15 Key CRM Software Trends & Predictions for 2024 and Beyond - Financesonline.com (2024)

With market competition growing tougher than ever, good customer relationship management (CRM) might be the only thing that can make a business stand out. However, businesses today may find that achieving good CRM is easier said than done. According to CRM trends, many CRM software solutions now integrate new technology, making it slightly more difficult for businesses to maximize the use of these tools.

Moreover, customer expectations of businesses have only risen further in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to 58% of consumers, they expect better customer service than they did a year ago (Talkdesk, 2021). Combined with new customer technology, these higher expectations push businesses to constantly improve their relationships with customers.

To help business owners in these efforts, we’ve listed down the most important CRM software trends for 2022. By knowing these trends, business owners and their teams can better understand how to meet customer needs more efficiently.

Using software for more efficient customer relationship management is not exactly a new concept. However, many businesses find themselves leaning on CRM solutions even more these days. Factors such as customer preferences have also pushed businesses of all sizes to quickly adopt an “all-digital” CRM strategy.

Business experts expect the spreading adoption of CRM technology to continue in the coming years, too, especially with consumers saying that they plan to continue their new shopping behaviors post-pandemic. To meet these increased demands and ensure brand loyalty in a volatile market, businesses must use everything in their toolbox.

Personalization, improved customer experience, and technologies, such as VR, AR, and IoT continue to influence CRM trends as well. Staying on top of these trends can provide business owners with valuable insights into customer behavior. As a result, these insights can help sales and customer service teams plan more effective strategies for meeting customer needs.

Below, we’ve listed some of the most important CRM software trends today. Hopefully, this list can help business owners hit the ground running in using CRM to improve their bottom lines and drive business growth.

1. Continued Expansion for the CRM Platform Market

If CRM software trends are anything to go by, the outlook remains positive for the CRM platform market. Previous projections forecast that the CRM market would be worth $113 billion by 2027. However, newer data indicates that the global CRM market could reach $129 billion by 2028 (Fortune Business Insights, 2021).

Software giants such as Microsoft, Zoho, and Visma continue to dominate the market. These software are also likely to continue to demand larger market shares in the future (Latka, 2020). These companies’ growth will be spurred by the businesses’ increased investment in top CRM software. By making such investments, business owners can make sure they have the tools needed to maintain and improve relationships with customers.

Interestingly, experts have also calculated the estimated ROI of such investments. CRM trends 2022 now indicate that businesses can make as much as $30 for every dollar spent on CRM (Carter, 2021). The potential ROI alone makes CRM technology a sound investment for any business.

2. Using CRM to Gain a Deeper Understanding of Customers

CRM software trends show that CRM has grown to do more than just contact management and lead nurturing. These tools now work to provide businesses with a highly detailed view of customers, thanks to the amount of data they’re able to collect. Using data from CRM tools, sales and customer support teams can build comprehensive profiles of each customer they interact with.

Sales teams, in particular, reap plenty of benefits from this in-depth view of customers. According to a sales industry report, 70% of salespeople consider CRM as “very important” to closing deals (Chang, 2021). As such, up-to-date, complete CRM data is crucial to highly successful sales teams.

3. Connecting All Business Aspects to CRM

As consumer behavior evolves and more customers depend on virtual interactions, more businesses realize the importance of maintaining an efficient CRM system. To take full advantage of the benefits brought by CRM, companies and organizations must integrate the software into all business processes.

By integrating CRM with other business software and tools, companies can build a single, overarching view of each customer and remove data silos in the organization. In turn, marketing systems can use this single source of truth to craft highly personalized customer journeys. As a result, these personalized journeys help increase brand loyalty (Salesforce, n.d.).

For instance, most CRM tools today can be integrated with a wide range of marketing software, including email marketing platforms. Syncing data between CRM and marketing systems ensure that customers’ contact data is always updated. This integration also minimizes the hassle of dealing with duplicate emails.

4. All Teams Will Rely on CRM Tools

In line with the previous trend of integrating CRM into every part of a business, business experts also expect CRM to be used by all teams in an organization. Traditionally, CRM technology was considered the tools of the trade of customer-facing teams in sales and customer support. However, this may change in the coming years as CRM becomes part of a tech stack used by the entire organization.

Moreover, according to CRM software trends, this company-wide use of CRM may come sooner as organizations realize how underutilized CRM systems are. One study even found that 80% of businesses recognize that CRM tools have greater utility than supporting sales and customer service professionals (Salesforce).

