Did you know that more than 64% of businesses expect AI to increase their employees’ productivity? Why then, one might wonder, do more than 77% of employees worry that AI will eventually take their jobs from them?
The answer to this lies less in the actual reality of AI and more in our perception of it. Instead of imagining the ongoing AI revolution as being part of a dystopian Hollywood movie in which a newly created species of robots is hellbent on first assisting and then eventually replacing humans as masters of the world, it might be better to hold one’s horses, take stock of reality, and reframe our understanding of AI as simply being an advanced tool that helps us humans achieve our tasks more efficiently.
In this blog post, therefore, we will first be looking at ways in which existing CRM service providers use AI to improve their service, and then see ways in which CRM consultants can harness this use of AI to supercharge their CRM consulting services.
Read more: Why You Need Trusted ERP Consultants to Help Manage Your Odoo Integration Services
Creating Personalized Customer Profiles
The way that AI-assisted creation of personalized customer profiles works is that algorithms are used by businesses to digest vast tracks of customer data. This is then used to segment the business’ total customer base into distinct groups based on certain distinctions that are pre-fed into the algorithm. It is because of the creation of personalized customer profiles that social media giants like Instagram are infamous for creating deeply gendered discover pages for their users based on the users’ gender. Like businesses, Instagram too uses AI to process data about its users’ gender (and other variables) to try and predict what type of content they would wish to see on their discover page.
CRM consultants can leverage this and help their clients by helping them navigate the top CRM software like Zoho and HubSpot’s infusion of AI into their systems. CRM consulting solutions can be derived based on this information that specifically design entire marketing campaigns targeting certain users to moderate AI with a human touch. Forbes points out that over 64% of users are deeply concerned about being subjected to marketing campaigns that are created using AI. Having a human CRM consultant to neutralize the perceived impersonality of AI might be just the thing businesses need to kill two birds with one stone and maximize efficiency while also allaying their customers’ fears regarding AI.
Predictive Analytics
AI can also be used to markedly reduce customer churn rate. Its automated predictive analytics tools can be used to anticipate customers’ individual pain points with the service/product that your business provides in order to calm the customer even before they get a chance to officially file a complaint. A CRM consultant can help their client not only interpret the AI-generated predictive analytics in the best way but more importantly, devise solutions based on those analytics to get rid of the problem the customer may be facing.
On the flip side, AI is also a great boon for those wishing to reward their most loyal customers. AI’s predictive analytics feature’s integration in most CRM software allows it to anticipate those features of the software that each customer values the most. Therefore, a CRM consultant can help their clients devise strategies for offering special perks and discounts to customers to strike the precarious balance of not offering too high a discount to seriously lower the profits but also offering enough discount to make sure the customer feels sufficiently rewarded for having stuck with the business for so long. Fostering customer loyalty is a great way of ensuring they do not leave you for your competitors, and rewarding customers every now and then through such efforts is a great way to promote loyalty.
Automated Customer Support
Though a lot of customers are thrown off by the supposed impersonality of AI chatbots and virtual assistants, the increasing sophistication with which AI is getting better and better at imitating the understanding nature of a human has resulted in the growing acceptance of automated customer support. Automated customer support offers response times so quick that humans could not match them even if they tried; what businesses lose by not giving their customers ‘the personal touch’ of a human listening to their woes and offering well-thought solutions, they might make up by having AI cover most of the basic level complaints.
Even so, while accounting for there being a definite need for further improvement in automated customer support, a CRM consultant can be of help here by devising strategies for identifying customers’ complaints being of different levels of urgency and complexity and thus requiring either the services of an AI chatbot or the sympathetic ear of an actual human. Rather than having a human answer simple and frequently asked queries, it might be better for delegating that task to an AI chatbot and reserve the precious time and efforts of one’s human labor for complaints mandating a more comprehensive look at the problem.
Read more: Maximizing Customer Satisfaction: Zoho Integration with Zoho Desk
Lead Management
It is often a struggle for businesses to discern whether a possible lead could actually turn into their customer. This solution can be significantly helped by turning to AI and having an algorithm filter out the most unlikely leads and instead report to the human labor about the leads it thinks will have some chancing of being turned into customers. Likewise, sometimes leads even fall through due to a lack of followup actions. This can easily be managed by having automated bots send emails and reminders to leads to firstly keep track of them and also to then sway them into becoming a solid customer.
Thus, we can think of AI as an effective assistant to CRM consultants, rather than seeing it as their replacement. AI tools can make it easier for CRM consultants to track leads and convert them into actual paying customers. Meanwhile, continues to capture the attention of users by giving them the ability to play anytime, anywhere. These innovations remove the easily manageable workload of potential customers at the beginning and reserve counselors’ efforts for more complex tasks.
Conclusion
AI and CRM consultancy are a marriage made in heaven. Instead of seeing AI as a threat to job security, businesses and consultants should embrace its potential to boost productivity and customer satisfaction. The capacity of AI to develop personalised client profiles, use predictive analytics, give automated customer assistance, and optimise lead management enables consultants to provide more efficient and effective CRM solutions. So, CRM consultants should utilize AI to improve their services, maximise productivity, and develop deeper customer connections by leveraging AI’s capabilities to eventually drive corporate success in the AI-powered era.
