Quick summary:
What can AI CRM software do for you? From writing emails and helping you get rid of boring data entry to scoring your leads based on their chances to convert, artificial intelligence is here to serve as your personal assistant. Get ready to optimize your work processes, improve your productivity, and increase the number of sales you make!
It’s official - AI is here and it’s ready to take our jobs… Just kidding! No matter how powerful this latest technology is, it is still limited to work only as a reliable assistant of yours. It’s not capable of replacing you. Yet.
But what it can do is revolutionize the way you manage customer relationships, streamline your sales processes, and boost your productivity. And yes, we truly mean it when we say revolutionize.
With real-time data analysis, key features like automated lead generation, and personalized customer interactions, AI-powered CRM tools are designed to be your secret weapon to achieving ultimate customer satisfaction and outshining all your competitors.
Buckle up as we dive into the world of AI CRM and discover how these intelligent systems can transform your business operations!
If you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick overview of the tools:
- HubSpot CRM – Free AI CRM Software
- Salesforce Einstein GPT – AI-powered CRM for Large Teams
- Pipedrive – AI sales CRM
- Zoho – Powerful AI CRM system for diverse business needs
- Freshsales – Best Choice for Chatbots & Boosting Customer Interactions
How AI CRM Software Works?
AI is now everywhere. It helps you summarize documents, write content, do research, and even create compelling images and videos. When combined with CRM, it turns your good old contact management system into a powerful sales assistant. But what is CRM with AI features capable of?
Let’s use some fancy tech terms, which you’ve probably already heard of, to help you understand how AI for CRM works.
AI leverages machine learning algorithms. This allows it to analyze vast amounts of data and identify patterns and trends that might not be obvious to humans. It can also utilize predictive analytics to analyze past data points to make future forecasts.
With the help of natural language processing (NLP), AI tools can understand human language and engage in meaningful conversations with users. NLP also aids in sentiment analysis, gauging users’ feelings from conversations.
Now that you know how AI-powered CRM works, let’s see how you can use it to drive sales and build lasting customer relationships.
How Artificial Intelligence Improves CRM & How Can It Help You?
You’ve probably seen generic sentences like all over the web:
AI CRM software helps you automate routine tasks, analyze large datasets, and personalize customer interactions. It can also boost your sales efforts and improve the overall customer experience.
All of this sounds great, but one obvious question arises - how can I use AI-based CRM to do all of this? Here are a few examples:
Automating Manual Tasks
According to a HubSpot survey, 81% of participants agreed that AI has the potential to help them spend less time on manual tasks. These include data entry, appointment scheduling, and even follow-up reminders.
Content Generation
Sometimes, it takes you a few minutes to write an email or even a LinkedIn post. Other times, you don’t have an inspiration for your content, even if your life depends on it. Numerous AI CRM tools can help you generate content in a matter of seconds, whether it’s for your email or marketing campaign.
Reduced Errors
How many times have you made a mistake? Whether you entered a duplicate contact or made an error in data analysis, AI will ensure greater accuracy for various tasks.
Data Analysis
The greatest power of artificial intelligence in CRM lies in data analysis. It can analyze data faster and more accurately than humans can.
AI can use all of your customer data to do some cool stuff. For example, it can tell you which leads are more likely to convert. It can also help you identify certain buying behaviors and the factors that cause them.
Also, with AI, reporting becomes a breeze. Just give it an order, and it will have a beautifully filtered report ready for you in seconds.
All of this enables you and your sales team to prioritize your efforts, stop wasting time on meaningless tasks, and close deals more efficiently by focusing on strategic activities.
Top 5 AI CRM Software
In this section, we’re going to present you with the best AI customer relationship management software currently available. We’ll focus only on the AI CRM tools and won’t go into too much detail on other features of these CRMs. We’ll provide you with links for individual reviews where you can find all the info you need.
HubSpot CRM: Free AI CRM Software
One of the greatest benefits of HubSpot is that you can use this CRM and its AI assistant, ChatSpot, for free. It is available on all plans, so free users rejoice!
You can use ChatSpot, even if you’re not a HubSpot user, as a free AI tool that helps you craft all sorts of content.
