The Rise and Fall of CX Satisfaction

This week on Funnel Frontier: See how Backstroke's new AI-driven app is reshaping B2C messaging, and explore how Salesforce's new GenAI benchmark is setting standards in CRM.

This week:

• In 2024, CX stonks go down

• Pipeliner announces Voyager AI Gen II

• Sussing out your sales mix (via Pipedrive)

• Freshservice vs Freshdesk 

• GenAI and your team structure (via Freshworks)

Stat of the Week 

In 2023, Salesforce commanded 21.7% of global CRM market revenue, with Microsoft at 5.9% and Oracle at 4.4%. (Statista)

CX stonks go down: research finds 3-year decline in CX quality 

Forrester's latest Customer Experience Index is here, and it’s sobering stuff.  

American consumer perceptions of CX quality have hit a record low for the third year running. Effectiveness, ease, and emotion have all tanked. 

A staggering 39% of brands took a nosedive compared to last year's 17%, with the average drop hitting 3.9 points on the Customer Index scale. Industry-level declines were rampant, with ten industries hitting new lows, leaving only airlines with something to smile about. 

Even elite brands, the so-called top 5%, weren't spared—six out of eleven saw flat scores, and four tumbled. 

The average effectiveness of CX dropped 4 points from last year to 64%, and the ease of CX dipped 3 points to 66%. 

Why, oh why is this happening? 

It seems the CX crisis is driven by omnichannel fails, too-much-effort platforms, and agent disempowerment:

• On the omnichannel front, too many options and lack of guiding direction are major contributors to customer frustration. Disgruntled folks are jumping between channels or using several at once—and they don’t like it.  
• Self-service and digital experiences often ask customers to do the heavy lifting, and when hiccups occur, they end up having to start from scratch with a human agent
• Speaking of agents… an emphasis on scripts and gatekeeping authority is keeping customer service agents from dazzling with pizzazz.

I know, I know, it’s like finding out your favorite restaurant now serves only cold soup. But with knowledge comes power—so in 2025, let’s make bad CX fall down with our loud guitar sounds.

The Week @ CRM.org

Types of CRM. There’s 3 mains, plus 2 spin-off types. Our explainer/refresher sifts the differences. 

AI CRM. 5 tools that unite CRM + AI, and why that might be useful.

Weekly Bloom

Dieter Rams - 10 Principles of Good Design. From Apple's iPhone to sustainable, user-centric products everywhere, Rams’ industrial design principles have an enduring influence. 

Pipeliner announces Voyager AI Gen II 

Current schmood: liking AI. 

Pipeliner CRM's Voyager AI Gen II is now out, supplanting Gen I, which first debuted back in 2018. 

“It’s all about the data,” says the vendor copy. AI “is only as good as the data it relies upon…. the old adage “garbage in, garbage out” is absolutely fundamental to its effectiveness.”

Now banish those images of smelly trucks and crow-pecked bags from your mind. Voyager AI Gen II is odorless, premised on the idea of using data + AI to make sales teams’ lives easier. Major features include:

• Summary: The whole team can review and summarize interactions with customers and prospects to stay all one

• Sentiment: Emotions and sentiments get analyzed to tip you off about account health and drive sales and service strategy

• Recommend: Customer data drives improved cross-sell and upsell opportunities

• Score: Lead data drives lead scoring, which auto-updates for hyper-focus

• Key Account Assistant: Monitor announcements, social media, etc. for specific accounts

In other words, it’s designed to be your sales team's new go-to. 

Pipeliner’s CEO, Nikolaus Kimla, pinky-swears this AI-driven CRM will keep sales teams ahead, leveraging cutting-edge tech with day-to-day practicality: “The latest trends in AI can be overwhelming. However, we focus on the applicability, utility, and direct impact these capabilities provide to users.”

Stellar Strategies: Tips & Tricks for Sales, Marketing & Service

Sussing out your sales mix (via Pipedrive)

Sales mix, a not-so-secret recipe.

Basically, it helps you figure out the ratio of different products sold, letting you focus on the most profitable ones. 

At the most basic level: say you sell 100 ergonomic chairs and 200 modular desks; your sales mix is 33% chairs and 67% desks. Then you can track revenues against sales. 

Knowing this, you can tweak marketing and sales strategies to hit revenue goals, plus calculate profit margins, track volume and revenue, and adjust accordingly. You can also scoop how much revenue you get from each service/product, actual sales vs. budget estimate, and variable costs impacting sales. 

Essentially, it's about working smarter, not harder, and investing in the right products to maximize profit. 

Further demystify the sales mix here.

Freshservice vs Freshdesk 

It’s a proper family feud: Freshservice vs Freshdesk. Two help desk mainstays calling from inside the same house. 

Freshdesk is your go-to for general customer support, handling everything from help desk ticketing to self-service queries. Meanwhile, Freshservice is tailored for IT service management, equipped with ITIL best practices to keep your tech issues in check. 

Think of Freshdesk as the friendly neighborhood customer service milkman, while Freshservice is the IT department’s pretty pet. 

Spoiler alert: you can use both for harmony. More here.

GenAI and your team structure (via Freshworks)

Your new work buddy might be a bot, but your boss still needs a coffee break.

AI is shaking up the workplace, but the present trend is a medium-roast, iterative blend of AI with humans. Radical org chart redesigns aren't happening overnight. 

Of course, new ‘paradigm-shift’ ideas are emerging. Harvard Business Review, for one, thinks workflows should now turn on dialogue. Meanwhile, an MIT Sloan Management Review article reckons that LLMs will require a radical reinvention of organizations, as increasingly complex tasks are farmed out to algorithms.  

That’s far off. In the meantime, genAI might mean leaner startup teams and the disappearance of silos. Treating AI “like an employee” is also a thing.

More on the subject from Freshworks here.

Galactic Gourmet

CRM blips from around the web

Marc Benioff wins Yale Legend in Leadership Award. Salesforce’s leader won the title—voted on by past award winners and Yale representatives—for being a CEO who inspires other CEOs.

Funnel releases MyQueue+. The property management CRM vendor’s new tool is designed to manage renter journeys, coordinate teams and tasks, and take care of full portfolio workflows.

Pipedrive wins for “Best CRM Solution” at Sammy Awards 2024. The fedora tip comes courtesy of the Sales and Marketing Technology Awards by the Business Intelligence Group.

Astronomical Assets

Significant Stock Moves from Last Week

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