Before you get the wrong idea, this is not another blog post about the benefits of using a CRM. Hopefully, you already have that covered. This article is about the importance of integrating your current CRM with a virtual assistant to develop stronger relationships and close more deals.

But before we go into the main benefits of this integration, let’s see what Customer Communication looks like these days.

Experience is King

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Product is King” way too many times (and I bet Steve Jobs helped in getting it stuck in your head). But offering great products isn’t always enough.

With more choices available than ever before, companies need to focus on delivering better experiences.

Here at Aivo, we are strong believers that Customer Service is a strategic ally for the Sales team. It’s no longer about giving them the information they need. Today, Customer Service is about creating experiences that customers appreciate so much they don’t need to compare you to your competitors. And guess what? When they feel well cared for, they are much more likely to remain loyal and even acquire more products.

On the other hand, not only are customers getting more demanding, as your business grows, so does your customer base. Employees spend their days answering calls, emails, chats and contacting other departments. Constantly hiring people can be an extremely high cost. In fact, the Customer support department is one of the most resource-intensive areas in a company.

Human Teams & Artificial Intelligence = The New Hot Couple

While you keep customers waiting – and not having a good experience – you’re missing out on cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. According to a Zendesk Study, “66% of B2B and 52% of B2C customers stopped buying after a bad customer service interaction”. Harsh figures, right? (If you are interested in deepening on how to deal with times of high demand don't miss this article). Fortunately, you can turn this around.‍

Artificial intelligence improves productivity without sacrificing quality by using its two main skills; Machine learning and Natural language processing (NLP). In the world of Customer Service, this results in freeing up agent capacity to work on more complex issues.

What is a Virtual Assistant?

A chatbot, or virtual assistant, is a solution that uses AI to help you solve your clients’ needs. It basically saves your team’s time and efforts by answering automatically. Key tip: make sure you get a virtual assistant that integrates with all your current solutions (not just your CRM). This will make it the perfect match for your overall customer service experience.

5 Things a Virtual Assistant does to Improve your CRM Strategy

#1 Automate support and optimize human resources

First of all, a virtual assistant understands natural language and identifies the customer’s need. It does the heavy-lifting by automatically resolving routine issues or collecting information. It's simple, really: all the frequently asked questions that you have in your knowledge base are solved by the chatbot.

#2 Make customers happy with immediate answers

As the bot takes care of frequent requests, customers get instant replies and agents gain time. This way, they can focus on customizing the answers, working on strategy and closing sales. If the request can’t be answered automatically, the AI solution sends the information to your CRM, creates a case and assigns it to the right department. As a result, your team will access a complete customer profile to quickly reach out with a solution or an offer.

#3 Reduce costs

Needless to say, while a trained bot takes care of answering automatically, a big 24/7 human support team becomes obsolete. It’s simple math: the smarter your solution, the lower your costs.

According to our data, companies that adopt the solution will get to offer 24/7 service, with an expected reduction in human services of around 70%.

#4 Boost Sales

Also, your virtual assistant will be able to detect sales or carry out real-time up-selling actions. When it detects a potential sale, it asks the customer to fill in a short form and sends the details to the Sales team. You will basically have an automatic lead generator that connects seamlessly to your CRM workflow.

#5 Offer unlimited support

Finally, your customers will forget about waiting. You can rely on a chatbot to resolve their demands immediately, 24/7 and in all your channels.

Empower your CRM with AI

You’re now ready to fully take on automated technologies as key components of your Customer Relationship Management.

Our own virtual assistant, AgentBot, is an automatic solution that has proven to give all the mentioned benefits but also adds a key feature: it interacts with empathy and human-like dialogues. Go ahead and give AgentBt a try today.

Connect Salesforce to AgentBot

If your company uses Salesforce, this is your lucky day. Recently, Aivo partnered up with the world leader in CRM to build a native integration between AgentBot and Salesforce. See how it works

Enhance you chatbot even more with Zapier and Aivo!

If you have another CRM provider, don’t worry. Our Zapier integration lets AgentBot connect to more than 1000 apps. For example, if you use Hubspot, you can create a workflow that transfers contacts and information directly from the virtual assistant to your account. You can finally forget about manually copying and pasting the info.

‍Here you´ll find all you need to start automating tasks and managing your customers in a simpler way.

If you have questions or want to know more about our solutions, contact our specialists. They´ll be happy to help you.