Customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions continue to gain popularity for several reasons. This includes helping businesses to streamline operational complexities, automate sales & marketing activities, improve lead capturing & conversion, drive sales growth and boost revenues. But how are CRM trends for 2021 evolving? This is what we’ll look at in today’s article.
Table of Contents
1. Customer experience
2. Artificial intelligence (AI)
3. Social CRM
4. CRM integrations
5. Data driven insights
6. Qobrix Real Estate CRM system
1. Customer experience
Customer experience is a key CRM trend for 2021 with a focus on customer centric offerings. While products and services continue to play pivotal roles, the experience one has using them is paramount. According to SelectHub, “People go where the best experience takes them, and Forrester research has shown that the majority are always willing to try out new products and brands. Furthermore, acquiring a new customer is a whopping 500% more costly than retaining an existing one. On the flip side, a poor experience leads consumers to spend less or stop spending at all, according to Qualtrics.”
So, one can only conclude that providing a top customer experience is key, not only to attract new customers but also to retain those you already have to mitigate loss of revenue.
2. Artificial intelligence (AI)
Forcetalks says that “some projections show that CRM-related AI would raise global business revenue by $1.1 trillion by the end of 2021”. AI and CRM integration will help businesses gain a better understanding of their customers to provide a more personalized experience. AI-powered CRM solutions are also expected to have the capabilities to analyse real-time customer behaviours to decipher buying patterns and boost conversions [Suyati]. More specifically, this CRM trend for 2021 is focused on:
- Automated assistance: AI will be able to “create ‘personalized agents’ that, via machine learning, discover the primary needs and wants of sellers for automated assistance. AI tools will take over tedious, time-consuming manual tasks to enhance productivity. [SelectHub]
- Conversational tools: AI-powered CRM chatbots will use data points in the next few years to anticipate the following questions from customers or make predictions about the additional details customers will need. Such insights will assist service agents to be more diligent about resolving customer issues [Forcetalk].
- Data and analytics: AI offers elevated forecasting capabilities and data intelligence to drive improved business outcomes and boost selling opportunities. [SelectHub]
3. CRM and Social Media integration
The need for integration of social media channels with CRM platforms will become a pertinent CRM trend for 2021. The insights that this integration allows will offer better understanding of consumer behaviour as well as brand perception across the channels. The adoption of Social CRM’s will further enable businesses to:
- analyse what customers are saying about their product or service offering
- respond to queries, comments or even complaints much faster
- make changes to their offerings based on consumer feedback as required
- improve engagement or rapport with prospects or leads in real-time to boost lead generation and customer retention
4. CRM integrations
Another popular CRM trend for 2021 is CRM solutions that allow for integration with other valuable 3rd party systems. It is anticipated that these integrations will help businesses streamline operational processes, improve customer interactions, boost sales and marketing strategies and objectives, and more. SelectHub further reports that, “The internet of things (IoT) also presents substantial integration possibilities. The number of IoT connected devices is projected to climb to more than 41 billion by 2027. Furthermore, CRM systems are beginning to incorporate connections to IoT feeds.”
5. Data driven insights
Companies are increasingly looking to advanced analytics tools to process and understand their data. This requires CRM solutions that can support this now vital functionality that is doing much in terms of creating better customer experiences. And as Forcetalks also says, “companies want the most reliable details about how their sales pipeline works, how satisfied consumers are, and what leads to churn.” As a result, CRM analytics capabilities are becoming an essential business tool, rather than something that’s simply nice to have.
6. Qobrix Real Estate CRM software
Qobrix Real Estate CRM software is an advanced CRM platform that has been built specifically for global real estate professionals and property developers. Taking into consideration evolving CRM trends, Qobrix aims to deliver an advanced proptech product that caters to the changing needs of the real estate sector. It does this through several key modules which include (but are not limited to):
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Leads, Opportunities, Property Matching, Viewings, Offers and Tasks
Each of these modules play an integral part in supporting your sales and marketing activities – optimising the process pf converting new prospects into buying customers more effectively. This will enable your sales team to focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience that will likely boost sales and revenue.
The leads module makes lead capturing easy and hassle free. It offers you the options of adding leads manually or having them pushed into the CRM through integration with your real estate website or other 3rd party sources.
Once you’ve added leads into your CRM, the property matching module will allow you to instantly view matching properties that meet their requirements. These can be emailed to your leads directly from the CRM. As you move leads through your sales pipeline, converting them into opportunities is as simple as a click of a button.
Once converted, the opportunities module provides the ability for each opportunity to be assigned a status according to your business needs. The viewings, offers and task modules will then help you nurture those opportunities more strategically, increasing the likelihood of closing a deal successfully. The conversion of opportunities to clients in the CRM happens with one click as well.
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Dashboards and Reporting
An important source of business insights, Qobrix CRM dashboards offer users a visual representation of key metrics through the collation of real-time data from different sources. Dashboards can be customised to the needs of the business and each individual user to provide critical business intelligence on lead generation and conversion, sales and marketing activities, operational processes, and more. Users can opt to view this data in several ways including pie charts or line graphs, funnel presentations and bar charts. Reports can also be generated for real-time insights so that any business decisions can be implemented as and when required.
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REST API
CRM integration capabilities are becoming increasingly popular. Qobrix offers this feature through REST API so that the CRM can interact with other 3rd-party applications. This offers you the opportunity to generate leads from external sources (e.g. Facebook, your Real Estate website, etc.). It also allows other websites to request information from the CRM and pull it to their site.
The Qobrix Real Estate CRM platform is constantly evolving to adapt to changing CRM trends. New features and functionalities are continuously added to deliver a product offering that will help real estate businesses meet all their challenges. Why not start your 15-day free trial of Qobrix and discover how it can help you elevate your real estate enterprise.
