NetworkNewsWire Editorial Coverage: Customer relationship management (“CRM”) is a process in which a business or organization uses data analysis to better understand massive amounts of information to determine the best strategies for interacting with current and potential customers. Evolving from rudimentary surveys in the 1970s used by a handful of companies, CRM has become the biggest software market in the world used by 91% of companies that have more than 11 employees. The market is dynamic and constantly evolving in order to maximize return on investment for companies around the world, with companies such as Infobird Co. Ltd (NASDAQ: IFBD) (Profile) growing rapidly as a name brand in China. Majors such as Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) are also part of the market getting in front of emerging trends, as are Zendesk Inc. (NYSE: ZEN), Twilio Inc. (NYSE: TWLO) and Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) by providing the critical software and know-how for companies to improve customer relationships, quickly engage new customers and drive higher sales.
- The CRM market was valued at $41.93 billion in 2019, is forecast to reach $96.39 billion by 2027.
- IFBD completed IPO in April, raising $25 million by selling 6.25 million shares at $4; shares hit $11.25 on the IPO day.
- Infobird has landed major new clients that are renowned in China and globally with its intelligent standard SaaS.
- Infobird has expanded into field of private domain traffic with the launch of its SaaS business WeChat Call Center.
The New Kid on the Lucrative CRM Block
According to Allied Market Research, the CRM market was valued at $41.93 billion in 2019 and growing at an 11.1% compound annual growth rate, a trajectory that will carry the market size to $96.39 billion by 2027. Within that, a new trend is toward mobile CRM, with that subcategory 11% to $15 million this year.
Allied views the COVID-19 pandemic as the latest catalyst for CRM as companies were forced to take a forensic look into operations to make sure that they were keeping customers and finding new ones during global lockdowns. CRM provided a solution that has now become integral to business. The analyst report points out other advantages that users soon realize, including customer mapping from the outset to interactions even after purchases are completed, a part of the consumer cycle that often gets neglected, as driving adoption.
Other emerging trends include comprehensive cloud-based CRM and integrating artificial intelligence to empower companies to facilitate personalized and proactive engagement with clients, movements that fall into the sweet spot for Infobird Co. Ltd (NASDAQ: IFBD), a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of innovative AI-powered customer-engagement solutions in China. The award-winning company went public in April, raising $25 million in an initial public offering by selling 6.25 million shares at $4 before shares went as high as $11.25 on the opening day of trading.
Infobird helps companies manage the complete customer journey from pre-sales activities through post-sale customer support by leveraging leading technologies such as self-developed, cloud-computing structure, robotic- process-automation (“RPA”) machine learning, patented Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), no-code development platform and more. The holistic platform delivers intelligent products that can help companies to provide more effective and efficient engagement with client. In today’s mobile world — and remote world— cloud-based CRMs are en vogue, as evidenced by a surge from only 12% of businesses using them in 2015, compared to 87% today.
Taking Solid Steps
Infobird has further penetrated into different industries such as finance, retail industries and healthcare industries by promoting intelligent standardized SaaS products and acquiring new clients, which signals the successful implementation of Infobird’s strategy to transition from customized SaaS to standardized SaaS products. These are the industries that are fast-growing in China and have high potential and willingness to digitalize their customer relationship management.
The new clients Infobird acquired include Hong Kong beauty retailer SaSa; Zu Li Jian, a leading footwear brand for the elderly in China; and a top fintech company in China. At the same time, This month, Infobird wasn’t at liberty to disclose the name, but management did say that the company landed a service contract with a subsidiary of a “global well-recognized Fortune 500 retail and consumer product company with operations in more than 80 countries.”
Maximizing Customers’ Lifelong Value
Infobird’s ambition also aligns with what Philip Kotler, dubbed the father of modern marketing, calls the Marketing 4.0 era. This era is characterized by use of AI and big-data analytics blended with multichannel and social interaction between companies and customers to most efficiently reach and retain consumer loyalty throughout customer’s lifetime.
Following the idea of Marketing 4.0, Infobird this month made its initial foray into the field of private domain traffic with the launch of a new intelligent SaaS product branded WeChat Call Center. The WeChat Call Center is designed to help companies further develop the value of existing customers through automated and personalized solutions for private domain traffic, industry nomenclature for a brand’s private assets collected as part of a customer database.
