It is rightly said that the customers form the backbone of any business. Most businesses understand this concept and try to make the best attempts to connect and coordinate with the businesses in the best possible manner. When a business reaches high customer satisfaction levels, it is able to grow at a rapid speed that has not happened before.

A study by Gallop revealed that businesses that are able to effectively engage with their B2B clients have the benefits of 63% lower customer attrition, an amazing 55% of higher share of the wallet, and almost 50% raised productivity. One of the primary elements that help a business give excellent services to their customers is the use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. If the business uses a good CRM tool, it will be able to make the best use of the customer data to identify the interests and trends of the customers. This tool also helps businesses to understand the buying behaviours of their customers. All this information is later used to develop products and services that the customers actually need.
Here, we are going to share some Top CRM Trends for Small and Medium Businesses in 2022 that will shape the CRM landscape in 2022 and analyze their impact on the different businesses.

Integration of the Big Data Analytics and CRM

Businesses all over the world are generating a huge amount of data every year. This makes it worthwhile for businesses to make the best use of the data to make informed and timely decisions.

A number of developments in the areas of data science and technology will help the CRM systems to collect and interpret this massive amount of data in real-time and provide meaningful results related to sales and the overall business performance.

It is also believed that the CRM applications of the future will be highly analytics-driven. This will allow the users of the applications to get overall insights of the customer in a single view.

Disparate Communication Channels can be Unified

Several users of the CRM tools develop and work on omnichannel strategies to have effective communication with their customers. These strategies help the CRM professionals to stay in touch with the customers on the channels that are preferred by the customers themselves. Such Omnichannel strategies facilitate high levels of customer engagement and smooth experiences.

The omnichannel strategy holds several benefits. Still, there are strong indicators that the companies will soon use this method and will connect with their customers on a single channel communication network. This will be later incorporated to develop a centralized platform that provides marketers with all the information that they need.

Increased Role of AI in CRM

Many of the CRM activities today are supported by Artificial Intelligence technology. Its role will only increase in the coming year 2022. It is believed that one of the biggest AI breakthroughs of CRM is the increased capacity to have a conversation with the customers with the help of chatbots. Chatbots are becoming more and more intelligent these days. They are able to manage queries of higher complexities than the current ones. This was all made possible with the increased development in the Machine Learning domain.

More technical advancement in the field of AI leads to a significant increase in field service efficiencies. Applications that are AI-enabled help the businesses to specify the criteria to automatically assign a customer ticket to the right representative and also makes sure that he has all the resources to resolve the customer queries.

Integration of the AI Technology and CRM

Recent development in the IT sector due to the remote work setting and people preferring online activities rather than physical ones also accelerated the tremendous growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is never developing than before and is likely to show no signals of slowing down. Therefore, the developers of the latest CRM systems are leveraging IoT capabilities in their systems. This will provide solutions that will enable the companies to enhance the quality and standards of their customer service activities.

Integration of this technology helps businesses to get deeper insights into the customer. One of the biggest benefits of introducing IoT in the CRM system is, the CRM systems are now able to deliver highly personalized customer services. Businesses are now able to customize their products and services as per the needs of the customers. The technology also helps businesses to run hyper-targeted marketing campaigns.

All the data and information that is collected with the help of IoT enables businesses to carry out hyper-targeted marketing campaigns. IoT devices make data collection easy in real-time for marketers. The overall activity helps businesses to suit the needs of the customers.

Introduction of the Business Vertical Specific CRM System

Verticalization can be the next big thing and the next stage in the evolution of CRM systems. One of the biggest CRM providers, Salesforce, is already providing some industry-specific features. The Verticalization trend is driven by the specific needs of the companies across certain sectors. For example, businesses that operate in banking and financial services must follow highly firm procedures to prevent money laundering as well as other illegal activities by the customers. Similarly, healthcare facilities must make sure that all the data and information related to their patients is highly secure.

All this can be done if the CRM systems are developed dedicatedly to a specific industry. This makes them highly configurable than the CRM systems developed to serve the general purpose. The reason is, the verticalization system is developed to align with the different processes that are unique to any industry.

The five trends that are mentioned above shows how CRM is likely to change in the year 2022. It is thus advised for small and medium businesses to align their businesses processes with the latest developments in the market. These will help to meet your business goals in less time and with improved efficiency and productivity. Always use the best CRM system for small medium business to deliver an ideal solution and delight your customers.