You’ve spent countless hours perfecting your CRM strategy—choosing the right software, customizing features, and training your team. You’re excited about the possibilities and hope it will transform your interactions with customers.
But as time goes by, you start to wonder: Is this CRM really delivering the results you expected? Are you maximizing its potential or just barely tapping into it?
In this article, you’ll discover the latest CRM predictions and trends for 2025. From AI-driven innovations to industry-specific solutions, these insights will provide you with actionable strategies to improve your CRM approach and achieve meaningful results for your business.
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Features
It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is being integrated into virtually everything, and CRMs are no exception. More and more CRM platforms feature various AI tools and use machine learning to manage many automated processes.
Some of the CRM tasks that AI can handle include:
- Transcription of phone calls
- Data analysis
- Writing emails and other marketing materials
- Migrating and organizing data sets
2. Less reliance on AI and bots
Even as CRM companies are doubling down on AI efforts, businesses using those CRMs are taking a step back. This doesn’t mean they’ve stopped using AI for certain tasks, because they clearly haven’t. However, one thing that has become clear over the past few years is that customers want to interact with people, not bots.
This means that when customers find out they are reading emails or social media posts written by AI, or when they find themselves speaking to a chatbot instead of a human representative, they react very negatively. In short, overusing AI can actually hurt businesses.
3. More built-in functions
Another of the biggest trends in CRM platforms today is an increase in integrated features. There was a time when CRMs simply collected and organized data. However, more and more, these platforms have evolved into all-in-one hubs for analyzing and reaching out to customers.
This trend continues to advance, with many CRM platforms adding even more features directly into the tool. Some of the features that are being prioritized right now include:
- Email Marketing
- Scheduling meetings
- Budget generation
4. CRM on demand
Traditionally, CRMs worked like many types of software: a platform offered several plans, with each plan adding more features as the price increased. But one of the latest CRM trends sees companies leaning toward an a la carte system, where a business can choose the specific set of CRM features it wants and pay only for those features.
While it is not yet common for CRM companies to adopt this pricing model en masse, it is clear that many CRM customers are showing a preference for the few companies that are using it.
5. CRM mobile applications
Many businesses collect customer information when they’re out in the field, making it convenient to have a way to immediately input that information into their CRM. That’s why more and more CRMs have begun to offer mobile apps.
This is something that some platforms have done for years, but it’s only now reaching the same level of popularity as other customer relationship management trends on this list. The ability to access your CRM from your phone—meaning you can do it no matter where you are—is definitely a huge plus.
6. Low-code and no-code CRMs
For years, many CRMs were incredibly complicated to use. Many required a certain level of programming knowledge, which meant that businesses had to hire experts to help them use the platforms. Fortunately, this situation is disappearing.
One of the latest trends in CRM companies is low-code and no-code CRMs. These terms refer to CRMs that are largely self-sufficient, meaning you don’t need a ton of technical or programming knowledge to use them.
Whatever you need to do with your CRM, you can accomplish on your own, without any outside expertise.
CRMs have been known for offering email marketing capabilities for a while now. But now many of them are starting to offer help with social media as well. Social media is one of the best places to collect customer data, something that more and more businesses are discovering.
One of the biggest trends in CRMs right now is that many businesses are integrating their social media accounts directly into their CRMs to help them track customer engagement and learn more about their audience. This trend works well with social listening , allowing you to pull insights into what customers are saying right into your CRM.
8. Greater emphasis on data security
Data security has always been important, but with CRMs growing in size and becoming more central to business operations, many companies are placing a greater emphasis on it. After all, your CRM contains a lot of sensitive customer and company information, and the last thing you want is for a hostile entity to gain access to it.
To protect yourself against cyberattacks, you not only need to comply with all relevant laws (like GDPR and CCPA), but also choose a CRM that comes with robust security protocols. Fortunately, CRM companies are feeling the pressure and are making more of an effort to implement those protocols.
9. Integration with more applications
A CRM is designed to serve as a central location for all of your customer data, but that data comes from a variety of different sources. That’s why you need to integrate your CRM with many other platforms. And while that’s always been necessary, companies are focusing on it even more as they look ahead to 2025.
These integrations aren’t just about collecting data. You can also integrate your CRM with advertising platforms and export data to help inform your advertising campaigns. Plus, with the number of automation features now present in CRMs, you can also run some of your campaigns (like email marketing) directly from the CRM itself.
10. CRM Unification
Historically, it has been common for businesses, especially large corporations, to use multiple CRMs. This is because different teams operated independently, so the marketing team used one CRM while the sales team used another, and so on.
However, companies are now realising how inefficient this is – not only does it lead to spending more money unnecessarily, but it also leads to data silos, where different teams operate based on different data sets. It makes much more sense to get all the teams in your company on the same page.
The easiest way to achieve this is to simply use a single CRM across your entire company. It costs less and ensures that all the different teams are unified. That’s why using a single CRM is one of the biggest trends in customer relationship management right now.