Once you connect ChatSpot with your HubSpot account, you can use the AI assistant to optimize your sales processes. For example, we asked it to add a contact to the CRM and then create a task related to that contact.
Both tasks were executed in seconds. ChatSpot also gives you this neat “Click to see all context option,” which shows you what the AI did. It also allows you to “View in HubSpot” if you want to double-check the AI. We assure you, there’s no need to.
Here’s what ChatSpot can do for you:
Generate content and images that resonate with your audience, making your marketing efforts more impactful.
Quickly pull data for contacts and ask questions regarding the sales process, ensuring you have all the information you need at your fingertips.
Write and send emails to your prospects, streamlining your communication.
Build custom reports quickly, saving you time and providing you with insights that improve your sales strategy.
Interested? Check out our HubSpot review if you need more details on this CRM.
Salesforce Einstein GPT: AI Powered CRM for Large Teams
There are two things you need to know about Salesforce. First, it’s one of the best CRM software on the market. Second, it’s not for everyone. Even though businesses of all sizes can use this AI CRM software, it’s most suitable for large companies.
Salesforce has developed a very powerful AI tool called Einstein GPT, which is one of the most powerful generative AI CRM technologies. However, it comes with a catch - it’s not available on all plans.
Image Source: Einstein AI Opportunity Scoring
Einstein Activity Capture, which automatically captures and syncs your email and calendar content, is available on all plans. However, the advanced features are available only on the highest-paid plans.
Unfortunately, you cannot purchase the AI separately on the Starter Suite and Professional plan, but you can on the Enterprise plan.
Is Einstein worth the price? Well, we’d say it might be a tad overpriced but you do get your money’s worth out of it.
Here’s what Einstein’s AI capabilities can do:
Score leads from 1-99, based on how likely they are to convert.
Score opportunities from 1-99, based on how well they match your conversion patterns.
Inspect sales pipelines and deals, providing actionable insights and sales forecasting.
Detect customer sentiment and analyze customer behavior to suggest next steps.
If you do have a budget that can handle Salesforce, then you’ll definitely be getting a reliable companion. Read our Salesforce review to see if this CRM is a good fit for your organization.
Pipedrive: AI sales CRM
Pipedrive is a CRM made for salespeople, so it’s no surprise that their AI tool is called AI Sales Assistant. The tool provides insights and recommendations to sales teams so they can optimize sales processes.
Unlike Salesforce, Pipedrive is more affordable. However, it lacks Salesforce's business suite of features. The AI Sales Assistant is available on the Professional plan and above, starting at $49/user/month.
Image source: Pipedrive AI-powered Sales Assistant
Here’s what this AI sales software can do for you:
Analyze vast amounts of data and provide next-step suggestions, improving your decision-making.
Identify patterns and recommend high-potential deals, allowing sales reps to focus on opportunities that matter the most.
Craft quick, personalized emails from simple prompts, making your customer communication more efficient.
Give intelligent suggestions to streamline the sales process, helping you close deals more efficiently.
Even though Pipedrive combines advanced features and affordability, it may lack some sophisticated tools other CRMs have. To see if this AI-powered CRM system has everything you need, check out our Pipedrive review.
Zoho: Powerful AI CRM system for diverse business needs
If you’ve ever used or read about Zoho CRM, then you know that this software is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses. It blends advanced functionality with affordability and scalability. In addition, it offers a suite of business tools that can support your sales, marketing, and support teams.
You can read about all of that in our Zoho CRM review. Now, we’re here to talk about AI.
Zoho’s AI assistant is called Zia and it can help you out with everything from gathering customer data to creating meeting summaries.
Here’s what this generative AI CRM solution can do for you:
Improve customer engagement, as Zia can autonomously generate emails and social media posts.
Close more tickets, faster by automatically responding to customers.
Predict the win probability of every ongoing deal, helping you sort your priorities.
Detect oncoming anomalies in your sales trends, giving you enough time to react.
Zia is available in Zoho CRM’s Enterprise and Ultimate plans that start at $40/user/month.
