2018-06-19
How AI can make your CRM smarter and more efficient
It’s rare to come across a sales person or customer service representative who says they enjoy the paperwork more than meeting and working with customers.
But, to better advise them, you need the make sense of the data. Researching customers, having their information to hand, and being able to have a view on how you can help them can be time consuming and sometimes inaccurate if your customer systems are not optimised - or present at all.
There are a number of ways which AI can help CRM:
- Predictive analytics - Know what the likelihood is of different scenarios in the near future and intervene. This can be coupled with information management to present supporting documents, offers and service plans.
- NLP – Natural language processing can help you better understand customer needs, intent and sentiment analysis, giving you more knowledge on how to best serve that customer.
- Voice recognition – The growth of voice in marketing sees customers developing new behaviours and expectations in terms of search and service.
In this post, we’ll be focusing on the value that AI offers with predictive analytics, giving colleagues more time with customers and less time on background work.
Improved segmentation
We all know that customer segmentation breeds success, but how do you validate whether you’re going after the right customers to begin with?
For decades, the way businesses have analysed customer data can be compared to looking in the rear-view mirror; looking behind to try and trace the path forward.
AI now makes this analysis more predictable. By using bigger datasets, we can compute more information and derive new learnings that give us a clearer view of what we can do to influence future customer behaviour and sales. Being able to better classify customers by behaviour, where they are going to be in the lifecycle, lead scoring and channel management has become easier, more manageable and ultimately makes businesses more successful.
Making a great call
Those of us that remember the Microsoft Office animated paper clip saying “hmmm looks like you’re writing a letter” will have a slightly different recollection of virtual assistants than what we’re seeing today. Even the most cynical and digitally-savvy among us don’t know how many ‘bots’ we’re using each day. In fact, the few of you who have found this article have probably been ‘served’ it.
So how does AI help with this? AI makes information retrieval a great deal quicker and easier. Being able to pull together all you need to know swiftly and accurately gives any sales person confidence. This can also be modelled to your business need, such as conversion, promotional management or contract/service management for example. Being able to then action meeting outcomes, report on those and how that affects forecasts can be automated.
Updating forecasts, call sheets and data retrieval will become ‘touch of a button’ stuff.
Smarter People, Smarter Business
Organisations are only as good as the people and teams that make them. Managers should always be looking to provide their team with better information and tools to help their team do a better job and achieve better results.
AI will enable sales people and service colleagues to analyse data instantly, whether that’s service history, stock, logistic information or profile information. That means that anyone with access to AI technology will have a significant competitive advantage.
As your teams learn how to pull the best value out of these tools and how to better interpret customer responses to these heightened levels of service, new opportunities will inevitably follow and/or grow.
