Entering a new year means new beginnings, following through on our resolutions or at least trying to and finding out about all of the new Trends to try. Information technology plays into new additions in the New Year, including customer relationship management software. Believe it or not, there are trends in the software world and it isn’t a concept that is hard to understand because without trends, businesses wouldn’t know how to properly market themselves or what their competition is doing.

In today’s blog post, we will discuss three trends that we plan on following in the New Year and how they may just be helpful for businesses around the world.

Trend #1: Increase in Social CRM’s Importance

We have seen the emergence of Social media and what it can do for brands over the past year and in 2018, social CRM is on the verge of becoming the new “it” tool for businesses across the world to use. Companies who use social media tend to use it as a new means of becoming an interactive business, give personality to their brands, attract and maintain a customer base and also extending their customer service reach beyond phone calls or within brick and mortar stores.

Social customer relationship management software not only connects a business with existing and potential customers, but it also allows businesses to access information about customer behaviors, opinions and social media usage with a company. Knowing that type of information about your customers lends itself to quickly solving issues and with this software that can be done anywhere.

Trend #2: The Emergence of Artificial Intelligence

Considered to be one of the most prominent advances/trends, artificial intelligence is one of the most talked about 2018 trends. Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, can potentially make a business smarter by using CRM systems interaction data to predict business needs and taking care of those tedious tasks that burn up our time. AI will minimize manual work, automate actions and reconfigure interfaces that will save employees hours and hours of work.

Coupling AI with your CRM system will learn from constant usage patterns of marketers and salespeople. When that happens, daily tasks can be automated. AI can also collect information on existing customers and potential leads, predict trends, analyze data and make crucial decisions that will reduce the number of cold calls for sales departments.

Trend #3: Snackable Content and Messaging

Before explaining this trend, let’s define “snackable content.” It is a term that means content designed to be easy for readers to both consume and share. Customer facing websites often consistently publish fresh content to drive site traffic and boost brand awareness.

This type of content is on trend for 2018 is because of one word: personalization. Creating personalized content drives the customer experience, provides consistent information through content writing and also helps with developing higher rankings on search engines. CRM helps with this type of content because with customer data, you know what your customer in most interested in so you can create content around their interests.

Moving into the New Year, it’s important to stick with what you know, but never be afraid to step outside of your norm and try something new. That is what trends are for, it allows you the opportunity to learn something new and apply it to your life or business. In 2018, let’s look at these trends and implement them because you never know what will work until you try.

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