AI Transformation in the CRM Industry: What You Need to Know

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been helping enterprises for years, but recent advancements in hardware and increasingly sophisticated algorithms have created new possibilities and use cases.

And even though there’s plenty of excitement around AI, there’s plenty of justification behind much of this excitement. A recent study found that the potential contribution of AI to the global economy will be US$15.7 trillion by 2030. Additionally, this study identified and evaluated the economic effects of approximately 300 use cases for AI.

We’ve already seen how everything from search engines to graphic design software has begun implementing AI to increase productivity, minimize tedious tasks, and improve accuracy.

So, how will an AI driven CRM change how businesses operate? 

From enhancing productivity to providing a better customer experience, CRMs are poised to become even more valuable to sales, marketing, and customer service teams in all industries. Keep reading to learn more about how AI will continue enhancing CRM.

The Impact of AI Transformation in the CRM Industry

CRM transformation never stands still, and the latest advancements in AI have propelled a new level of development. Some CRMs have already implemented AI into their platform, but it’s clear that we’ve only seen the beginning of the impact of AI on the CRM industry.

Harnessing the Potential of AI in CRM

So how can you harness the potential of AI in your CRM? You’ll need to evaluate any AI-powered features to understand how they may benefit your organization.

Explore how new features work, then consider where they fit with your existing workflows. Do they replace or enhance existing workflows? Or are they creating a new workflow that might not be beneficial to how your employees work?

Genuinely harnessing the potential of AI in your CRM requires understanding how it can augment your workflows. Otherwise, you may create more problems or confusion than you’re solving.

Top Use Cases for AI for CRM Implementation

How can you use a CRM with AI to enhance sales, marketing, and customer service operations? Your exact implementation of new and improved AI-powered features will depend on your organization’s specific needs and the CRM you’re using. However, several potent use cases may already improve key processes throughout your organization.

Let’s explore some of the existing and potential use cases for AI-powered CRMs ready to help enhance workflows, accuracy, and productivity.

A Personal Assistant for Everyone

Personal assistants are a long-time staple for improving productivity, but in-person and remote personal assistants are generally reserved for executives or high earners.

Now, CRMs equipped with AI can provide every employee with a personal assistant, ready to take charge of specific tasks and workflows, such as:

• Manage calendars
• Schedule meetings
• Make automated phone calls
• Take meeting notes
• Handle follow-up emails or texts
• Set reminders for sales demos
• And much more

An AI personal assistant integrated with your CRM will have access to all the necessary information to handle more critical tasks than a standalone assistant. An integrated AI assistant has the data and access necessary to assist every employee in a customer-facing role better.

Unprecedented Personalized Communication

Generative AI is the overarching term for AI capable of creating new content based on a robust data set of existing examples, like articles or art. While generative AI has its limits, it can be leveraged to create email communications with an unprecedented level of personalization.

For example, AI can leverage available information to create highly customized follow-up emails rather than relying on pre-made email newsletters. Once the employee approves the email, it can speak directly to the customer’s needs to help them move forward in the buying process.

In this example, marketing and sales teams can create the base email, then have the AI tool personalize it for the specific customer. This level of personalization goes well beyond having a field that uses the customer’s name; it will create an entirely new email written for that customer.

Enhanced Customer Experience

The customer experience (CX) is everything these days, especially for industries, products, and services that have become commodified. Giving customers a positive, memorable experience can be the difference between remaining a customer and leaving for the competition.

AI-enabled CRMs can enhance customer experience at several key stages, from moving through the conversion funnel to customer support.

For example, sentiment analysis can be integrated with customer service chatbots to understand the customer’s current state of mind, then adjust how it communicates as the conversation continues. Additionally, if a customer needs to be referred to an agent, the chatbot can pass along its insights to ensure a positive experience.

Repurpose Corporate Information Assets as Marketing Assets

Most organizations have a wealth of information intended only for internal use but can also be turned into effective marketing assets. For example, generative AI can take your internal documents, given the prompt to turn them into a marketing email, and the software will handle the rest.

This capability can also be integrated into a CRM to leverage available data about the individual customer to take this use case further and provide enhanced customization.

The overall practice of repurposing internal information for marketing purposes isn’t new, but it’s time-consuming. Now, AI can transform dry policy and procedure documents into effective marketing materials. 

New Levels of Automation for Almost Every Process

Many processes found throughout an organization are relatively mundane, such as copying information from the customer’s profile into a calendar or generating sales quotes.

A CRM equipped with the right automation capabilities allows your teams to create custom automated workflows to alleviate the manual labor and repetitive tasks that otherwise can take hours out of their day.

Automation has been available in CRMs for years, but now AI provides expanded capabilities and opportunities to automate more complex tasks. 

As an example, AI can handle your scheduling by contacting leads or customers directly to schedule follow-up calls or sales demos; then, AI can also adaptively schedule your workday for optimal productivity. Everything from lead pipeline automation to rapid customer service is now within reach for businesses of all sizes.

We’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible with an AI-powered CRM, but the future is undoubtedly filled with enhanced accuracy and productivity.

Leveraging CRM and AI Integration for a Competitive Advantage

AI has already changed CRMs, and this isn’t the endpoint. It’s clear that companies of all sizes will benefit from adopting an AI powered CRM.

However, choosing the right CRM with the flexibility, integrations, and ongoing development is essential to truly benefit your organization. Evaluate current features to ensure any new CRM will meet your needs and understand the development team's plans for AI integration.

Fireberry is an adaptable CRM with an ongoing focus on offering our users a CRM that fits right into their tech stack. We provide integrations and a flexible API and continually explore implementing AI enhancements throughout our platform.

Are you ready to upgrade your CRM and have a future-ready platform that evolves alongside AI? Reach out to us today to learn how Fireberry can help your business.

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