Do you remember when artificial intelligence (AI) was only a thing for big players like Amazon, Walmart, or Netflix? Well, that's a thing of the past! 2023 marked a turning point, and now it's your chance to hop on the technological revolution train!
While big companies have been capitalizing on the benefits of AI for years, small businesses are not lagging behind! It's time for you to explore the wonders of integrating your CRM with artificial intelligence too.
So, what does this mean for you? Imagine having a personal assistant that helps you manage your customers more efficiently than ever before. That's exactly what CRM integration with AI can do for you!
Here's how this powerful combination can skyrocket your business:
The integration of your CRM with AI can bring significant benefits to your company. Here are the details. Photo Generated by Pikaso- Freepik.com.
More about artificial intelligence integrations to grow your business. Here's our article on AI integration for sales force.
Why integrate your CRM with artificial intelligence?
It is a fact that even the smallest business manages, to its extent, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications.
This is software or a toolbox that allows documenting the various channels of interaction with customers and centralizing them in a single location, standardizing them, and generating analysis and reports.
In addition to providing the company with a centralized source of records, CRMs provide marketing, sales, and customer service teams with important input to drive their decisions and new interactions.
Visualizing omnichannel interaction history in a more standard base enables the detection of purchasing and consumption patterns, new prospects, upselling and cross-selling opportunities, among other marketing and sales strategies.
Imagine having a personal assistant telling you exactly what steps to take to turn a potential customer into a loyal one. Exciting, right? Of course it is!
However, until recently, tracking and tracing that growing interaction database becomes repetitive and consumes too much time and technical resources, making CRM an ideal avenue for automation, and that's where developments in artificial intelligence come in.
The growing implementations in AI are integrated into CRM systems to facilitate access to data, detect purchasing and consumption patterns, and personalize reports and analysis.
Discover more reasons for integrating your CRM with AI: Learn how AI is revolutionizing the customer service process.
Some benefits of integrating AI with CRM
As mentioned in the introduction, the integration of CRM with artificial intelligence has been years in the making, to the point where today we talk about AI-powered CRMs, or customer relationship management systems equipped with artificial intelligence.
And now they are within reach of small businesses, regardless of their size or sector. A synergy that can bring a series of competitive advantages and benefits, among them:
Time and effort savings through automation.
Integrating CRM with AI enables the scheduling or automation of a series of customer interaction tasks such as:- Access to databases
- Generation and customization of reports
- Analysis of specific interactions
- Account management
- Scheduling of contacts, emails, and calls
- Visual content and communications
- Billing
- Email marketing
And other periodic tasks that consume time and effort, guiding marketing and sales teams to focus efforts on other more strategic stages of the management cycle.
Omnichannel data processing
Multichannel presence is the standard today in a digital world; however, unstructured and multi-format information is difficult to standardize and process in order to generate patterns and insights.
Hence, artificial intelligence is being relied upon to address this growing and heterogeneous pool of data; refining, unifying, and generating intelligent reports and insights.
These so-called AI-powered CRMs are trained and fueled by this pool of information, producing increasingly refined and relevant insights regarding the business context and its customers, enabling better implementation of a series of tactics or strategies.
Customer experience increasingly personalized.
Artificial intelligence in customer relationship management enables comprehensive tracking throughout the entire sales cycle and customer development, providing input for a high level of personalization.
In addition to tracking, pattern analysis, intelligent segmentation, custom and on-demand reporting allow staying connected with the customer base and understanding their trends, preferences, and needs.
AI initiates primary interaction and handles an increasingly larger base of requirements in a personalized manner, activating human assistance with a high degree of detail and follow-up only when necessary.
Ease of visualization and accessibility
CRM integration with artificial intelligence, clearly set in the cloud, provides all authorized personnel and groups with integrated, standardized, and valuable information for their various analyses and support in processes, regardless of their physical location.
The personalized and intelligent generation of reports equips the staff with what is necessary to activate campaigns, follow-ups, interactions, improvement points, and increasingly precise and relevant forecasts.
Dive into the use of AI to support management processes in our delivery: Intelligent use of AI in customer service: benefits and applications.
How to integrate CRM with AI?
In summary, there is no single methodology as each provider and developer applies their own set of steps, but generally, here are some points of focus and best practices when integrating your CRM with artificial intelligence successfully.
Develop a matrix of needs and objectives
Start by understanding your specific needs and objectives for integrating your CRM with AI. What specific problems or challenges do you want to address with AI?
Clearly define your goals to be able to select the most suitable AI-based solutions for interacting with your customers.
