In the past decade, Customer Success has evolved from being a standalone unit that focused on helping businesses avoid churning and downselling to a strategy today that is key for achieving more efficient revenue growth.
As we begin the new year the integration of AI is revolutionizing the way businesses interact with their customers and retain them.
Scott Salkin, CMO of GainsightThis growing expansion of CRM platforms is an important item to keep track of as 2024 approaches.
He told CRM Buyer that “as companies adopt digital tools in order to reduce costs and automate key workflows in order to deliver a more personal customer experience on a large scale, they will become more important in both business models, business-tobusiness and business model, business-tocommerce, in the upcoming year.”
Many customer experience (CX), leaders are now seeing expanding into new technologies The annual CX Landscape Report that outlines the state of customer experience is a great way to prevent lost sales and customers. The Annual CX Landscape Report, which CallMiner The report released in September indicates that macroeconomic challenges are likely to persist.
The report referred to inflation and the global cost of living crisis that will affect individuals and businesses alike in 2024. In the study, nearly half of senior CX leaders and contact center managers strongly agreed to want their organizations to do more in 2024 using fewer resources.
CallMiner CEO Paul Bernard stated that “in a year when most industries were facing changing economic pressures and rapid adoption of technology, organizations had to adjust their CX strategy accordingly.”
The Key Factors Pushing CRM Expansion
Salkin noted that CRM’s growth is driven by two factors.
The growing need for self-sufficiency is a major factor. Today’s digital-savvy consumers expect user-friendly and streamlined interactions. Second, businesses need to be more efficient. They can do this by adjusting their go-to market models in order to offer a better experience at scale.
“Digital tools, experiences and interactions help customers become self-sufficient throughout their buying journeys,” said he. “This allows them to more proactively act or react to buyer needs and preferences, drive improved alignment, communication, relationship-building, and ultimately deliver better results for the customers.”
Digital Customer Success: A New Element of Advancement
After examining the main drivers of CRM expansion, we then turned our attention to digital customer satisfaction.
CRM platforms automate and manage key sales and marketing tasks and help companies optimize their interactions with customers. Salkin clarified, however, that customer success platforms (CS) focus more on activities after the sale.
He added: “They’re designed to give customers the maximum value for their purchases.”
Digital customer satisfaction takes this a step further by combining digital engagements with human touch points. These encounters may occur through email, in-app interactions, digital communities or customer education and learning management systems.
Digital-First Approach Drives Customer Success
Salkin says that according to Salkin digital-first The changing nature of business and the expectations of customers in the digital age are reflected by several factors which drive the approach to customer satisfaction. A few examples include:
Scalability, efficiency and effectiveness. Digital tools allow CS teams scale their efforts efficiently, while maintaining a personal approach to delivering the value. Digital CS allows them to reach a wider customer base, deliver more consistent support, experiences and management at scale, all at lower cost.
Changing customer behavior. Digital experiences are becoming more and more important to customers. They prefer to interact through digital channels and enjoy seamless digital experiences.
AI-powered automation, data-driven decisions and decision-making. These elements are essential to the digital transformation many businesses undergo to stay competitive. These elements enable better informed and more effective strategies that enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.
Customers expect immediate and real-time replies to their queries. Salkin added that a digital-first mindset allows for fast and efficient communication using various digital channels. These include in-app engagements (chatbots), email, community, and digital education/training.
Improve Standard CRM Performance
Digital CS Tools complement and enhance standard CRM Systems. They offer specialized capabilities and features focused on the after-sales phase in the customer lifecycle.
Salkin stated that “features such as automated communication, in app messaging, and personalized outreach can help businesses to deliver and maintain continual customer engagements.”
These methods allow for the delivery of information, updates, and training while also collecting feedback with less effort, since they don’t require human interaction.
In addition, digital CS uses advanced analytics and ML to monitor customer health, which is also known as “customer relationship status.” This evaluation involves tracking usage patterns and product adoption as well as other relevant metrics in order to maintain a positive relationship between the customer and business.
This allows them the ability to anticipate potential issues, and identify opportunities for upselling.
Manage CX without Advanced Tools is Now a Risky Business
Salkin emphasized the fact that even without AI advancements, businesses can still successfully leverage CRM and CS platform, he said. However, they will not be able to take advantage of the automation speed and advanced use of data analytics at a high level that can produce better results in personalization.
New AI models already play a transformative part in enhancing both types of platforms’ effectiveness in several key ways. Sentiment analysis is one such AI-powered tool that provides new ways to gain better insights into customers.
It can analyse customer interactions through surveys, email, social media channels and support tickets. Salkin says that this data can give valuable insight into customer satisfaction and identify potential problems.
He said that AI will play a greater role in disrupting CRM and CS in the future.
AI advances, including natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics will provide more sophisticated features, better performance, as well as more useful results.
Fear, not budget, will challenge more massive adoption
AI and CRM are now inseparable. According to Eric Williamson CMO of CallMiner, the rise of generative AI in 2023 is a good thing.
AI adoption has moved from fear, doubt, and uncertainty (FUD) towards fear of missing out.
CRMBuyer reported that he said it is “one of most transformative technologies of our times, with the ability to upend whole industries and how we operate.”
Williamson described the adoption trend as an all-out rush by organizations to adopt generative AI, switching to more strategic technologies. He predicts this will continue through 2024.
Do you want to gamble with AI or play it safe?
Apart from budgetary concerns, adopters are often forced into a difficult decision between impressive results in business and legal entanglements due to the difficulty of laws to adapt to new technologies. This dilemma could be the most significant challenge for CRM and CSA platforms to integrate AI by 2024.
CallMiner’s CX Landscape Report 2023 shows that 45% of CX leaders and contact center managers are worried about AI exposing the company to security threats. A similar number of CX and contact center leaders (45%) are concerned that the technology will spread misinformation.
A slightly smaller number of respondents (41%) fear that AI could give inappropriate or biased responses to CX and customer-service use cases. Williamson stated that only 6% did not have any concerns.
“I do not expect AI adoption in 2024 to slow down.” He predicted that AI adoption would continue to grow, especially for CX-related use cases.
More business leaders are likely to accept that generative artificial intelligence is not a panacea, he said. They will come to see it for what it really is — most powerful when used for specific use cases, often along with other AI techniques, to meet specific business needs.
He also predicted the organizations who “get it right” are the ones that balance AI agility and speed with responsibility and security.
Williamson concluded that those who do this are in a better position to provide the best value to their clients and to improve the bottom-line.