Customer relationship management (CRM) is not what it used to be 10 years ago. It is rapidly evolving and it is only the organisations who make the necessary changes that will continue to reap the benefits of an effective CRM — whether that means acquiring new clients, retaining existing ones, or making sales, service and support processes a pleasurable, customer-centric experience.

To build a strong relationship with your customers and grow your company, you need to keep abreast of the latest CRM trends and make adjustments where you should.

Here are 3 big CRM trends to focus on right now.

Customer experience is more crucial than ever

You cannot have a healthy relationship with your customers if all they keep getting is a poor customer experience. In fact, according to Salesforce, 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.

You need to find ways to create wonderful experiences for today’s customer, like:

• Aiming for enriched data that shows the full customer journey and previous support tickets
• Providing live chat for quick support
• Making customer data accessible across departments
• Syncing customer data between apps to show a 360-degree view everywhere
• Automating the knowledge bases

You can do this by using a cutting-edge CRM system such as NetSuite CRM to reach new levels of customer experience.

ML/AI are becoming an integral part of effective modern CRM systems

Artificial intelligence (AI) is causing disruption across industries and CRM is not left behind. According to Gartner’s 2019 CIO Agenda survey, about 14% of global CIOs have already deployed AI. The same report shows that AI and machine learning (ML) associated with CRM activities will boost global business revenue by $1.1 trillion by the end of this year.

With AI and machine learning, teams can become more efficient in customer segmentation and personalisation. These technologies are also bringing more automation to CRM as they’re able to assist in customer communications via chatbots, solve help tickets automatically, and bring deeper insights to forecasting with predictive analysis and data intelligence.

CRMs are no longer just for customer-facing teams

Traditionally, CRMs have been thought of as tools for sales and customer success teams, but that’s no longer the case.

CRMs are now a crucial part of modern companies’ broader business tools. For example, marketers can use CRMs to best understand the contacts in their pipeline and monitor how CTAs convert just as customer success teams can access a 360-degree view of the customer to provide the most personalised experience.

Upper management at the other end can access valuable data on performance across the board through the CRM system.

Sharing customer data across the organisation becomes even more important when you realise that today’s customers are demanding consistency in interactions and IT leaders are consistently working to break down information silos.

CRM Trends: Conclusion

If you must grow your business, then building lasting relationships with your customers isn’t an option but a necessary step. And to achieve this, you cannot stick with the old system of managing customer relationships.

Modern CRM systems like NetSuite CRM offer powerful, top-of-the-range tools and dashboards that provide a real-time, holistic customer view across the entire customer lifecycle.