Customer Relationship Management
These days, providing the best product and services to the customers isn’t enough. Building a relationship with the customers to improve loyalty and retention can escalate the bottom line. A list of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) trends appear in the tech market every now and then. It is not only significant to acknowledge the trends but also to adapt them as it can give the business an edge over the competition.
To eradicate your hustle, we’ve listed some of the CRM trends you should know at the start of a new decade. These changes are nothing but a step-by-step process to move to a CRM platform that improves the relationship with customers and alongside provides real-time insights.
Customer Identity and Access Management
Every marketer is harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) these days.
And why not! AI helps them interact with millions and billions of customers, all at one time. However, standing firm and developing marketing programs require a large amount of data with a good system and analysis capabilities. Customer data, though, brings greater insights, but the marketers need an exceptional infrastructure for managing the data and drawing insights from it.
There is a technology named Identity and Access Management (IAM) that constitutes the core of customer relationship management. It provides the administrator with the tools and technologies to mention the user’s role, track user activities, and create reports based on those activities. The system is designed to provide a means of administering user’s access throughout the enterprise while ensuring necessary compliances and regulations. Not only IAM, but there are several other technologies for customer identity purposes.
Nevertheless, we expect investment and innovation over the platform to increase.
Unified interaction
There are many CRM strategies that focus on omnichannel or a multichannel approach. And to support this approach, companies make an effort to remain available on all the communication channels used by the customers. These strategies have a clear benefit- that is, to maximize user engagement.
However, the CRM trend of 2020 depicts a different perspective. It indicates that the single-channel approach to CRM is more powerful. The experts are saying all these channels will be unified into a single piece of software that handles all the channels. The sole idea to move from multichannel to one channel is that people no longer have to switch between multiple channels to communicate with the customer. The centralized interaction will help companies in the extraction of valuable information and smoothen internal operations.
Again, thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI), it identifies simultaneous communication over different platforms from one customer and closes them all (communication threads) to talk only on one platform.
Voice Technology
In the last few years, the sales were seen getting virtual. At one end, where virtual meeting helped in cutting down the transit time, the administrative tasks such as data entry ate up a large chunk of time. Therefore, it was found that only sales representative spend their actual time selling.
Most of their (sales reps) time is spent on –
- Sending emails
- Organizing customer information
- Finding the right person to contact
- Creating follow-ups emails
- and everything that is needed to close a deal
It implies that voice-enabled mobile applications are the answer to it. Voice engagement will appear as the next frontier that the CRM platforms will be exploring.
For Your Knowledge: Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce are providing funding to Tact.ai, a company that lends smart voice assistant technology. A contributor at Forbes, Daniel Newman, states that Salesforce is going to invest in the Einstein Voice Assistant to help make it even easier for staff to track, update, and notify the teams about relevant customer data. The company, further, extends the same to other business to business enterprises for them to utilize and harness the potential of voice technology.
It is the customer experience (CX) that will continue to shape the future of customer relationship management. That means CRM platforms will focus on improving usability and provide them an interface that is easy to use. The experts claim that CRM systems are going to evolve and help the users to access and analyze the information conveniently; like, there will be a simpler way to initiate contact with customers.
In short, the CRM platform will render improved and personalized service to the users. It will actually fit in the content that engages the readers and help him/her generate the real value out of the technology. As a user, CRM platforms will remain a crucial and simpler aspect of gaining insights about a company/brand.
Tailor-made CRMs
As the next step in the discipline of evolution, it was about verticalization. There will be new CRM systems that will focus on the development of vertical markets. And, there will be existing vertical CRMs that will offer an advanced set of features.
Moving forward, the industries will be able to choose from a variety of CRM platforms that will have built-in functionalities to meet the industry regulations. For instance, CRM systems such as EHR software maintain record-keeping needs of any and every industry.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
With the help of the newest possibilities, AR and VR are changing the way companies engage with their customers. Also, the CRM platform that integrates AR and VR provides companies with advanced functionalities for marketing campaigns and sales. It plays a major role in transforming the buying behavior that will ultimately act in favor of companies.
The bottom line
Customer relationship management holds a massive significance in the software industry. And, the above research reveals that it is just going to grow in the coming years. I’m sure the overview of the CRM trends 2020 caters to your business needs. It will help you understand which features to look for in a CRM platform while establishing a new business.
You should also make sure that you choose the best CRM for your business. Also, check out the 4 Questions Every Professional Should Ask About Their CRM System. Not only the CRM platform buyers but the companies can also refer to the CRM trends 2020 to understand what customers expect from them.
