3 min
As the B2B (Business-to-Business) sales landscape has evolved, it offers the opportunity to harness the value of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in contact centers. In-house sales teams using CRM in the call center now have access to a wide range of automation and AI solutions that reduce costs and generate efficiencies that can increase sales closing rates.
In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2020, 30% of all B2B companies will use Artificial Intelligence to augment at least one of their main sales processes.
To do this, you first have to know what AI solutions to invest in, and how those investments can work with the proper integration of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). They are two fundamental aspects to use them successfully and achieve a high ROI (Return On Investment).
What Is Integration Between A Contact Center And A CRM?
It is a connection between the CRM system and the software of a call center that automatically transfers data so that each system, and the people and processes that use it, work better. As a general rule, contact center software needs to be easily integrated with any CRM.
Why Is It Important To Offer Personalized Experiences?
A customer service center needs to provide personalized customer experiences for two reasons: users demand it and the competition is doing it.
Contact center software is the primary source of customer interactions across its various channels, while the CRM system is the primary source of user information. So integrating those two separate customer-related data sources is key to a more comprehensive view of your customers.
Why Is Integration Necessary?
The integration of CRM and call center software expands the value of CRM data. This data can be used to route customers to the agent who can best solve their problem and give that agent the relevant information they need to successfully manage the interaction.
Conversely, mapping contact center interaction data with the CRM system creates a more comprehensive view of the customer journey, which helps improve business decision-making.
Are CRM Data Improved Through AI?
With the AI integrated into the call center, the data stored in the CRM is automatically tracked. Predictive modeling powered by Artificial Intelligence can keep agents informed and up-to-date, so customers are contacted with the right information at the right time to increase sales retention and productivity.
So to create more personalized sales experiences for B2B customers (and support them with more proactive customer service, a truly holistic view of who they are – their preferences, purchase history, behaviors, past interactions, etc.) is necessary.
An integration with CRM helps provide a holistic view of the customer to the internal sales team, but Artificial Intelligence solutions can improve it. By increasing the information in the CRM, AI solutions can offer an even more complete and comprehensive view of the customer.
Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence-based analytics tools can also use CRM data to provide predictive information about customers. This leads to more proactive outreach by the sales team, higher sales closing rates, and increased customer retention.
For example, the CRM can store customer account information and purchase patterns. But the internal sales team may have a hard time manually entering that information and monitoring those patterns.
Why Develop A Better Understanding Of The Customer Journey?
The sales team can find out who a customer is, what they have purchased or what products and services they may be eligible for, all thanks to CRM. But with AI-enabled voice and text analytics, sentiment analytics, and the predictive behavior model in the contact center, you can get a complete picture of the customer journey, how the user feels about the brand, and what can be driving your engagement.
From chatbots to natural language understanding in the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system, many AI solutions can also work in conjunction with CRM to generate customer journey profiles.
The integration between the call center software and the CRM system improves the commercial value of both systems, helps to improve the customer experience, increases the productivity of agents and allows for more informed decision making in the business.
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