Direct experiences, characteristics and future vision of AI in customer relationship management (CRM) systems
Want to learn more about how AI is being used in customer relationship management, which customer relationship management solutions offer AI features, and how effective they are?
As co-founder of Salesflare , building a CRM for more than a decade, I tested out 8 of the top CRMs that offer intelligence features firsthand.
I am happy to accompany you in this adventure.
The Current State of AI in Customer Relationship Management
With the rapid evolution of AI cayman islands phone number data models, there is always a lot of expectation on AI to make new things possible in all types of software. The same goes for customer relationship management software .
As CRM vendors feel the need to react quickly to these new expectations, they often add AI features that seem great from a marketing perspective, but don’t deliver significant value to their customers. Some would say this is “lipstick on a pig,” and I think they’re right.
Number of these AI functions:
- Do not improve the what does this mean for marketers? fundamental usefulness of CRM software .
- Do not add more value than autonomous AI models.
- Overpromising and underdelivering.
After all, it’s nice to have an AI model to help you write emails, but it has to be better than what you get in ChatGPT, Copilot for Microsoft 365 , or Gemini for Google Workspace . Otherwise, why pay extra to your customer relationship management software for this feature?
There is no doubt in my mind, however, that all rich data vendors will continue to improve, as I think everyone agrees that the introduction of AI will redefine software. (And no, not everything will become a chat interface, visual interfaces are not dead. Visual interfaces are not dead.)
So, if we seem to be only at the beginning of the AI CRM journey, where are we really going?
The Future of AI-Based Customer Relationship Management Solutions
At its core, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. And that’s what CRM software does: it helps you track, build, and manage customer relationships more effectively and on a larger scale.
If you only have a few customers or less than 10 leads in your pipeline, you may not need customer relationship management software. Your brain and a simple system to stay organized will do the trick. But as you scale, a good CRM software can help you track your sales in a much better way. You’ll build better relationships, manage your sales better, and make more money.
This is also where AI can bring the most value to CRM.
Here are some AI features I see that could help you track, build, and manage customer relationships at scale:
- Populate and update the CRM for you semi-automatically, so that everything is properly tracked. This ranges from suggesting companies, contacts and opportunities to create to collecting all available information about them.
- Reminding you to do important things when you forget to do them: follow up with an important prospect, respond to an email, add a note to a meeting, etc. CRM can be your enhanced second brain.
- Summarize large amounts of information For example, it can summarize a history or timeline with a customer, suggest next steps, and answer questions they may have about it. For example, it can summarize a customer’s history or timeline, suggest next steps, and answer questions you may have about it. It can also summarize a call for you. Or it can summarize the relationship you have with a prospect or customer.