CRM in 2017 and Beyond

CRM Systems and Human Relationship

In this interconnected web of human network one individual is linked to other by a special connection, that we commonly refer as "Relationships", and Organisations had always been struggling to analyse and decode this very basic human phenomenon, to help them build relationship with their customers.

Relationships by its own very nature had always been the most complex human behavior to understand, so we applied technology to help us understand our customers better and strengthen our bonds, these miracle softwares are known as "Customer Relationship Management"

but the question still remains have we succeed at understanding Customer Relationship or are we still trying out?

CRM Softwares and Future

With the advent of CRM solutions taking rise in late 90's Businesses found a sweet spot for managing all customer interactions in one place, but now with rise of technology and ever changing customer needs

"is it just sufficient to have a 360 view of the customer" ?

"Are CRM Solutions a help or an additional task for sales teams " ?

Key Feature Recommendations - 2017 & Beyond

In order to succeed in 2017 and beyond it would become absolutely necessary for CRM systems to evolve from Customer Relationship Management to Customer Engagement Management.

Some of the hot features that would become differentiating factors in CRM Sales are as below:

Lead Scoring : Automated AI driven lead scoring to help sales reps focus on good leads, then a laundry list.

Lead Enrichment: Decision based engine to nurture leads based on criteria and Conditions, helping sales rep cultivate benefits of wait time. Machine learning based engines would get advantage over classical decision algo based engines.

Configure Price Quote: Straight thru processing engines making sales cycles shorter than 30 seconds. Automated lead qualification and decisioning engines, helping pre qualified leads become customers in a click.

Automated Customer Service: We would see more and more customer interactions happening via mobile than call centers and web. This would need to customer services to become proactive and engaging for customers. Providing right information to customers on each step, this is only possible by automating customer service an increasing self service capabilities.

Sentiment Analysis: This has already reached its peak, now CRM solution providers have to offer "Natural Language Processing" Capabilities as standard offering, enabling system to read thru emails and messages and convert them to Leads and Cases automatically.

Intelligent Workflows: Defining a boolean logic based workflows won't work anymore. It would become absolutely necessary to have your workflow engines to be smart, that can take complex decisions automatically. This would require AI & Big data to come together to make this happen.

Plug & Play Integrations: Businesses across globe are sick with integration nightmares, CRM solutions have to offer standard pre-configured connectors (CIBIL, PAN, AADHAAR), and a provision to plug and play almost all types of integration engines.

Meaningful Customer Insights: Fancy charts does not make sense, what is important is to tell me numbers so that i can focus, that's what is the customer need. CRM Solutions have to offer meaningful customer dashboards which can calculate past and predict future.

Context Driven Communication: There is no help in sending offers when customer is already escalating issues, CRM systems have become context aware and tailor auto- responses based on customer's interaction with system.

Sales Assistant for Sales Reps: Sales reps need help, and not in form of sales manuals. CRM mobile solutions would need to provide Sales coach / Bots to enable feet on street sales teams deliver more, and help them when needed, this has to be voice enabled with AI capabilities such as auto form filling, recommendations.

AI Enabled Customer Apps for Self Service: Customer facing apps can't be unaware of customer interaction, the content and offering made thru them have to be personalized and context driven, thereby pitching right products to right customers at right time.

Year 2017 is going to be an exciting year for CRM industry where we would witness some players becoming outrageously big by adopting to these changes, while other getting taken over or fade away.

At last would say May the best Player Win.