Customer Relationship Management Trends to look out for
Whether you work as a customer service agent or manage a support team for your company, the successful implementation of current CRM trends will often make or break your clients’ perception of the servicing you provide.
According to Small Biz Genius, companies that have successfully implemented a CRM tool have seen a spike in sales revenue by up to 29%, with customer retention and satisfaction rates also experiencing an uptick of 47% due to proper management of their needs.
Contact centres with dedicated CRM outsourcing, as well as businesses with their own customer relationship departments should always look for new ways to innovate when it comes to servicing.
That being said, let’s take a look at several noteworthy CRM trends to watch for, as well as why you should do so going further into this decade.
The Benefits of Up-To-Date CRM Trends Implementation
Let’s discuss the “why” behind CRM trends implementation before we take a look at several changes coming to the industry in the near future.
Customer relationship management has existed for as long as businesses have sold products and services to customers.
With the advent of cloud computing, AI, mobile-first services and other digital innovations, CRM had to evolve in order to remain competitive and to ultimately provide its servicing agents and end-customers with a platform they could rely on.
While your support services might be entirely functional, your competitors will always look for ways to provide a little more than you, effectively increasing their value proposition compared to your brand.
Brand loyalty, customer retention and positive public image are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to being ready and willing to up your CRM game as time goes by.
Innovation doesn’t lead to stagnation – quite the opposite in fact.
Pioneering new CRM trends will allow you to differentiate from other businesses on the local market and beyond.
4 Customer Relationship Management Trends in 2020
1. An Emphasis on Brand Experience
While the trend was present in the industry well before 2020, the fact that simply selling a product to a customer isn’t enough anymore in terms of servicing will come to the forefront in the near future.
Whether it’s post-purchase follow-up calls or customers’ contacting your business or customer support centre, you should always be aware of each individual customer’s history with your brand.
Using a centralised CRM platform that will allow you to gather, segment and comb through customer data as calls and emails come into your contact centre or support department will do wonders for your retention and brand image in 2020.
Pulling up their past experiences with your brand and referring to them during your conversation will allow the customer to feel more engaged and taken care of in terms of servicing apart from the obvious problem-solving nature of the call or correspondence.
In short, 202o is all about personalisation and a CRM tool is the key enabler.
2. Growing Mobile Presence
In terms of back-end CRM, mobile platforms have experienced a boom in recent years and are now able to facilitate customer servicing and data analysis regardless of the agent’s current location.
This opens the possibility for remote work activities, timely responses to customer queries, global CRM outsourcing, as well as the seamless ability for customer support professionals to shift between in-office apps and their mobile counterparts.
Customer-side servicing expectations have also shifted with times, given the widespread nature of smartphone devices and internet access.
Customers may now contact their brands’ support services via messaging apps and video calls via their smartphone device regardless of where they are at the time of experiencing a problem with any given product or service.
3. Social Media Engagement
Social media platforms continue to enjoy a multi-billion user base which continues to exhibit growth on a daily basis.
Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn thus provide customer support representatives with a unique opportunity to engage their customers through a variety of activities aimed at servicing, feedback gathering and community management.
Social media platforms can be used in a plethora of ways, such as to announce upcoming products or services, publish updates on common customer issues or to simply provide another communication channel to would-be customers who come across problems with a product or service.
Positive social media interaction is bound to not only elevate your brand’s public perception but also allow for the word of mouth to spread more easily given the networked nature of social media in 2020.
4. CRM Process Automation
Lastly, providing as many customers with timely, representative and helpful servicing should remain centre stage as we go into the new decade.
Manual customer servicing without a dedicated CRM platform to back your activities will quickly spiral out of control due to the sheer volume of information, variables and request types flowing into your contact centre.
With that in mind, CRM automation will play a huge role in ensuring that every customer is processed more efficiently given the recent rise of AI technologies, chatbots and data analysis algorithms.
This will leave customer support agents with more time to dedicate to actual customer engagement and servicing, further elevating your business’ or clients’ CX going forward.
Customer-First (Conclusion)
Whether through a thorough internal audit and reevaluation of your customer support capabilities or through small additions to an existing model, implementing new trends as they come is more than valuable in the long run.
Referring to hubs such as CX Central can give you useful insight into the current customer servicing trends in order to refine your processes as we move forward.
Finds ways to innovate within your CRM model and your customers’ satisfaction and CX will reflect those efforts.
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