You probably never expected to let robots handle your relationships. 🤖
But adding AI to your customer relationship management (CRM) process can speed up response times and improve customer satisfaction—because, as we all know, timing is everything.
It’s kind of like when your partner asks if they look nice, and you say “yes,” but you pause first. That’s going to cost you. 🤦
Likewise, if you pause for too long before following up with a lead, that could also cost you. But with AI tools for customer relationship management, your customer support and sales teams can stay on top of every customer interaction and never miss an important touchpoint. And that’s not all AI can do for you.
From real-time insights and up-to-date customer data to timely reminders and workflow automations, artificial intelligence is one of the most intelligent decisions you can make for your CRM process. We’ll share the best AI CRM tools so your team can work smarter, not harder.
10 AI CRM Tools to Automate Sales and Customer Processes
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Should You Look for in AI CRM Tools?
If you want your team to reap the benefits of AI, choose tools that are integrated into your CRM system and designed with sales and customer support in mind. Here are key features to look for to ensure your AI tool will be effective for your team.
- Natural language processing: Your sales reps should be able to ask your AI tool to answer a question or perform a task in plain English. Then the AI should respond in plain English so everything is clear, easy to use, and easy to understand—no technical expertise required
- Generative AI: If your machine learning tool can write original content, it’ll be able to help your team members respond to customers, write follow-up emails, and rewrite their own content to ensure it’s clear and has a professional tone
- Real-time research and data: AI can scan the internet and compile customer research or complex sales forecasting and reports in minutes, instead of the hours it would take a human. Since sales is a numbers-heavy field, ensure your AI tool is empowered with reporting features
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe 10 Best AI Tools for CRM
Here are our top 10 AI CRM software. All of these programs can complete tasks specific to customer relationship management. They make it easier to understand customer behavior, connect with potential clients, and improve sales and retention rates.
1. ClickUp
If you want to give your sales teams productivity superpowers, then you need to give them ClickUp.
This all-in-one productivity platform has all of the key features sales and marketing teams need to streamline your customer relationship management process, automate CRM tasks, and track your progress every step of the way.
You can visualize your sales pipeline in over 15 different ways using ClickUp’s custom views including Calendar, List, Table, or Kanban-like Board view. And with ClickUp Dashboards, you can access your most important and up-to-date sales data in real-time.
Plus, your CRM solution becomes even more powerful when you pair it with ClickUp AI—the only role-based machine-learning tool tailored to your sales teams’ exact needs. Like your own personal sales assistant, ClickUp AI can help you generate emails, scripts, and responses to foster meaningful relationships and build lasting customer loyalty.
ClickUp best features
- A customizable CRM template helps you set up your CRM in minutes
- Role-based AI performs tasks specific to your team members’ different responsibilities, whether it’s your customer support team, sales team, or marketing team
- Hundreds of templated AI prompts help your team members start using the AI immediately and discover new use cases for AI that can boost their productivity
- AI features for sales help you build a territory plan, write a prospecting email, or create an elevator pitch
- AI features to streamline your workflow can summarize customer interactions, identify action items, assign them to a rep, and speed up decision-making across all your tasks
- AI features for customer support can write customer responses or edit them for grammar, accuracy, or tone
ClickUp limitations
- Because ClickUp offers so many features, there can be a learning curve for new CRM users
- Not all of the features in the ClickUp web app are available in the mobile app
ClickUp pricing
Sign up for a free trial of ClickUp AI. If you like, you can add AI features to any paid ClickUp plan for an additional $5 per month.
- Free Forever
- Unlimited: $7 per user per month
- Business: $12 per user per month
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (8,810+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (3,810+ reviews)
2. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot is a popular SaaS CRM program. It connects your marketing, content, customer service, and sales teams together under one umbrella so no one gets left out in the rain. ☔️
In addition to all the standard CRM features—like tracking customer interactions, contact information, next steps, and progress through your sales pipeline—it features HubSpot AI.
These AI tools help you automate repetitive business processes and free up your team to focus on building more meaningful customer relationships. It can also help your team members draft content, like outreach emails, and analyze customer data in real time.
HubSpot best features
- Generative AI helps your team write emails, social media captions, and more for better customer interactions
- ChatSpot, HubSpot’s chatbot, can answer team members’ questions, research potential customers, and provide real-time insights
- Predictive sales forecasting can show how much revenue you can expect to have and whether you’re on track to meet your sales goals
- Conversation summaries can quickly update customer profiles with their latest interactions
HubSpot limitations
- The mobile app has fewer features than the web app
- Some users report that templates can be difficult to edit and customize to fit your brand
HubSpot pricing
- Free Tools
- Starter: $18 per month
- Professional: $450 per month
HubSpot ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (10,750+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (430+ reviews)
3. Durable
An AI-powered platform for small businesses, Durable offers a website builder, a CRM, an invoicing tool, and a virtual assistant. It’ll help you launch and run your business in a snap.
Embed a lead scoring form on your Durable website, and built-in AI features will automatically organize contacts in your CRM, respond to leads, generate personalized communication, and send out review requests.
