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Keeping Your Business Human In Today’s Digital World

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Management Article | Digital Technology| Keeping Your Business Human In Today’s Digital WorldDigital technology has had a huge positive impact on business – software has helped to automate tasks that were once mundane and time-consuming, whilst the internet has helped to make the world more connected making it easier for niche businesses to find new customers.

The downside of all this is that business is starting to lose touch with its human side. Whilst many of us appreciate the convenience of modern technology, many of us still need human interaction both as a customer and an employee. Here are several ways in which you can inject a human element into your business whilst still using digital technology to its advantages.

Don’t over-rely on AI

There are many jobs that artificial intelligence is better at handling than us humans. This includes complex calculation tasks such as accounting and repetitive tasks such as building machinery.

Some tasks however are still performed much better by humans. These are jobs that involve creativity and emotion.

As this article at Harnham delves into, relying on AI for marketing can be damaging. Whilst analytics can uncover useful marketing strategies, there are times when you need to react emotionally to people’s demands.

Similarly, customer service still benefits from a human touch. As this article from Forbes suggests, human chatboxes are becoming a big problem – most customers find them irritating as they’re not able to deviate from their script when asked difficult questions and a lack of empathy towards customers’ frustration can only add to the anger.

As for using AI to help employees, it shouldn’t be used as a tool to replace in-person training. Many employees feel neglected when forced to learn everything via e-learning. Whilst it can be a useful supplement, relying wholly on digital training could demotivate new employees.

Show your face

Whilst the internet has helped to connect people, there are times when it can form a barrier. Long conversations with strangers can be had via chains of email, whilst we can buy products online without ever having to talk to a person. However, as this article at QuickBooks suggests, face-to-face interaction is still something we need in business to build trust.

In-person physical meetings may be the best way to do this, but they’re not always possible. Fortunately, there are ways to use technology to still show your face. Video communication tools can help to replace in-person meetings allowing you to still have a face-to-face meeting digitally. Meanwhile, it could be worth sharing photos of you and your staff on your website to help develop a human connection (you can even embed a video of you introducing yourself to clients).

Be playful with tech

Another way to stay human when using digital technology is to use this technology beyond it’s purely functional form. Many of are engaged by technology when it is used as a toy and many businesses have started to embrace this. Examples include Ikea’s use of AR to allow users to see what an item of furniture would look like in their home or Pizza Express’s delivery app that allows users to play a video game whilst they wait. Some may view this as gimmicks, but it can actually be a way of appealing to customers with technology whilst also showing a human appreciation for fun.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Management Article | Digital Technology| Keeping Your Business Human In Today’s Digital World

Why AI-Driven Sales CRM is Leading the Way in Customer Relations

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article | Artificial Intelligence | Why AI-Driven Sales CRM is Leading the Way in Customer RelationsOver the last several years, AI has become a popular trend for enhancing all areas of business. With the ability of the machine to learn how to perform tasks like forecasting, clustering, text and speech recognition, error corrections, database filling, and other activities that involve human intelligence, AI has become an invaluable tool for sales teams to understand and interpret the behaviours of customers and suggest products for these customers. One of the critical factors, according to SuperOffice, behind the growth of CRM software is its ability to allow businesses to access customer data in real-time. Here are several ways that AI-driven sales CRM is leading the way in customer relations.

Collecting and Filling Data

It is no secret that marketing and various CRM applications require substantial sets of qualified data. Many of today’s new AI-driven sales applications have made it much easier to capture the corporate data that allows users to create and fill in the new information to solutions, as well as cleaning the existing lists. With this new technology, the need for data entry is eliminated with Spiro.

Clustering Contact Details

With AI applications you can structure, clean, and analyze the sales data you collect. After a series of algorithmic executions and iterations, the application can effectively provide you with the best model along with a pattern, which will allow you to group your customers. After the data has been clustered, it can give you a list of all the customers included in each of the groups. It will consider new sales and provide updated reports to improve marketing strategies.

Suggest Products

When a specific product is considered, the AI-driven application will provide you with a list of the various products purchased in the past by the customer. An excellent example of this in action is Amazon. When a customer is shopping at the online retail shop, it provides them with a list of suggested products that they might want to purchase. For B2B companies, the product basket of all their customers is carefully analyzed to interpret details like business sectors, employee’s numbers, address, and the revenues. All of this increases customer relations because the company doesn’t have to waste time suggesting products that the customer won’t be interested in purchasing.

Forecasting and Pattern Recognition

AI-driven solutions play a critical role in the process of the forecasting of sales, regarding production. Through pattern recognition, the trends of the purchase of a product over the years can be determined. Also, the success rate of the product can also be predicted, which can save companies thousands in unused and unsold inventory and can help increase revenue by nearly 41%, according to the site, Big Contacts.

Highlight Inconsistencies

The ability of a sales team to close sales is dependent on the accuracy of the sales pipeline. An AI-drive CRM application can effortlessly highlight any inconsistencies within the sales pipeline so that it can quickly be addressed. With accurate reports and sales forecasts, companies won’t have to worry about the sales process being slowed down or stopped because of inaccuracies.

The most prominent advantage of AI-driven CRM solutions is the ability to efficiently analyze the data of the company, which can lead to an increase in sales, better customer satisfaction, and better responses to customers’ needs.