Identify quality data sources
AI algorithms are trained from a significant flow of data, and if these do not meet criteria of accuracy and validity, all development will be in vain.
In this regard, you need to ensure relevant and quality data sources, as it will be this data that will allow the model to generate patterns, reveal preferences, and accurately address customer needs.
Therefore, to ensure results in your CRM integration with AI, identify reliable data sources from your CRM system and consider what other sources you can integrate. Verify the validity of this data and, if any issues are detected, take corrective actions or contact experts.
Identify use cases
Define specific use cases in which you want to integrate artificial intelligence into your CRM.
Start by identifying and including the automation of repetitive tasks, enhanced customer experience personalization, sales pattern prediction, or the detection of patterns and trends that meet certain parameters or restrictions.
It is valuable to establish and implement key metrics to measure the efficiency of each use case.
Explore the range of AI implementation solutions and choose a provider
At this stage, you can already explore the offering of AI integration technologies that can be applied to your customer relationship management system.
There are many features, but the most common ones revolve around chatbot implementations, catalogs and dynamic recommendations, generative artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.
Research and select a reliable AI provider whose infrastructure ensures the deployment of these basic functions and others specialized in CRM integrations.
And make sure they have experience in your sector and hold licenses from major AI providers or developers. This step will ensure that you are working with robust and up-to-date solutions.
Hand in hand with the provider, build and train your models and integrations
Depending on your team's capabilities, you will need to work closely with your artificial intelligence provider to customize your use cases.
Ensure that the integrations fit your needs and align with the existing workflows in your CRM; Zapier is an excellent tool for this purpose.
At this stage, it's the ideal time to perform validations and ensure proper functioning.
Ensure proper training and support
Once the AI integration is up and running, you should provide adequate training to your staff, both technical and CRM users.
Ensure they understand how to utilize the new AI integrations and how to make the most of the functionalities and advantages they offer.
Make sure that continuous support is included in the service level agreements to address any contingencies or doubts that may arise within your integration team and users.
Now is the time to begin capitalizing on the benefits of integrating your CRM with artificial intelligence.
Interested in improving results? Discover how to use artificial intelligence to sell in this 2024.
Some cases of AI-enabled CRM
HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho are examples of CRM platforms equipped with artificial intelligence.
Salesforce
CRM specialists based in California introduced Einstein GPT in March 2023. A powerful, open, and extensible AI algorithm that seamlessly integrates with other AI implementations to provide ready-to-use functionalities for CRM.
Einstein leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze customer databases and offer insights for customer service, marketing, and sales teams, equipping businesses with capabilities to enhance their customer experience.
According to competitor HubSpot, Einstein can analyze customer behavior data to generate optimized recommendations for sales representatives, improving effectiveness, communication, and follow-up.
Among its disadvantages is its price. If you choose the Service plan that includes AI, you could end up paying $500 per user per month.
Zoho CRM AI
The Asian company with significant global presence had already ventured into intelligent features since 2018 with Zia, initially with voice interaction and commands, but today it has evolved into various functionalities.
Zia represents the intelligent features within Zoho, enhancing the functions of this CRM.
It has Generative AI capabilities thanks to its integration with ChatGPT, maintains voice command functionalities, can generate sales forecasts, detect patterns under certain parameters, and automate daily tasks.
Among the drawbacks, many users argue that this technology is still in the implementation process and does not solve real problems for customer service and sales teams.
ChatSpot de HubSpot
The developer and marketer based in Cambridge couldn't fall behind, and in March 2023, they introduced ChatSpot, their conversational AI tool to guide the sales and marketing efforts of their clients.
ChatSpot is capable of managing emails, enhancing content, uncovering patterns, and generating tailored reports and insights with high customization.
Similar to the previous examples, HubSpot, as a CRM, doesn't seem to fit well for medium and small-sized businesses looking to implement AI.
More about integrations with AI, learn about 3 types of AI-driven solutions.
How to integrate your CRM with Artificial Intelligence - Conclusion
CRM integration with AI is within reach for any business, capitalize on its benefits with the right enabling provider. Photo Generated by Pikaso- Freepik.com.
Successful integration of artificial intelligence into your CRM can drive efficiency, accuracy, and decision-making in your business.
Seize the opportunities that AI implementations offer to streamline your processes and enhance customer experience.
At Darwin AI, we specialize in providing small and medium-sized businesses' CRMs with AI, and we're ready to help take your CRM to the next level.
Come and discover what Darwin can do for your business! Contact us today and find out how we can empower your company with our smart solutions.