Against the backdrop of marketing trends shift towards a customer-centric approach to deliver unique experiences, Infobird is pioneering a new product differentiated from common private domain traffic tools in the market today through the integration of AI, RPA analysis and other technologies. Enterprises with a relatively large customer base can now use a new service that has significant advantages in batch, automation and personalization of services that can help clients comprehensively improve efficiency and reduce operating costs. IFBD expects to generate significant value by creating new demand and capturing uncontested market space in a cost-effective manner, known as a blue-market strategy.
Different in More Ways Than One
Infobird offers unique customer-engagement solutions that have common threads with technology that potential clients would be familiar with, only supercharged with proprietary next-generation tech underscored by years of R&D. For instance, Infobird’s AI chatbots have advanced functions that allow them to carry out free conversations owing to design and a massive database of real-life interactions to draw upon to recommend products and services in a concise fashion. The programs are even “smart” enough to recognize when a customer is talking and not interrupt.
Infobird is a company of firsts. It is the only organization in China to build its customer engagement SaaS on a cloud-native architecture, meaning it is easier and more cost-effective for clients to scale with unmatched capacity regarding supporting the number of agents online concurrent with high stability and security . IFBD is also one of the few China-based company that owns and applies a no-code development platform in customer engagement. This puts Infobird on par with giants such as Tencent and Alibaba, except those companies applied their platforms on office software. Benefits abound for Infobird with this strategy, including being able to develop new SaaS with preprogrammed microservices at a low cost, a key in quick reactions to new market opportunities.
All About the Customers
Big data and high tech are reshaping the customer/brand dynamic like never before. Companies must be nimble and attentive to constantly react and invest in technology that not only helps measure a customer’s value but provides the roadmap to their wallet and “stickiness” to keep them coming back.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) is not just a retail juggernaut — the company has its hands in many kettles including cloud services. In 2019, Alibaba partnered with Salesforce.com to become the exclusive provider of Salesforce CRM in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Through the partnership, Alibaba offers Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Platform to customers in those markets exclusively through Alibaba Cloud. In addition, Salesforce became the exclusive enterprise CRM sold by Alibaba in those markets.
Zendesk Inc. (NYSE: ZEN) has been a leader in the customer experience revolution since 2007 by enabling businesses around the world to take their customer service online. Today, Zendesk is the champion of great service everywhere for everyone and powers billions of conversations, connecting more than 100,000 brands with hundreds of millions of customers over telephony, chat, email, messaging, social channels, communities, review sites and help centers. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark; built and grown in California; taken public in New York City; and today employs more than 5,000 people across the world.
Twilio Inc. (NYSE: TWLO) is a leading cloud communications platform that has democratized communications channels such as voice, text, chat, video and email by virtualizing the world’s communications infrastructure through APIs that are simple enough for any developer to use yet robust enough to power the world’s most demanding applications. Twilio bought Segment in November for $3.2 billion, giving it a top Customer Data Platform (“CDP”) that provides companies with the data foundation that they need to put their customers at the heart of every decision. Using Segment, companies can collect, unify and route their customer data into any system where it’s needed to better understand their customers and create seamless, compelling experiences in real-time.
Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) even has the ticker that says it is a stalwart in the world of customer-relationship management. The CRM giant agreed to acquire German intelligent RPA company Servicetrace for an undisclosed amount. The plan is to pair Servicetrace with Mulesoft, the company Salesforce bought in 2018 for $6.5 billion. With the addition of Servicetrace’s RPA capabilities, MuleSoft pairs its cloud and on-premises system integrations with control and automation layers bringing actionability to consolidated data flows.
Not long ago, the goal was seemingly to collect as much data as possible and mash it together to try and put pop up ads, alerts and other type of offers in front of a possible customer. While that still might be a piece of the objective, the precision of programming and technology has changed the game. CRM is playing an increasingly important role for brands around the world across 100% of the buying cycle.
For more information about Infobird Co. Ltd. please visit Infobird Co. Ltd.
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