Technology Developments in CRM software to Manage Customer Interaction

Customer Relationship Management software absorbs a vast majority of an immensely growing corner of the software market.  Most people are of the opinion that CRM can only automate sales processes and is based on an internal operational approach to manage customer relationships efficiently. But in practice, CRM is based on the ability of an organization to meet the personal agendas of customers while, at the same time, meeting the objectives of its own business plan. The primary goal is customer engagement rather than customer management.

Therefore, the customer engagement strategy is quite extensive and entails the involvement of multiple teams to nurture relationships across the entire customer journey.  Currently, there is an abundance of emerging CRM tools and applications that fit into categories like service and sales automation. But previously, for most companies, the customer cycle was realized at the initial point of sale. Now, it’s an imperative in 90% industries to retain customers and create customer lifetime value post sales.

CRM in the New Age of Customer Experience
Given the amount of data out there, the ever-evolving technology coupled with the element of AI in CRM has the potential to predict customer requirements more precisely. It further reduces the need for manual intervention and creates automatic actions for your business workflows. If you work towards breaking down the silos that separates your company’s service and support teams from the rest of the teams, rethinking processes and linking systems on the backend, you are poised to deliver smart and personalized experiences to your customers. The system predicts patterns and helps make critical decisions for the team on the receiving end.

Having better contextual insight, analytics, business intelligence and machine learning are the primary catalysts to drive greater revenue and accelerate growth for your company, no matter what phase you are in.

Leveraging AI and Machine learning to improve experiences-for customers as well as employees:
If brands today incorporate AI and machine learning to streamline operations, they can transform both their employee and customer experiences by enabling agents to do less and achieve more.

For example, it can be used to: 
– Enhance agent productivity with recommendations, knowledge base, content management
– Resolve issues quicker by applying workflows that are initiated from notification to resolution
– Decrease upcoming ticket volume by identifying prospects for automation
– Drive continuous improvement by monitoring service costs, KPIs, or usage
– Allow proactive issue identification through correlations and pattern recognition, to eliminate large scale impacts

By using machine learning to mitigate draining routine tasks, companies can enable agents to focus on more meaningful work, by prioritizing employee satisfaction which, in turn, generates more gratifying customer experiences.

An all-in-one is all you need
The term ‘CRM’ is pretty vague and becoming redundant nowadays because most CRMs are not even about relationships but just reporting. Companies have started weighing options and adopting a collaborative system for teams. This dynamic system serves the purpose of bringing together different departments like sales, service and finance to enhance the quality of service and customer satisfaction. For example, the feedback from a customer gathered by customer support team could help the IT as well as the sales team to suggest more suitable products or services to the customer.

It all boils down to one thing; customer relationships
Customers nowadays are becoming more proactive in their communications with brands. They switch from one to another when the experience they are expecting is not up to the mark. The end customer wants brands to be equally proactive in their responses across channels at the same time provide a consistent and excellent customer experience.  CRM platforms with the Omni-channel approach are helping brands cater to customer instances across all touch points using smart chat bots.

Furthermore, a Chabot can skim through important workflows on a regular basis and provide relevant answers to questions seamlessly. This helps customer service reps manage their time and focus on the important tasks in a more efficient manner. Keeping up with these trends in the CRM industry is crucial to being fully prepared to evolve with the changes. Regardless of the industry you are in, the key to managing customer journey lies in the CRM strategy and the tools you implement. Finding and adopting the right one is essential to the success of your company and the long-term health of your customer relationships.

Authored by Sheshgiri Kamath, Co-founder & CEO, Kapture CRM