AI-first strategy for 2025 is not what I expected from Pipedrive
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The announcement of the next webinar about 2025 strategy for Pipedrive (Reimagining your CRM experience with AI) is bad news to me. Am I alone to be concerned about an AI-first strategy?
I don't activate any AI features because I chose Pipedrive for EU data storage and treatment while Pipedrive AI features are based on OpenAI, an American based company. As a EU citizen, recent political directions of the USA confirm me that I don't want to share any sensitive data outside Europe.
Furthermore, I am not a big fan of integrated AI features. By reading "AI-first strategy", I am worried that Pipedrive team will not be very innovative outside AI features, and it is sad while Attio and Hubspot has a more diversified strategy.
I am looking forward to listening Pipedrive team in few days at the webinar to know if I need to find a Pipedrive alternative soon or if finally Pipedrive stay Pipedrive : focusing on easy (and powerful) customization and integration to adapt easily the CRM to our business-specific needs.
Answers
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This is a concern for me as well. I do not need any sort of AI for my business and I feel they have focused from their core product development to implementation of AI. I have felt this much of 2024 already and to see the AI First announcement I worry I will have to abandon this CRM.
I feel Pipedrive is better for small teams and AI is a more a enterprise level need. It's clear they are shifting focus to large enterprise clients and leaving us small businesses behind.1 -
I agree, and have switched these functions off. After testing some, I am also not really impressed with what the AI does. I may not make the best use of it, but the pre-generated replies are bland and irrelevant. I've never had the need to use the email summary, but I may be alone in this. Would love to hear if others find this useful.
My preference would be for pipedrive to focus more on the automations, so that someone who wants to, can integrate pipedrive easier with OpenAI (or Mistral)'s API.
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Yes an API for Smartdocs is what's needed the most for me.
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Agreed. I hope Pipedrive reconsiders this focus. I gave AI a chance but it did not add value to my workflow.
Pipedrive has been great for my companies however there is still a lot to be desired with its core functionality and options.
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I love AI and love the power of it. However, focussing on integrating AI into Pipedrive I think is a mistake. Clickup has done the same thing and it's driving me crazy. The AI tools they are building aren't useful and I'm concerned this focus could bloat the software and make it harder to use.
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They must focus on fixing what is not working and finish the other features they started instead of giving us a poor AI. I don't understand their vision.
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As artificial intelligence is becoming more and more applicable in various products such as CRMs like Pipedrive. The big question or issue is how and why it is being implemented. In AI iplementation Pipedrive should focus on how the users can maximize their customer information in their Pipedrive database. Pipedrive filter are good in filtering data.
However, there is tons of unorganized and categorized data in notes, activities, documents etc. which is hard or almost impossible to sort out with current means. This is where the real value of AI comes to play: mining the data from these sources and helping the users to generate output that is concise, informative and makes sense.
I don't care about AI that presents possible apps to use or any other "fun" stuff. These do not enable me to generate value to my organization.
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Hi @Alexandre Brianceau and all others in this thread
Sorry for taking some time to get back to you.
You are raising very valid questions and concerns which have made us internally realise we have to communicate clearer and proactively with you and all other Pipedrive customers how we work with AI to create trust in our users base.Data privacy is very important to us, and I understand it's critical for you. We continue to adhere to the requirements of applicable data protection laws, including the GDPR. Any data transfers to the U.S. are done in accordance with the GDPR requirements.
When it comes to innovation beyond AI, rest assured that our CRM remains at the core of what we do. Our roadmap includes many improvements to our core product that are essential for the AI layer to function effectively. Here are some examples upcoming in 2025 outside the realm of AI:
- Team Inbox
- True/False Branching for Automations
- Seamless Calendar Sync
- Improved Data Import
- And more..
Our mission is still to make Pipedrive the easiest CRM to use on the market, and we're designing the AI experience to simplify your life, not complicate it. Nobody wants to deal with clunky software, and bloating it goes completely against our principles.
Finally, I want to reassure you that we're building Pipedrive for small and medium-sized businesses. This remains our focus!
I hope to see you and many others during the webinar tonight and will gladly help you with any more questions. Thanks again for sharing 🙏🏻
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Thanks Mike.
I love pipedrive and it's the core of my business. We use it not just for sales but managing and storing all relevant data through each stage until it's closed out.
This is why "AI First" has me so concerned. It just does nothing for us at the CRM level. We are a low volume business that offers a high end custom product and sales process requires a personal experience.
The recent addition of AI to the insights for generating a report is the first possible use case I've seen.
You guys could do nothing but add Smartdoc Automation and I couldn't think of anything left to be desired. :)1 -
@Mike van der Valk For me, this sentence says it all: Our mission is still to make Pipedrive the easiest CRM to use on the market. BUT: It's not just about AI but fixing and upgrading basic functions, like campaigns and calendars, more flexibility in reporting with a combination of different metrics (we've shared a post about this), and so on… I know you work hard, guys, but for me, working on AI before all posts here is a missed opportunity to consolidate your CRM as easy to use.
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Hi @Josh Buesking and @David Picard
Thanks for your reflections. I think what is crucial for me to highlight is that we see AI not as something we need to put everywhere and only before any other improvements to the existing functionality. It's a new and exciting technology with a lot of potential. We want to narrow in on the best use cases where the power of this technology can help our customers and where it can be best put to action to help save our customers time and become more efficient in their sales process.
We are at the beginning of this journey with Pipedrive and feedback such as yours is crucial to help us learn where and when AI can be most impactful. Insights report generation is one example and with continuous feedback we will find the best use cases out there. Josh, in this case we are committed to balance the needs of all our customers worldwide like with other functionalities in our tool. This could lead to some use cases being more impactful for one specific customer than they are for the other. Having said that, we always looking to prioritize those updates that will be most impactful across our entire customer base.
This ties into what you mentioned David. In our prioritisation we don't just prioritize anything AI related. We work from the customer problem first, as we've always done. If then we can solve that customer problem by using AI (like setting up Insights reports) that's great. However if we notice an important and bigger problem for our customers where AI isn't needed to solve this, we are still committed to solving these problems first and foremost.
You can shoot me an email to mike@pipedrive.com if you'd like where I can share a bit more details on our Product roadmap for 2025 where you will see that this is still filled with many improvements to our existing core functionalities. As this roadmap is meant for our customers as an audience I will refrain from posting it publicly here.
Thanks again for candid feedback, this will continue to help us narrow in on what's most important for our customer base and do send me a private email or reply here if you have more questions 🤞🏻
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