With this AI, it’s like you have an entire crew helping you, even if you’re flying solo. 🧑✈️
Durable best features
- The AI assistant helps you write, research, or complete administrative tasks
- A lead generation form automatically adds interested customers to your CRM
- Email sync allows you to send AI-generated email follow-ups to potential customers
- Automated review requests ask customers to leave Google reviews to help promote your business
Durable limitations
- This tool offers limited design features, so it’s not a good choice if you want to build an advanced website or custom pages
- You can’t export the code to your website, so if you ever want to switch platforms, you’ll have to rebuild your site from scratch
Durable pricing
- Starter: $12 per month
- Business: $ 20 per month
Durable ratings and reviews
- G2: No reviews available
- Capterra: No reviews available
4. Zoho Zia
Zia is an AI tool that’s built into the Zoho CRM. In addition to the CRM’s features—like contact, deal, and lead management—Zia helps your team manage their workload.
Signing up for Zia is like hiring an assistant for everyone on your team. You can ask this chatbot for help collecting customer data, writing emails and documents, or running sales numbers.
It’s a great option for e-commerce companies because you can embed the bot on your website to answer customer questions. It will also make product recommendations based on a customer’s behavior, so your customers will want to stay longer and shop more. 🛍️
Zoho Zia best features
- Use Zia to identify patterns in your team’s activity and suggest automations
- Get automatic research to fill customer titles, contact information, and more
- Improve the customer experience with automated cross-selling and recommendations for products or services that might interest them
- Allow reps to spend less time on data entry by chatting with Zia about their customer interactions instead
Zoho Zia limitations
- Customizations require a higher level of technical expertise and programming knowledge than many other platforms
- Multiple users report that Zoho’s integrations with other platforms provided limited functionality
Zoho Zia pricing
- Standard: $14 per user per month
- Professional: $23 per user per month
- Enterprise: $40 per user per month
- Ultimate: $52 per user per month
Zoho Zia ratings and reviews
- G2: 4/5 (2,480+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (6,385+ reviews)
5. C3.ai
Most of the options on this list are CRM software first and AI tools second. But C3.ai has built its entire CRM platform around artificial intelligence.
C3 is an AI-first company that promises an impressive return on investment. They say their AI-powered CRM can give you a 30% increase in your reps’ productivity and a 60% decrease in your churn rate.
Of course, it’s always best to track your own ROI, but C3.ai does provide impressive insights to empower your team. These include sales forecasting, external data research, pipeline analysis, and relationship insights.
C3.ai best features
- Forecast your sales revenue company-wide or broken down by territories, products, accounts, and more
- Receive alerts about emerging risks and factors that are impacting your sales opportunities
- Visualize the most important areas of your sales pipelines with automatic analytics
- Monitor relationship health so you can reach out and improve customer engagement when it’s most important
C3.ai limitations
- Users have experienced occasional lags in the program’s response time
- Exported reports sometimes contain errors
C3.ai pricing
- Contact for pricing
C3.ai ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (1+ reviews)
- Capterra: No reviews available
6. Zendesk Sell
Zendesk makes CRM software for service businesses and sales teams. This platform understands the process of selling services. So if you want a tool that’s tailored to your industry, this one could be the perfect fit. 👔
Their tools make it easier for your customers to connect with you and for your team to connect with more customers. Thanks to Zendesk AI, you can free your reps from busy work with automations. And when reps work with customers, the AI can provide suggestions to resolve customer issues.
Zendesk AI is built on OpenAI’s GPT natural language processing model, making it easy to use—just ask it questions like you would with any other coworker. You can add integrations with Zapier or ChatGPT to extend your CRM’s AI functionality even further.
Zendesk Sell best features
- Track all of your customer interactions so you can provide a personalized experience
- Analyze your process and track your progress toward sales goals with built-in reporting features
- Support your customer support team with Zendesk AI, which suggests responses and analyzes customer behavior to provide intent data
- Integrate your CRM with Zapier to automate repetitive tasks and with ChatGPT to add an AI chatbot assistant
Zendesk Sell limitations
- Some users feel that the interface looks dated and is less intuitive than other CRM systems
- Several users report that Zendesk’s customer support team can be slow to respond
Zendesk Sell pricing
- Sell Team: $19 per user per month
- Sell Growth/Suite Team: $55 per user per month
- Suite Growth: $89 per user per month
- Sell Professional/Suite Professional: $115 per user per month
Zendesk Sell ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 (475+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (150+ reviews)
7. Pipedrive
Pipedrive was created by salespeople for salespeople. It has a user-friendly layout with all the reminders you need to track deals and never miss a follow-up. This way, every lead gets the attention it deserves.
You can set up your sales pipelines to match your customer journey so you can visualize where your leads are, from first touch to final sale. Pipedrive excels at its visual layout, making it easy to know what you need to do next at a glance. We love to see it. 👀
This is a good CRM for Mac or Microsoft users, with mobile apps for both iOS and Android.
