Artificial intelligence (AI) features have been added to business software at quite a clip over the last few years, with the evolution of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT driving the innovation.

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As a result, business systems like customer relationship management (CRM) software have become more powerful than ever, enabling users to do a lot more with a lot less. From crafting team emails to summarizing client interactions, AI has made life a lot easier for those willing to branch out and give it a try.

So, how exactly can your business take advantage of AI-powered tools within your CRM software? Well, that’s what we’re here to help you figure out.

In this guide:

• How to Use AI to Optimize CRM Strategy
• Benefits of Using AI to Optimize CRM Strategy
• Downsides of Using AI in Your CRM
• Getting Started with CRM and AI

How to Use AI to Optimize CRM Strategy

In 2024, business software like CRM is filled with AI features that can organize, automate, and streamline a wide range of business processes. More importantly, our research found that businesses that use AI report higher levels of productivity, so taking advantage of these tools can clearly make a big difference for your business. That is, of course, if you know how to use them.

Here are some of the best ways that you can use AI to optimize your CRM strategy.

Automate operations

CRM platforms can do a lot. They can help you reach new customers, manage support tickets, market your product, and perform a wide range of other tasks that are related to sales, marketing, and customer service. However, those operations can take a lot of time between all the manual data entry and individual checkpoints it may have to go through.

That’s where using AI in your CRM can really help. These platforms often allow for robust automation builders that can streamline business operations quickly and efficiently.

Typically powered by a simple if/then functionality, you can set specific criteria — like hitting a specific sales number — to automatically trigger specific actions — like moving lead information in your contact database.

The Freshworks automation builder can streamline operations to automatically be performed with simple if/then actions. Source: Duanetoops testing

See more : Why Businesses Need CRM, According to Research

Automation won’t just have benefits for your staff, however. The smoother the data entry or sales pipeline process is for your employees on the back end of your software, the more time they’ll have to focus on the customer or client experience they’re managing over the phone.

Generate content

You might not realize it, but CRM platforms actually demand a lot of content creation to keep them up and running. From email marketing campaigns to customer service communications, your team could get really bogged down by all that writing if they don’t have a way to streamline it.

If you use AI, though, you can speed things up substantially. Many CRM software providers have added generative AI features to their platforms, so you can just click a button to have a high-quality content at your fingertips for everything, including email subject lines, product descriptions, and more.

HubSpot email marketing offers helpful tools to generate copy like subject lines. Source: Duanetoops testing

Identify trends

When you use a CRM platform, you create and collect a lot of data. Between all the customer interactions, sales data, and marketing campaign success rates, there is a lot of information about your business that can be hard to make sense of. In 2024, with customers able to make contact through a range of avenues, compiling all this data and organizing it into a uniform format is no easy task.

Before AI was more prevalent, a lot of the sorting would be manual, and significant time would have to be invested into human-led data analysis to pull out useful, actionable insights.

Luckily, the majority of providers now offer powerful analytics dashboards that can give you a means of clearly visualizing your data. But if that isn’t enough, AI-powered tools can help you make sense of the data, providing you with comprehensive trend information, so you can have a data-driven strategy for your business.

Check out our guide to the best CRM for Sales Dashboards for more information

We were able to create and thoroughly customize sales dashboards in the analytics tab of Salesforce. Source: Duanetoops testing

Keep your data clean

As we discussed in the previous section, AI can be used to identify trends from the information you’re storing in your CRM, which you can then use to adjust your sales or marketing strategy. But if your database contains incorrect or duplicate information, your insights won’t necessarily be accurate.

Thankfully, AI can help with this too, by scanning your information for repeat entries, and essentially keeping your data clean, up-to-date and accurate – which will give your customer profiles a level of depth inaccessible to those not using AI to pull data together like this.

Some advanced AI tools you can integrate into CRMs can even do this in real time, so your employees won’t actually be able to enter information that you’re already storing. Even with large datasets, this sort of crawl can usually be performed in a few seconds, while checking that same dataset manually for duplicates might take an employee hours, or even days.

Benefits of Using AI to Optimize CRM Strategy

Now that you know how to use AI to optimize your CRM strategy, why exactly would you care? After all, it sounds like a lot of work, and we haven’t even mentioned what kind of benefits you’ll see from implementing it at your business.

Well, the reality is that using AI to improve your CRM strategy has a lot of benefits that will impact your entire business. Here are some of ways in which AI will make your company better.

• Save time – The goal of AI tools is to take the burden off of your non-AI employees, which means they will have more time to perform tasks that only a human can.
• Increase productivity – In the right hands, AI features can be powerful tools for hard-working employees, which will substantially increase productivity when empowered by managers.
• Improve reporting – In the modern era, businesses are always collecting a lot of data, and AI allows them to more effectively track, manage, and make sense of that information to help them grow.

Perhaps most importantly, though, using AI at your business, whether it’s to improve your CRM strategy or any other business operation, will help you stay relevant as a business. It’s no secret that AI has become an integral part of the business world, which means staying up to date on its evolution and functionality will be vital for staying competitive.

Check out our guide to the Benefits of CRM Software to learn more

Downsides of Using AI to Optimize CRM Strategy

It’s not all peaches and cream when it comes to using AI with your CRM strategy, though. Yes, the benefits are notable, but there are definitely some downsides that you should consider before committing to the use of AI in general, but especially when adding it to your CRM platform.

For starters, some of the AI features — particularly the generative AI features — could cost extra depending on your provider, which can cut into your budget. On top of that, the lack of human-inspired content could lead your marketing, sales, and customer service effort to come across a bit cold and emotionless.

Finally, one of the biggest risks when it comes to implementing AI at your business is job loss. Given the wave of tech industry layoffs that have hit businesses around the world, it’s best to consider the human tool when considering AI.

Getting Started with CRM and AI

Now that you’ve learned all this information, you might be thinking that you’re in over your head on this whole using AI with your CRM situation. After all, you don’t know how to code or have the technical skills for all that, so it’s safe to be a bit concerned.

Luckily, using AI with your CRM doesn’t require all that know-how. In fact, the best CRMs for small businesses are typically equipped with this AI functionality without any additional installation, so you can get started today.