The popularity of a business largely depends on the customers it has. Directly or indirectly, number of customers contribute to the success of a business. This is not a new philosophy, and business owners are well-aware of how customers contribute to their success. Time and again efforts are made to attract customers, improve their experience, and show them that they are valued. This realization and willingness to work towards customer experience is what gave rise to CRM.
The improvement in the existing CRM solutions were driven by the market trends, customer’s expectations, technological improvements, etc. In 2016, CRM development trends were more focused on marketing through social media, promoting apps and integrating related data, etc. With a new year, the CRM development trends have shifted and it would be safe to say that this year seems to be more focused on internal process improvements rather than customer interaction. With this thought process, the article will discuss the CRM application development trends to watch in 2017.
Cross Functionality is on the top of the list because businesses are realizing how specialist task system does not work in all situations. Company representatives who work with customers have to be versatile and handle customer requirements at the right time. The means that the available CRM solutions need to be versatile as well in order to provide smart options to the representatives.
Another related aspect is that the teams or the CRM system needs to be adept at connecting with fruitful insights. This means that the sales and marketing team should no longer work as two separate teams but they should be guided by a similar motive and should work towards that. A CRM solution that seamlessly merges the two aspects is what seems to be in the picture.
Two Pillars of Improved Digital Customer Experience – CRM and CMS
Automation is second in the list of CRM development trends. While the existing systems are already automated, the industry experts demand more automation because if a customer’s queries or concerns can be resolved by a machine, human involvement can be limited and made use of at places where machines won’t work. We get a glimpse of this already when we connect to customer centres via IVRs but the coming year should get a receptive IVR rather than the usual monotonous options.
This trend will likely affect both the customers and company executives. On one hand, company officials would enjoy work getting streamlined and they can probably have some level of expertise in one field. The other aspect would enable faster resolution of customer queries.
Acceptance is the last in the list and this is probably going to be in the prediction list for some of the coming years. This is because there are enterprises which are still unwilling to accept CRM solutions. But, each passing year sees a rise in the number of companies embracing CRM solutions and benefitting from them. The can be attributed to the improvements that CRM solutions have made or simply to the fact that big businesses cannot achieve the same results without CRM solutions. And, it would be interesting to watch how CRM flows in 2017.
