Take a look around. Everything around you is evolving.

You. Your business. Your customers.

But what about CRM?

Why should your CRM software be stagnant? Is it an outdated one or the one with irrelevant features that you don’t need? Is it why your relationship with customers is stagnant and suffering? Do you know where your CRM software heading? Is it lagging? Is it up-to-date with current trends?

There has been a lot of talk about what CRM could be and what it couldn’t. However, as a business leader, you would like to understand which trends are worth pursuing. According to Gartner estimates, global CRM is expected to grow at 13.7 per cent CAGR. The growth, however, shouldn’t be holistic and integrate the evolving needs of business too.

The businesses are recognizing the value of data, their needs are evolving with time, and it is time the CRM is used and embraced as a technology in all its potential and capabilities- which is a lot more than just organizing customers’ information.  So, what is it that CRM should do so that you understand your customers’ expectations and market challenges, way before than your competitors’ do?

So, we sit with a crystal ball (okay, couldn’t resist) and predict what future trends are experts hoping in for CRM. The idea is not to make your existing CRM future-proof but adaptable, flexible, all-embracing and of course, keep your business a few steps ahead in innovation.

The Long Overdue Overhaul

It is time that CRM is seen as a business strategy and not just software –a strategy that understands not only the business but also the customers. This twenty-three-year-old data management technology needs a dire refresh while companies figure out the capabilities within the system to earn rewarding relationships. A system that was initially designed as an application to drive sales function and reduce costs should undergo a transition and work towards building mutually rewarding customer experience.

While customers are getting more and more proactive and engaging the brands online and offline, existing CRM doesn’t. In the foreseeable future, CRM software should be able to listen socially and prompt engagement with customers on all levels. The command centre should alert the stakeholders and filter the noise that there is. The search intelligence, which almost every CRM is lacking, need to be enhanced and should be able to perform just more than a simple string of keyword search. The software should be able to categories the social content as well and push it forward to the right set of people, be it sales, customer support, business development or marketing.

Customers First

Yes, CRM systems were designed to improve the businesses and reduce their costs. To retain their relevancy in future, the customers and their needs should be at the centre point. The CRMs should evolve to make the customer experience better and improved. Customer satisfaction and the prediction of their expectation should be raison d’être for the CRM system. A customer’s buying journey, the analytic tools and the design tools- all should be integrated with CRM. The process of ideal response and action should be in-built for enhancing customer experience and increased ROI.  The optimal response needed for the customers, valuing their time and trust in you can minimize the disruption caused by other technologies and competitors.

Automation is the Keyword and not just AI.

While the world is still getting the hang of it, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have been around in the CRM space since long. However, the possibilities are endless, and if this Infoholic Research is to be believed, the integration of AI with CRM is going to be worth $73 billion by the end of this year.

A few years ago, Zoo’s Zia and Sales force’s Einstein were the talk of the town and paved the way of AI into the CRM system. These bots would use predictive analysis, streamline and ease the bottlenecks by pushing the customers further down in the funnel and eventually, boosting the sales process.  Or that was what they thought. According to Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, the customers failed to process the predictive analysis in most cases, and the machine learning algorithms couldn’t offer any real insights into the large datasets of relationship.

Let’s face it. AI is still in the nascent stage. It isn’t ready for a real crossover and definitely can’t be the only factor making or breaking CRM’s fate. The focus, instead, should be on automation and streamlining the existing process to serve as well as understand the customers. However, its potential can’t be ruled out of the big picture, and it is still the most important technology to uncover marketing insights.  Digital streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon are using predictive analysis and based on this personalizing and recommending content. Such precise targeting can take the hot spot among other customer relationship management trends; however, as it happens with any other hot thing, one needs to proceed with caution and apply it brilliantly within the processes.

Human. Not Machines. And the Balance within

The data operations of Facebook, Netflix and Google tell us to trust data sciences and not the damp squib AI and ML. The basic yet intricate human analysis will be at the core of gathering data insights that will help the companies to gain a peek into prospective customers’ mind and understand their psyche. The personal manual touch gets redeemed (once again) in the world of ML but striking a balance between the automation, and manual analysis is where the magic lies. The automation should improve the efficiency and the insights derived from human intervention should be used to spot the prospects and growth opportunities.

The idea of inducting human touch comes from the realization that the businesses can’t afford to treat their customers any longer.

Data-Driven Customer Intelligence

The business response from sales, marketing and customer support often seem like repetitive and based on a trial-and-error. Instead of relying on the data, the businesses are still adopting an opinion-driven route to make commercial decisions. Existing CRMs deliver basic information and not insights that can be used to develop accurate buying journeys and make improved decisions.  The existing CRMs don’t take customers’ profile, their social media conversations, demographics, buying preferences and other attributes into account to dive deeper into what a customer wants. Data can lend confidence to the decision-makers and help businesses to find their voice amidst all the web interference.

The future CRMs will add many more algorithms, patterns and alerts to predict customers’ behavior and buying patterns. The up selling and cross-selling, recommendation engine and social engagement algorithm should be a package deal in the years to come.

Under-utilized and Unused Data

The businesses take pride in the big data. Each business process has bundles of data lying there. But it is time we address the elephant in the room. It is not about the quantity. It is about quality. According to the  report, up to seventy-three per cent of data is rendered useless. The companies often get data from a third-party collaborator, which can be dirty, inconsistent and incorrect.  The CRM ingests the bad data, leading to inaccurate insights and thus, business decisions that aren’t beneficial. The quality will always trump quantity, and this is why, companies need to get irrelevant, unimportant and inaccurate data out of the system. The right data for the job sets the processes straight and it is time that data scrubbing , data mining services  and data appending, data verification  are made a standardized process for CRM.

CRM cleaning is a painstakingly, thorough job and a semi-automated process. If you go by 1-10-100 rule, the “un cleaned” CRM data can cause a business $100 every time it takes a decision based on the data.

Mobile First

Mobile-this is where the business lies.  deploying mobile CRM has seen a surge in sales and have exceeded their sales quota. Users want their experience to be easy, streamlined and seamless and Omnichannel CRM can enhance it-eventually, letting you stand apart and win brownie points.

Conclusion:

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The future depends on what you do today.” So, the future of CRM lies in the fact what you are doing effectively for forecasting accuracy and a positive impact on your business decisions. The data that CRM thrives on, the data, which goes into the system, processes like data scrubbing and cleaning- it can lay the foundation of strong CRM in the future. However, you need to take action today to ensure that your CRM game stays strong and top-notch. Customer satisfaction remains the number one metric, and in the future, too, CRM will be expected to double up as a solid foundation that can harness data and derive actionable insights out of it. An integrated, aware and intelligent customer-centric CRM platform that can forecast accurate results and measure them is what the future needs.