Customers experience expectations are rising, and the stakes are high for companies. In 2019, 84% of customers said the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services — up from 80% in 2018.
Standing at the doorstep of the new decade, let’s examine where these changes will take companies and their customers. Here is a look through several years of Salesforce’s original research to examine one of our favorite topics: what will be the 2020 CRM trends?
Marketers hone in on the customer identity problem
Armed with the power of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and more, marketers can interact in meaningful, personal ways with millions — even billions — of customers, all in real time. However, creating and reacting to competitive marketing programs depends on large amounts of data, as well as robust management and analysis capabilities. In the most recent Salesforce State of Marketing report, it was estimated that the median number of customer data sources used by marketers globally had jumped 50% from 10 in 2017 to 15 in 2019 — and we see no signs that this trend will slow down.
Already, less than half of marketers have a complete, unified view of customer data sources. As the number of data sources climbs, we anticipate that marketers will need to adapt their infrastructure to accommodate the increasing complexities of data before drawing insights from it.
Survey data from the same study shows that the average business uses three different technologies for customer identity purposes. These may often be owned by different departments, handling specific parts of the customer journey — for instance, sales activity managed in a CRM, advertising managed by a data management platform (DMP), and so on. Will the early years of this new decade finally be the era marketers simplify and modernize their technology stack?
While there are several ways to identify customers, there isn’t yet universal adoption of a single solution. However, we foresee that investment and innovation on this problem to increase, given only 28% of marketers are completely satisfied with their ability to create a shared, single view of customers across business units.
Shopping moves to the edge
The past decade saw frequent headlines of a "retail apocalypse." But the reality is that retail is far from dead — it's just transformed, into what some view as a renaissance. The commerce journey in the coming years will encompass an increasing number of touchpoints as it becomes embedded in our everyday lives.
The key commerce trend we anticipate is “shopping at the edge” of traditional spheres — i.e., on emerging digital purchase points like voice, social media, or even gaming consoles: places beyond retailers’ physical and digital properties. No need to run to the store; the store will come to you through the apps and platforms you use every day, blurring the very definition of shopping.
Already in 2019, nearly one in 10 purchases occur on channels separate from retailer and brand-owned properties, both physical and digital. These channels are particularly attractive to younger generations. For instance, Salesforce found that Gen Zers are more than three times more likely, compared to baby boomers, to use emerging digital purchase points, and that one in four millennials and Gen Zers are interested in shopping with gaming consoles. As younger generations gain a greater share of purchasing power, and as innovation continues in the space, we predict shopping will move closer and closer to the edge.
Voice Technology Revolutionizes the Sales Process
Over the past few years, the sales process has gone increasingly virtual. However, while virtual meetings cut down on transit time, administrative tasks like data entry and quote generation remain massive time consumers. Shockingly, our State of Sales research found sales reps spending just 34% of their time actually selling.
Voice-enabled mobile apps for sales may be the answer. We already have the technology: speech recognition can reliably log calls, and natural language processing can spot key phrases in a transcript, generating call summaries and triggering automated tasks like scheduling meetings, creating opportunities, and flagging competitor mentions.
Sixty-eight percent of IT leaders believe voice technologies will be a key part of their company’s business processes by 2021. We agree. If people can rely on smart speakers and voice assistants to manage many aspects of their personal lives, why wouldn’t that expand into sales relationships? We anticipate voice technology to take sales by storm in the coming decade.
Customer service agents take on elevated mandates
Mounting customer expectations make service a challenging field. For instance, 71% of customres expect companies to communicate with them in real time, and 40% won’t do business with a company if they can’t use their preferred communication channels.
To meet these demands, customer service is anticipated to radically transform, with companies using artificial intelligence to manage simple and repetitive tasks, while investing in training to advance agents to more strategic roles.
The changes will be rapid. Based on the responses of over 3,500 service agents and decision makers, the number AI-powered chatbots will more than double over an 18-month period.
The primary drive will be to scale support and reduce agents’ manual workload. Judging by the most common cases of currently chatbot-equipped service organizations, chatbots will:
- Provide self-service in simple scenarios
- Gather initial information about a service case before handing it off to an agent
- Provide agents with guidance and recommendations as they handle cases
- Greet customers when they call
That being said, human agents aren’t going anywhere. Eighty-five percent of service decision makers view investment in agents as a vital part of service transformation. Over the coming years, the biggest change in service organizations will be the distribution of work, with artificial intelligence freeing agents to deliver results in cases that a re complex and involved.
Cross-company integrations bring it all together
In the coming years, marketing, sales, commerce, and service will focus on connecting with the customer across new channels, blurring the lines between departments. However, departments will not be able to meet goals by optimizing operations in isolation. Nearly 8 in 10 customers also expect consistent integrations across departments, making the mission a full-company endeavour.
We believe the next decade will be characterized by a race towards system integration. Successful companies will empower IT to move customer-facing teams onto integrated platforms, fostering a single view of the customer across all integration.
Fortunately, IT is on the same page. Eighty-three percent of IT leaders say data silos create business challenges, and 97% are currently undertaking or planning to undertake digital transformation initiatives to improve customer experience. With Salesforce’s reusable APIs and integrations, Laputa can make it easy to plug in new services as to drive seamless customer experiences at scale.
This blog post is an adaption of an article by Salesforce. To read the original article, click here. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/12/customer-relationship-management-trends.html
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