and the design tools- all
should be integrated with CRM. The process of ideal response and action should
be in-built for enhancing customer experience and increased ROI. The optimal response needed for the
customers, valuing their time and trust in you can minimize the disruption
caused by other technologies and competitors.
Automation is the Keyword and not just AI.
While the world is still getting the hang of
it, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have been around in the CRM
space since long. However, the possibilities are endless, and if this Infoholic Research is to be believed, the integration of AI with CRM is going to
be worth $73 billion by the end of this year.
A few years ago, Zoo's Zia and Sales force's Einstein were the talk of the
town and paved the way of AI into the CRM system. These bots would use
predictive analysis, streamline and ease the bottlenecks by pushing the
customers further down in the funnel and eventually, boosting the sales
process. Or that was what they thought. According to Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, the customers failed to process the
predictive analysis in most cases, and the machine learning algorithms couldn’t
offer any real insights into the large datasets of relationship.
Let’s face it. AI is still in the nascent
stage. It isn’t ready for a real crossover and definitely can’t be the only
factor making or breaking CRM’s fate. The focus, instead, should be on
automation and streamlining the existing process to serve as well as understand
the customers. However, its potential can’t be ruled out of the big picture,
and it is still the most important technology to uncover marketing
insights. Digital streaming companies
like Netflix and Amazon are using predictive analysis and based on this personalizing
and recommending content. Such precise targeting can take the hot spot among
other customer relationship management trends; however, as it happens with any
other hot thing, one needs to proceed with caution and apply it brilliantly
within the processes.
Human. Not Machines.
And the Balance within
The data operations of Facebook, Netflix and
Google tells us to trust data sciences and not the damp squib AI and ML. The
basic yet intricate human analysis will be at the core of gathering data
insights that will help the companies to gain a peek into prospective
customers’ mind and understand their psyche. The personal manual touch gets
redeemed (once again) in the world of ML but striking a balance between the
automation, and manual analysis is where the magic lies. The automation should
improve the efficiency and the insights derived from human intervention should
be used to spot the prospects and growth opportunities.
The idea of inducting human touch comes from
the realization that the businesses can’t afford to treat their customers any
longer.
Data-Driven Customer
Intelligence
The business response from sales, marketing
and customer support often seem like repetitive and based on a trial-and-error.
Instead of relying on the data, the businesses are still adopting an
opinion-driven route to make commercial decisions. Existing CRMs deliver basic
information and not insights that can be used to develop accurate buying
journeys and make improved decisions.
The existing CRMs don’t take customers’ profile, their social media
conversations, demographics, buying preferences and other attributes into
account to dive deeper into what a customer wants. Data can lend confidence to
the decision-makers and help businesses to find their voice amidst all the web
interference.
The future CRMs will add many more algorithms,
patterns and alerts to predict customers’ behaviour and buying patterns. The up-selling and cross-selling, recommendation engine and social engagement
algorithm should be a package deal in the years to come.
Under-utilized and
Unused Data
The businesses take pride in the big data.
Each business process has bundles of data lying there. But it is time we
address the elephant in the room. It is not about the quantity. It is about
quality. According to the Forrester
report, up to seventy-three per cent of data is rendered useless. The companies
often get data from a third-party collaborator, which can be dirty,
inconsistent and incorrect. The CRM
ingests the bad data, leading to inaccurate insights and thus, business
decisions that aren’t beneficial. The quality will always trump quantity, and
this is why, companies need to get irrelevant, unimportant and inaccurate data
out of the system. The right data for the job sets the processes straight and
it is time that data scrubbing, data mining services and
data appending, data verification are made a standardized process for CRM.
CRM cleaning is a painstakingly, thorough job and a
semi-automated process. If you go by 1-10-100 rule, the “uncleaned”
CRM data can cause a business $100 every time it takes a decision based on the
data.
Mobile First
Mobile-this is where the business lies. Five per cent of businesses deploying mobile CRM has seen a surge in sales and have
exceeded their sales quota. Users want their experience to be easy, streamlined
and seamless and omnichannel CRM can enhance it-eventually, letting you stand
apart and win brownie points.
Conclusion:
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The future depends on what you do
today.” So, the future of CRM lies in the fact what you are doing effectively
for forecasting accuracy and a positive impact on your business decisions. The
data that CRM thrives on, the data, which goes into the system, processes like
data scrubbing and cleaning- it can lay the foundation of strong CRM in the
future. However, you need to take action today to ensure that your CRM game
stays strong and top-notch. Customer satisfaction remains the number one
metric, and in the future, too, CRM will be expected to double up as a solid
foundation that can harness data and derive actionable insights out of it. An
integrated, aware and intelligent customer-centric CRM platform that can
forecast accurate results and measure them is what the future needs.
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