3 Key Trends Leading the CRM Revolution A great customer experience helps companies to get more leads, convert more of them into paying customers and get them to refer more people. These trends are making it easier to do all that and more.
By Pritom Das Edited by Frances Dodds
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In most industries, the products and services offered by the different market players are of similar quality, making it difficult to stand out and gain market share solely on the basis of being better than the competitors. Great customer experiences have increasingly become the mainstay of companies looking to set themselves apart from other companies in their industry.
A great customer experience helps companies to get more leads, convert more of them into paying customers and get them to refer more people, thereby boosting both the company's brand and bottom line. Achieving that excellent customer experience is the goal of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the diverse tools and processes that have been developed to facilitate it. Regardless of the size of your company and the products or services you provide, the following are some of the most important trends you will need to include in your CRM strategy, to deliver the best customer experience you can.
1. Big Data and Personalization
The crux of the customer experience has always been the emotions that you are able to evoke in your customers because the happier they are and more connected to your brand they feel, the more likely they will be to continue to patronize you and refer others to you. Personalization is key to developing that essential connection, but it requires a lot of time and effort to gather all the necessary information on each lead, or at least it used to.
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Now, with the advent of tech that can collect and analyze customer data from a wide range of touchpoints such as social media, marketing campaigns, sales, and contact platforms, it's easy to automate the personalization of every stage in the customer's engagement with your company. For instance, your email newsletters can now be personalized to include content specific to each recipient, such that they feel it is intended for them personally, thus strengthening their bond with your brand. In addition, the data insights you derive from analyzing all the collected data can be used to improve your predictive analytics and other aspects of your marketing and sales strategy.
2. Mobile CRM
Customers spend most of their time on their mobiles according to this study showed that in 2019, the average US adult spent 3 hours and 43 minutes a day on mobile devices. To keep up with them, salespeople and customer service staff always have to be on the move and ready to respond at a moment's notice. That has made mobile CRM grow in popularity significantly in recent times, with various popular CRM platforms introducing mobile apps to help companies perform actions on their smartphones and tablets.
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In addition to being able to access full CRM functionality on mobile devices, CRM platforms are increasingly being updated with the ability to integrate with social media. The goal is to make it easier than ever for companies to collect vital customer information via social media channels. Afterward, that information will be automatically and instantaneously integrated with other available data to provide actionable insights for the customer service rep or salesperson who is engaging with the customer.
3. Marketing Automation
Traditionally, CRM has been driven by human beings poring over endless lines of excel spreadsheets and typing emails to respond to prospects or customers or responding to instant messages. Expectedly, that process takes time and is often fraught with mistakes of various types, which is what marketing automation seeks to solve. Marketing automation is the technology that propels your business into a new era of relationship-based marketing with quantifiable results.
Things like chatbot and automated lead scoring will continue to be crucial aspects of any company's CRM strategy, enabling them to save money while simultaneously increasing the speed and accuracy of their CRM decisions, to provide the ideal customer experience, get sales and referrals, and ultimately boost the bottom line.
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