Pipedrive best features
- Easy setup only requires you to input the stages of your sales funnel to get started
- The Kanban board layout allows you to visualize your sales pipelines and see where each deal is in the process
- AI technology identifies sales opportunities within your pipeline and allows you to automate repetitive business processes
- Customer segmentation features help you provide more personalized communication based on customer demographics, interests, or needs
- Reporting and revenue forecasting track your progress toward your sales goals
Pipedrive limitations
- Some users report that the mobile app interface is less intuitive than the web app and that there are occasional performance issues on mobile
- While Pipedrive offers a lot of basic customization options, advanced customization is limited, which can make it difficult to tailor the CRM to a unique sales process
Pipedrive pricing
- Essential: $14.90 per user per month
- Advanced: $27.90 per user per month
- Professional: $49.90 per user per month
- Power: $64.90 per user per month
- Enterprise: $99.00 per user per month
Pipedrive ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 (1,660+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (2,870+ reviews)
8. Freshworks
Freshworks is a suite of customer service tools. And kind of like when you get the fancy suite at a hotel, this program includes a lot of extras. Except instead of a whirlpool bathtub and free champagne, the Freshworks suite includes features for IT, marketing, customer service, and sales. 🥂
There are tools for creating and tracking multichannel marketing campaigns, a ticketing system for delivering personalized customer support quickly, and a CRM for tracking your sales process. Plus, there’s Freddy, an AI-powered bot that can chat with customers to provide customer support or direct leads from your webpage to your sales team.
Freshworks best features
- All-in-one software keeps your sales teams on the same page
- Freddy AI Self Service, the built-in customer support chatbot, answers customer questions and provides support on your website
- Freddy AI Copilot answers team members’ questions and helps them automate repetitive tasks through natural language processing; no coding skills required
- Freddy AI Insights provides real-time customer data visualization
Freshworks limitations
- Users feel that setup and customization can be difficult without help from a developer on your team
- Several users report frequent glitches and error pages
Freshworks pricing
- Free
- Growth: $19 per user per month
- Pro: $49 per user per month
- Enterprise: $79 per user per month
Freshworks ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (7,325+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (595+ reviews)
9. Salesforce Sales Cloud
The Salesforce CRM, or Sales Cloud, is built for automation. You can trigger automatic updates and outreach based on where potential customers are in the sales funnel.
While automation tools help streamline repetitive tasks, the bulk of Salesforce’s AI capabilities come from Einstein, an adorable virtual assistant. Salesforce’s Einstein even has crazy hair like his namesake scientist.
Einstein can research potential customers, analyze sales calls to offer valuable insights, and use predictive analytics to provide data-based sales forecasting.
Salesforce Sales Cloud best features
- Generative AI technology helps sales teams write emails and transcribe sales calls
- Conversation insights can identify customer objections and give sales reps suggestions for next steps
- The AI-powered research assistant provides information about prospects and qualified leads right from your website
- AI predictions help reps prioritize the most important deals and forecast sales
Salesforce Sales Cloud limitations
- Learning this program can be difficult for first-time users, and your team may need training during the onboarding process
- Storing large amounts of data in your Salesforce CRM Cloud can lead to additional charges
Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing
- Starter: $25 per user per month
- Professional: $80 per user per month
- Enterprise: $165 per user per month
- Unlimited: $330 per user per month
- Unlimited+: $500 per user per month
Salesforce Sales Cloud ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (18,240+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (17,825+ reviews)
10. itransition
If you’re looking for a bespoke experience, itransition helps you hone your CRM strategy and find the right combination of features for your organization. They’ll set up custom workflows for you, migrate your data, test your platform, train your team, and maintain the software, so you don’t have to lift a finger. 👆
With 10 years of experience creating CRM solutions, itransition can build you a custom solution or optimize your current CRM platform to fit your industry and processes—because a CRM for a manufacturing company differs from a CRM for a marketing agency. They specialize in configuring Salesforce CRMs, and if you choose this solution, you’ll have access to Salesforce’s AI tools.
itransition best features
- Custom configuration gives you the exact CRM features you need
- Included setup means you don’t need to worry about importing data or testing the system
- Training ensures your team knows how to use the CRM and its AI tools
- Ongoing assistance keeps your CRM up to date and helps users troubleshoot problems as they arise
itransition limitations
- The out-of-the-box programs have limited customization options and can be more expensive over time because of ongoing licensing fees
- The custom-built option has high upfront costs and requires a team of developers
itransition pricing
- Contact for pricing
itransition ratings and reviews
- G2: No reviews available
- Capterra: No reviews available
Summarize this article for me pleaseArtificial Intelligence, Real Relationships
There’s nothing artificial about the real-time insights you can get from AI tools for CRM. These platforms help sales reps determine when and how to follow up with customers. They can free up more of your team members’ time to focus on what really matters: creating meaningful customer interactions.
With ClickUp’s CRM and AI features, you can streamline your customer service and sales processes with automations, insights, reminders, and follow-up tasks. And you know the role play you do in sales training? ClickUp AI is great at role-play. 🎭
It’s the first-ever role-based AI, programmed to help your team members use it for tasks related to their job immediately. Try it for free, and see how much more productive you can be.
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