Investigating Salespeople’s Performance of leveraging AI-CRM: A Study of different Capabilities of AI-CRM 

Abstract

Within a fast-developing and highly competitive business environment, salespeople performance (SPP) becomes a key critical factor for businesses to maintain their competitive advantage. Companies can leverage SPP even more by using new technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as AI-CRM systems. Increasingly CRM system providers integrate AI within their software, making their CRM system more effective and allowing salespeople to focus on real customer interactions, while the AI-CRM system takes over the mundane and repetitive tasks e.g., data management, follow-up e-mails, reporting, forecasting, etc. AI-CRM systems can be leveraged by salespeople to improve their overall performance if used correctly. Nevertheless, certain prerequisites to successfully use an AI-CRM system are necessary e.g., access to high-quality data. A company needs to put high priority on data management and data should be considered the number one asset of the business. Additionally, training for salespeople to use the AI-CRM system is perceived as important, to fully leverage the capabilities to improve SPP. Moreover, a good understanding of sales and marketing, and good collaboration between these departments is critical as the AI-CRM system serves as an interface between them. What is more, good data protection mechanisms and solving the problem of data collection e.g., the resistance of people to share information and data with others, are vital for implementing an AI-CRM system. Additionally, building up the required skill set, and information sharing across departments and employees are critical prerequisites for successful AI-CRM usage. Building up the required skill set among salespeople to use the AI-CRM system refers to two highly important skills: the willingness to learn, and analytical skills. Similarly, information sharing across departments and employees is highly important as a company needs to build up a profound sharing culture. Lastly, involving salespeople in the process of integrating AI-CRM is important, because a good change management process starts with focusing on the people. The capabilities or features of AI-CRM systems vary from system to system, however, what all of them have in common is their usage of generative AI for any content or text generation. Some of the features of AI-CRM that salespeople can leverage to improve SPP have been identified to be in-depth customer insights, the fully automatic data entry into the CRM system, the prediction of customer behavior and trends, the automation of reporting, the streamlining of data management, and automated cleaning of duplicate data. Another important aspect that companies should consider when changing their existing CRM system to an AI-CRM system is the usability aspect. Conducting a usability study among users of the existing CRM system to identify aspects for improvement could be a first step in getting the people on board. Lastly, it is advisable for a company that wants to implement an AI-CRM system, to develop a concrete strategy and roadmap for the integration of AI, in line with its overall business strategy.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Thomas Holzmann (Supervisor)