The clear trend is that business process automation will affect nearly every business in the very near future. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, CRM software is getting smarter and more versatile.
This means no matter what your industry, your customized CRM solution will do more for you than it has ever done before. But what does that really mean? How does artificial intelligence affect your CRM integration? Here are some of the top ways.
Lead Generation and Nurturing
One of the biggest obstacles many businesses have is generating good leads and nurturing them. With artificial intelligence as part of your CRM integration, much of this work can be done for you.
Even sending out cold emails can bring results. Based on the language in the email, your CRM either does not respond, responds with an appropriate programmed response, or alerts you that you need to respond to the customer message.
When it comes to lead nurturing, your CRM can also learn when the best time to follow up with your lead is, when they are most responsive to messages and emails, and even, once they are customers, how often they order your products or renew your services.
This automation not only saves you time and money, but because it is intelligent, brings higher conversion rates and better campaign results.
Analyze Support and Complaint Trends
Whether you have a product or a service, often customers will email or call with complaints, concerns, or just when they are in need of support. An intelligent CRM will evaluate those calls and emails and can be used to spot trends.
This enables you to target product and service updates to better meet customer needs and avoid issues in future versions. But even more vital, it allows you to reach out to current customers using your product or service, letting them know about coming changes and updates, and preventing complaints and support issues before they happen.
This kind of proactive approach can greatly increase customer retention and repeat buyers.
Create Intelligent Customer Self-Service
It is great when you can help customers in this way, but what is even better is if you can create more intelligent customer self-help. This can include everything from the integration of intelligent chatbots to creating more specific and responsive help topics and FAQs.
This not only helps you, but customers are more likely to return or continue using your service if they do not have to take the time and energy to call you or even initiate an online chat. The more your customers can help themselves, the greater the advantage you have.
Social Media and Industry Listening
Social listening is one of the best ways to get to know your target audience, as is industry listening and competitor analysis. When this data is integrated into your CRM, you have a greater understanding of your customers and their wants or needs.
However, the data gathering, and analysis of this information has been beyond the scope of most small businesses due to the time and expense involved. By the integration of artificial intelligence, much of this data gathering can be automated, as can much of the reporting on this data.
Analysis then becomes much simpler and faster, improving your bottom line.
Lead Scoring and Predictive Marketing
Yes, you are generating leads, but are they the right ones, and how valuable are they really? What is your true ROI? How many of them convert? More importantly, what marketing campaigns are reaching the right people at the right time?
The answer to these questions is often complex, but artificial intelligence can help. By analyzing a large lead pool, not only can leads be given a quality score, but your CRM can start to predict what marketing will reach the highest quality leads. Over time, this means your ROI on every campaign increases.
This is one of the keys to your business growth: marketing success, great campaign ROI, and the ability to make data driven decisions.
Analyze Data to Predict Daily Lead Scores
Artificial intelligence and CRM integration lets you go even deeper though. What if you not only new the best lead scores and could predict what campaigns produced them, but you also knew which day and even time produced the best lead scores? What if you could predict the average lead score on any given day?
The truth is, you can. With customized software coupled with machine learning, your CRM starts to predict for you what your daily lead scores are, when to initiate campaigns, and more. Your marketing will be changed forever by the integration of artificial intelligence.
Speed and Enhance Employee Onboarding
Outside of marketing, your CRM can do even more for you. You want to bring more marketing and sales personnel onboard to handle the increased lead load your system is generating? Onboarding and training them just got easier.
The reason? Your CRM is doing a lot of the work, and your new employees can learn many things about your company and your tactics in a very short period of time. Getting them up to speed is simply a matter of teaching them the ins and outs of accessing what your CRM already provides.
This results in an extremely valuable savings, but also increases the enthusiasm and viability of your new staff members.
Increase Marketing ROI
Overall the biggest benefit of artificial intelligence and CRM integration is the various increases in marketing ROI we have highlighted here. Essentially you are decreasing your workload while at the same time increasing your efficiency.
From lead generation and nurturing to data analysis that leads to better, data driven decisions, artificial intelligence and your CRM integration can truly make a difference to you, your employees, your customers, and in the long run your business and profitability.
Ready to learn more about custom CRM solutions and what they can mean you your business profits? Have questions about process automation and what solutions are right for you? Contact us today for more information.
About The Author: Troy Lambert
Troy is a freelance business and tech writer from the northwest where when not writing about being an entrepreneur he writes thrillers and mysteries. He's the owner of Unbound Media and loves business process automation, customer service, and all the benefits technology offers to today's businesses.
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