The Importance of AI for CRM in 10 Years from Now
When we talk about Customer Relationship Management, the first thing that comes to mind is the customer journey experience. Here comes the companies’ challenge of how they can customize a unique and seamless customer journey experience to their customer segmentation. AI is considered the backbone of any CRM system, and in the next 10 years from now, AI will help us to get a 360-degree view of the customer experience through:
Prediction analysis, as CRM will be able in the future to give insightful results and answer the following questions: Which customer has the highest potential to invest, will have more purchases, and is worthy of more attention and recommendations? AI can answer these questions by using historical analysis regarding the likes, dislikes, demographics, and purchasing behavior of the customers. Accordingly, that will help companies to have an accurate customer segmentation, which will facilitate for employees to tackle the pain points of their customers effectively and provide personalized services like giving precise information related to the product or service and avoid unnecessary ones.
We come now to contextual analysis, which is the real future. When platforms become more connected to each other, and all recommendations become based on a contextual and sentiments analysis, we will continuously question whether it is the best time to make a recommendation for your customers. Steven differentiates in his book: From CX to XC between two phases of automated buying. “Automated Needs” or habitual buying behavior, are easy to be predicted and tracked in a time frame. “Automated Wants” or impulse buying behavior are not easy to be anticipated, but Steven believes via the contextual data that could be possible. He gives the example of Jane who likes to buy clothes when she is stressed and providing that you can track the other data of what stresses her (e.g. traffic, or any other circumstances), then you can easily forecast her next move.
Lastly, automation and IoT. The number of connected IoT devices worldwide will jump 12 percent on average annually, from nearly 27 billion in 2017 to 125 billion in 2030, according to a new analysis from IHS Markit. This will boost the collection of data that grows from the connections of additional touchpoints. Therefore, with the help of IoT and AI, CRM systems would provide better recommendations, react faster based on real-time measures, and especially make the customer’s life easier. For instance, if your coffee machine would be able to detect that you are running out of coffee, it can order coffee automatically before that occur.
Once the algorithms deliver, humans trust it. So, are you like Bill Gates and believe that AI is the holy grail, or like Elon Musk, who believes that we are summoning the devil?
