It seems as though “The Great Customer Resignation” is hitting businesses hard as – across all sectors – customer churn rates reach 33%.
Consequently, the “average” company will lose almost one out of every three customers they gain.
These statistics come from The 2022 CRM Impact Report by SugarCRM, which also highlights that 58% of companies report that customer churn has increased over the last 12 months.
Sugar CRM speculate that these findings highlight “organisational turbulence across the customer journey” and “the inadequacies of traditional CRM solutions”. There are also many more factors that are likely at play, such as supply chain disruption and recruitment challenges.
Reflecting on these challenges, Craig Charlton, CEO of SugarCRM, says:
Companies face a daunting scenario – struggling to fill the top of the funnel with qualified leads while losing customers at the bottom of the funnel.
Further statistics shed more light on this “daunting” challenge. For example, 58% of UK respondents admit that they struggle to identify customers at risk of leaving. Meanwhile, 61% report that they find it difficult to track customer churn rates effectively.
Addressing these problems is tricky, yet analytics tools that enable sentiment analysis may help identify unhappy, at-risk customers. Centralising data into a CRM that tracks customer activity will also indicate when customers start to disengage with the business.
AI enables both of these approaches. Yet, many contact centres find it difficult to implement a well-rounded AI strategy. As Rich Green, CTO of SugarCRM, says:
Many sales and marketing leaders will fail to find real solutions using a loose collection of lightweight AI automation tools as opposed to AI that is purpose-built to solve sales and marketing challenges.
Yet, there is no doubt that AI-infused technologies will play a significant part in the future business ecosystem. As the report suggests, 94% of UK sales and marketing leaders plan to deploy AI technology and augment existing processes will increase over the next two years.
Further Interesting Findings from The 2022 CRM Impact Report
- 59% of UK respondents said they plan to change their current CRM platform within the next 12 months
- 70% of global respondents said they need to do more to improve customer trust in their brand
- 53% of sales leads generated by marketing are deemed either poorly qualified or underqualified
1,600 global sales and marketing professionals, including 400 in the UK, were interviewed as part of the SugarCRM report.
