Your CRM is the centre of your business, storing the most important data. Consider it the brain of your business.
That brain needs support and cannot work alone! There is technology right at your fingertips that can support your business growth.
Think big, think outside this world! Think artificial intelligence, automation, integration and voice recognition. These may all be wonders of the future, but that future is here.
So, what technology should you keep an eye on in 2022?
Artificial Intelligence
When artificial intelligence (AI) first started to appear in technology, it seemed that it was always a thing of the future. Like a technology so unimaginable that it would never be readily available in our hands.
Yet, the technology is utilised in so many applications and platforms that we use every day. It is a technology that is no longer a thing of the future.
AI plays an important role in CRMs and is a feature that you need to start taking advantage of in 2022.
AI helps to organise data in a CRM in a structured way so that the CRMs can effectively use the data. Moreover, with structured data, machine learning is more efficient.
For example, AI helps a CRM to find trends or to predict consumer behaviour. You may be familiar with your CRM having the ability to display data such as the time a contact opened an email or how many times they clicked a link. While this is great data to have, it is information after an event has happened.
AI learns from your contacts to predict the events that will occur. With this, you can create an exceptional customer experience, ensuring that customers have what they need before they need it.
Automation
All of this data collection is not only useful for AI and machine learning. Automations are used to automatically complete tasks that otherwise would be done manually. Think about the task reminders and expiring deal reminders. These are automations that are set up to send a reminder for a manual task to be completed.
However, automations are so much more than reminders. Automation can help you to action tasks from beginning to end, saving you time to complete an entire process manually.
Earlier we highlighted that a CRM tracks when events happen. With the date and timestamp, these can be triggers for automations.
Here are a few examples of the type of automations you can create:
- 1 week after email open AND contact has not purchased, send a reminder email of expiring deal
- 1 week after email sent AND is not open, resend the email
- When a contact is created, send a welcome email
- If an invoice is overdue, send a reminder email
You may be using these types of automations already, if not, 2022 is a great year to start learning how.
Integration
In addition to automations that you can build, there are also built-in integrations. For example, sending financial information from your CRM to your finance platform.
Sure, it would be great if all your platforms sit in one. While that is possible in platforms like Zoho One, you may have some existing platforms that you are not ready to get rid of (yet). A business may use multiple platforms across different teams, ensuring that data can be integrated (easily) from one platform to another is vital.
However, integrations don’t have to be off the shelf. Nowadays it is becoming easier and easier to create integrations.
Keep an eye out for available integrations between your platforms.
Mobile
We always hear that technology is right at our fingertips. Yet, we still need to use platforms from our desktops or laptops to access full functionality.
That has been rapidly changing in the last several years where CRMs are building apps so you can literally access all data from our fingertips no matter your location.
Mobile apps are not a new concept. In fact, Salesforce released their mobile app in 2014. However, with increased technology such as AI, these apps are forever improving to truly help you take your business mobile.
Voice Recognition
With your CRM on your mobile, Imagine delegating tasks to your CRM with only your voice.
Are you familiar with “Hey Siri “Set an alarm for 8am tomorrow morning”
What if you could say “Hey CRM, create a new contact called John Smith and attach a deal worth 10,000 USD. The deal is in an offer state”. And all of that just happens!
Then AI, automations and integrations better manage this data you have inputted – from your mobile – hands free! Imagine the amount of data you record accurately with only your voice commands.
Sure, sometimes this technology doesn’t pick up what we are saying. But that is what you should be watching out for in 2022. As this technology is tested more and more, from its users like you, improvements will be made to take this feature out of this world.
Social CRM
Integrating your social platforms into your CRM will allow you to see interactions with your customers on social media. These interactions are recorded in the CRM and allow you to respond accordingly, all from within your CRM – there is no risk of catching yourself scrolling through Facebook for hours or endlessly watching Instagram reels.
What’s more, people who visit your business pages on social media can easily interact with you through messages – all of which are captured. Platforms allow you to integrate your WhatsApp messaging or business Messenger profile straight into your CRM.
This data collection also supports AI to learn more about customers on these platforms in addition to the interactions within the CRM, such as emails opened and links clicked. AI can learn more about your customers from their social behaviour.
Most importantly, its interaction with the content that you post. You can manage all of this directly from within your CRM.
Customisation and personalisation
As CRMs are becoming more popular, the target market of CRM users is broadening. As this market broadens, so do requirements and needs.
As a result, more companies are considering customisation and personalisation needs as part of CRM creation. Sure, you can add your own custom fields. But what about creating your own forms, tabs, and relational databases directly in the system.
You don’t have to comply with what the CRM defines is a contact or a lead. You can build your own directly on the platforms.
With these options to fully customise your CRM, you can build your business requirements in an existing CRM without the expensive costs of custom CRM development.
Usability
With all the above in mind, usability is a foremost important aspect. You can have all the bells and whistles, but if it is not usable, what is the point?
As more people are using CRMs, and not all of them are tech savvy, the CRMs need to be user friendly.
In the past, using a CRM required some sort of technical background. Gone are those days!
In 2022, keep an eye out for improvements to usability across many different platforms, not just CRMs.
What to keep an eye on?
With new technologies emerging into the market, huge trends are expected for 2022 and beyond. Keep an eye out for AI that is within your CRM and how you can use it to manage your data. Watch out for usability improvements and how you can better utilise mobile apps and its voice recognition. These mobile-friendly tools will also help you to manage all your social media platforms from one place.
Keep up to date with integrations available to you and how you can customise your CRM to meet your business requirements.
Don’t forget, take a break! Your CRM is the brain of your business, it can handle a lot of your manual tasks for you, automatically.
Relevate helps business owners just like you to focus more on the income generating activities and less on the day-to-day tasks of a CRM. Start earning up to 3 times the clients when we take care of your system needs.
Get in touch with us today: https://relevate.com.au/contact-us/