For instance, finance and accounting teams can also benefit from CRM tools, especially those that come with invoicing software features (Akhrin, 2021). Once sales teams successfully close deals, accounting teams can use these CRM systems to immediately send an invoice to customers. Using these systems to manage invoices and payments also makes it easier to track revenue.

5. CRM’s Growing Role in Customer Experience

Understandably, CRM has grown to play a more significant role in improving customer experience. This is largely due to a CRM system’s ability to serve as a centralized location for any and all customer data. These tools provide all the data businesses need to create positive customer experiences that encourage brand loyalty and ultimately boost the bottom line.

As a result, the future of CRM involves supporting organizations as they scale personalization efforts (Hufford, 2021). Through CRM tools, teams can handle a growing volume of customer interactions while ensuring that each message is targeted and customized. Such efforts can vastly improve customer experience.

Providing a positive customer experience right off the bat is crucial. This is especially true since CRM trends 2020 indicate that over 60% of customers will talk to their family and friends about a negative experience with a company (Smart Insights, 2020).

6. The Rise of Channel-less CRM

A holdover from the CRM trends 2021 brought us, channel-less CRM may become the norm sooner than businesses think. We’ve heard all about the benefits of developing omnichannel strategies in the context of omnichannel marketing. However, business experts expect CRM technology to take one step further and adopt a channel-less strategy.

In contrast to omnichannel CRM, which involves meeting customers in all the channels they use, a channel-less CRM approach puts less focus on these communication channels altogether. One of the most persistent emerging trends in CRM, channel-less CRM also holds that customers don’t care about a business’ efforts to align customer communications and neither should agents. Instead, sales and customer service reps should focus on providing a customer experience that’s seamless, relevant, and highly personalized (Second to None, n.d.).

Also, with a channel-less CRM strategy, the customer is at the center of CRM processes, from start to finish. To support such efforts from businesses, CRM tools are expected to integrate advanced technology that allows for more intensive customer data gathering.

Perhaps it bodes well for this trend that 43% of retail businesses have already implemented solutions that integrate CRM tools and ERP platforms.

7. Social CRM Continues to Grow

Social CRM shows no signs of slowing down in the coming years. This type of CRM emerged as one of CRM best practices 2020, and businesses today continue to use social media to build better relationships with customers. To facilitate this, many CRM tools today seamlessly integrate with popular social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

In addition to CRM systems that offer integrations with social media channels, businesses today can take advantage of distinct social CRM solutions. Through these tools, companies can gain insights into a vast trove of customer data, including buying habits and product feedback. The information can help businesses get a more accurate picture of their customers.

As the number of social media users grows each year, it’s understandable that companies have only increased their use of social media as well. In fact, 92% of companies use social media at least for marketing purposes (Wutzke, 2021).

Most Popular CRM Software

1. HubSpot CRM is a free CRM that offers a powerful set of tools that can transform the way your team works and communicates with your customers.
2. Salesforce CRM is an app that lets you track all customer information and interactions in one location to follow more leads.
3. Freshsales is a customer relationship management software designed to enable high-velocity teams to keep track of contacts while solving their queries.
4. Pipedrive is a personal sales manager for small, medium, and large businesses that lets you close more deals and improve sales.
5. Nimble is a tool that allows you to combine your contacts, email, social, activities, and follow-ups in one place.

8. More Sophisticated CRM Prevents Tech Stack Fatigue

Along with CRM practices, CRM systems have evolved over time as well. Many CRM tools these days offer sophisticated features not just for customer relationship management but also for sales and marketing. As these tools start to gain wider adoption, more businesses will be able to cut down their tech stack. This can help companies improve productivity and reduce tech spending.

In addition, this is one of the many CRM trends reflecting the greater integration of CRM across a company’s tech use. To make the most of sophisticated CRM, it’s best for companies to set up data syncs between the tools teams use. This data syncing ensures that customer data is always up-to-date, wherever it’s viewed.

9. CRM Automates More Business Workflows

Along with these tools’ growing sophistication, business experts also expect increasing automation capabilities from CRM. Many CRM today have also started offering features to help teams automate routine tasks, such as customer data updates, sharing documents, and manually sending emails. These tasks, which are often referred to as “work about work,” consume up to 60% of skilled professionals’ valuable time (Koetsier, 2020).

Various CRM processes benefit from automation. For instance, you can set up automated email workflows for nurturing leads, sending follow-ups for abandoned carts, and reaching out to customers with product recommendations (Hufford, 2021). By automating these tasks, CRM professionals can focus on more valuable tasks like mapping out customer journeys and analyzing customer data.