Freshsales: Best Choice for Chatbots & Boosting Customer Interactions
Freshsales is a CRM by Freshworks, and it is one of the most affordable CRM solutions on the market. Recently, the company released Freddy AI, which helps you optimize your processes and improve customer satisfaction.
Freddy AI excels at providing personalized customer engagements and useful answers through the chatbot. Of course, the AI features don’t stop there; Freddy AI also does a great job of automating routine tasks and offering predictive insights.
Image source: Freshsales
Here’s what this AI CRM platform can do for you:
Enhance customer support thanks to AI-powered chatbots that automate customer interactions across multiple channels.
Provide deal and forecasting insights, to ensure you make data-driven decisions.
Based on your previous customer interactions, suggest the next best action to help you close deals more efficiently.
Automated email marketing campaigns to ensure timely and relevant communication with prospects and customers.
The AI chatbot is available on all plans, including the forever free plan. Freddy AI insights are available on Pro and Enterprise plans, starting at $39/user/month. Yes, you get amazing AI features for an affordable price. Read our Freshsales review to see what else this CRM can do for you.
CRM AI Use Cases: How to Boost Your Business Processes with AI-based CRM
Now that you know how AI-powered CRM works and which options are the best on the market, let’s see how you can use them to boost your business processes:
Improved lead scoring: Use AI to analyze and prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert. By doing so, your sales efforts will be directed efficiently.
Routine task automation: Forget about boring, time-consuming repetitive tasks such as data entry, appointment scheduling, and follow-up reminders.
24/7 customer support: Provide stellar customer experience with AI-powered chatbots that can handle basic inquiries round the clock.
Writing: Save hours of your life by letting the powerful, conversational AI craft text for your emails, social media posts, and even direct responses for basic email inquiries.
Next-level customer insights: Thanks to sentiment analysis, AI can analyze all forms of communication with your customers (email, chat, phone calls, etc.) and provide you an insight into customers’ sentiments regarding your product and service.
Customer segmentation & personalization: It would take you hours, but it takes AI seconds to analyze customer data, segment your customers, and tailor marketing messages to individual preferences and behaviors.
Churn prevention: Use CRM artificial intelligence to create 360-degree customer profiles leveraging various data to identify customers with the highest possibility to churn.
In case this doesn’t mean much to you, let’s turn to some numbers. Companies that have implemented AI are 50% faster in responding to their customers. You know what that means? Faster response = happier customers = more sales opportunities.
Also, as we have pointed out several times already, AI can be incredibly helpful with lead management. With the help of chatbots and automated email, companies can easily re-engage prospects stuck in the purchasing process.
AI will do everything on its own—from selecting customers to answering their questions. This can increase the selling time of your sales reps up to 20%.
Ready to choose your CRM with AI functionality?
Best AI CRM Software: Key Takeaways
Okay, if you reached the end of the article, we believe that the question isn’t “Should I get a CRM with AI?” anymore. It’s rather how to choose a CRM for your team.
One great thing about all the vendors on our list is that they offer either free CRM plans or free trials. So, we definitely recommend trying each one until you find the one that has all the functionalities you need.
Speaking of - do write down which functionalities you’d like. Then, when you test the CRMs, it will be easier for you to decide whether it checks all the boxes or not.
FAQs
Is there an AI CRM?
Yes, there are CRM systems that use AI to automate tasks, analyze data, and enhance customer interactions. Examples include Salesforce's Einstein, HubSpot's ChatSpot, and Zoho's Zia, which offer features like predictive analytics, personalized communication, and lead scoring to boost efficiency.
What is an automated CRM system?
An automated CRM system uses technology to streamline repetitive tasks such as data entry, appointment scheduling, and follow-up reminders. CRM automation can help enhance your team’s productivity by automating routine processes, allowing sales and support teams to focus on more strategic activities.
What are the three commonly used examples of AI in CRM?
Chatbots, sales forecasting, and lead scoring are the three most commonly used examples of AI in CRM. Here’s how each one works:
Chatbots: AI provides instant responses and answers basic customer inquiries to increase customer satisfaction.
Sales forecasting: AI uses predictive analytics to forecast future sales trends, based on historical data.
Lead scoring: AI analyzes leads behavior and scores them according to their potential for conversion.