10. Smarter CRM through AI

CRM continues to grow more advanced, thanks to technology such as artificial intelligence. The integration of AI into CRM is not exactly new, but it’s something that’s expected to significantly influence how businesses do CRM in the future. In fact, the AI-enabled CRM market is expected to be worth $73 billion by 2023 (Infoholic Research LLP).

One of the most important benefits of integrating AI into CRM involves AI’s ability to quickly sift through and make sense of high volumes of unstructured data. The technology can identify patterns and trends in consumers’ buying behavior, segmenting customers in new ways. Moreover, AI can make recommendations at different points of the sales funnel, helping businesses make data-driven decisions.

For instance, some advanced CRM systems use AI to analyze customer data and make predictions on lead sources. Other CRM also use AI to offer automated assistance via chatbots.

11. CRM with Voice Recognition and Conversational UI

Similar to AI, voice technology has the potential to improve the capabilities of CRM tools. Voice technology makes the software more accessible and easier to use. For instance, in many cases, teams can use speech-to-text features to significantly speed up data entry. Through speech recognition software, teams can also easily record meetings for documentation purposes.

Moreover, business experts expect more CRM tools to adopt conversational UI soon. Through this intuitive user interface, teams will be able to interact with CRM systems through a wide range of verbal and written phrases. Through these simple interactions, teams will be able to quickly access or input customer data, generate reports, and prioritize tasks (Blank, 2020).

12. CRM Continues to Benefit from IoT Devices

The integration of IoT devices into CRM is not new either, but it’s likely to continue growing in the future. The number of IoT devices increases each year, and many CRM developers continue to take advantage of this steady growth. As a result, many of these systems have started to introduce integrations to IoT feeds from a wide variety of devices.

By providing more data sources, IoT technology is expected to improve organizations’ CRM efforts and provide deeper insights into consumer behavior. IoT devices can also send data on product defects directly to an organization’s CRM system (Totah, 2020). In this way, customer service reps can be more proactive in addressing customers’ issues.

IoT feeds also provide real-time customer data, which supports teams in creating hyper-personalized marketing and sales campaigns.

13. Improved Mobility for CRM Software

The first mobile CRM was launched in 1999, and these apps have shown no signs of slowing down since then. Many business experts project a wider adoption of mobile CRM in the coming years, especially as more CRM users access these systems from multiple devices. Through mobile CRM, teams also get the advantage of accessing customer data and working from anywhere.

This flexibility and mobility have become particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, when companies adopted remote work. These mobile CRM systems also proved crucial in ensuring that teams maintained access to vital customer data even out of the office (Totah, 2020).

To ensure full efficiency, most mobile CRM tools come with a user-friendly interface, multiple integrations, and offline functionality. Robust security features also ensure the safety and privacy of customer data.

14. Self-Service CRM Will Be the Norm

As customers become more empowered, they look for ways to resolve issues with products and services on their own. As a result, most consumers now expect companies to have a self-service portal. Through this portal, customers gain access to resources like knowledge bases and user forums.

Current CRM trends indicate that more of these self-service portals are being integrated into CRM software. Through these integrations, businesses gain insights into common customer issues and anticipate needs. Many CRM systems also now come with chatbots that can address common customer queries and send personalized offers. Of course, these chatbots also collect valuable customer data.

15. CRM for Solo Entrepreneurs and Freelancers

Despite their growing sophistication, CRM platforms have become more accessible today. Available at a variety of price points and with different features, CRM tools are now commonly used by freelancers and solo entrepreneurs.

These systems often have essential capabilities that freelancers and entrepreneurs need, from contact management to deal tracking and invoicing. Some of the software even offer client management features, which come in handy for freelancers juggling multiple clients. By using CRM tools for these tasks, solopreneurs can focus on growing their business.

With these features, it’s easy to see how a company of one can benefit from CRM software. Moreover, CRM use is a common thread among solo entrepreneurs who have achieved more than $1 million in revenue (Pofeldt, n.d.).

Use These CRM Trends to Your Advantage

Now that you’re updated on the current trends in CRM, you can adjust your business strategy to ensure you provide the best customer experience. It’s a good time to evaluate your use of CRM systems and see if these tools can still meet your business’ needs.

If you’ve outgrown the systems you currently use, the good news is that there is no shortage of more advanced CRM systems to take their place. These sophisticated platforms ensure that your business benefits from CRM trends, such as automation, AI, and conversational UI.

If you’re looking for more guidelines on choosing the right CRM tools, check out our article on common mistakes in choosing CRM software.

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