The Bold New CRM Vendor Updates and Innovations 2025

Say goodbye to outdated customer relationship management tools. Today’s fast-moving, hyper-connected world demands more than just a basic CRM. Introducing the Bold New CRM for Modern Sellers — a smart, AI-powered platform designed to help sales professionals work faster, sell smarter, and build deeper customer relationships. With intelligent automation, real-time insights, and seamless integrations, the bold new CRM software will surely blow your mind as this isn’t just another system — it’s your ultimate sales advantage.

The pace of innovation remains high, with weekly updates from both software majors and specialist AI firms. Here are a few latest news about the modern CRM, along with the vendor updates and innovations.

Key CRM Updates from Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho (2025)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are no longer just tools for managing contacts; they are strategic platforms driving growth, efficiency, and personalized customer experiences. As we move further into 2025, leading CRM vendors like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho are rolling out significant innovations, with a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), hyper-personalization, and seamless data integration.

CRM Vendor Updates & Innovations 2025

Here's a summary of the latest trends and innovations from top CRM vendors:

#1 Salesforce Agentforce:

Salesforce, the leading CRM platform recently made an announcement about its power-packed Agentforce. Agentforce 3 offers an enhanced Atlas architecture that boosts enterprise readiness with faster response times, improved accuracy, greater resilience, and native support for hosted LLMs like Anthropic.

“With Agentforce, we’ve unified agents, data, apps, and metadata to create a digital labor platform, helping thousands of companies realize the promise of agentic AI today,” said the EVP & GM of Salesforce AI.

Salesforce is pushing its agentic AI platform, Agentforce, aimed at autonomous customer service, marketing, and sales agents. Its AI now handles 66% of customer inquiries (e.g., at Fisher & Paykel) and resolves 84% of internal queries.

(Source: Salesforce Agentforce)

What Is Agentforce?

Agentforce is Salesforce’s next-gen agentic AI layer built on top of Einstein GPT. It's a system of autonomous AI agents that can do more than chat—they can reason over business data and perform actions across your CRM and external systems.

Agentforce equips agents with everything they need to get work done: data, reasoning, and actions. It allows agents to connect to any data source, using that information in real-time to plan, reason, and evaluate. Furthermore, Agentforce agents can execute tasks by leveraging any existing workflow, automation, or API.

How Does it Work?

Each agent is powered by:

• Atlas Reasoning Engine for multi-step logic and decision-making
• Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) to ground outputs in real-time, trusted data from CRM and knowledge bases
• Built‑in guardrails via Einstein Trust Layer ensuring data privacy, safety, and ethical behavior
• Agentforce Command Center, a key new feature for observability and governance.

Why Does It Matter in CRM?

• Productivity boost: Automates routine tasks so teams can focus on strategy.
• Consistent accuracy: Responses are based on trusted business data and governed AI
• Scalability: Handles high volumes without increasing headcount
• Improved customer experience: 24/7 availability with personalized, context-aware interactions

What’s New?

Agentforce 3.0 now supports standardized agent interfaces, allowing for easy connections with third-party vendors like PayPal, Stripe, AWS, and industry-specific systems without custom development. New capabilities like "Agentforce Deal Agent" for pipeline management automation and enhanced multilingual sales coaching. Agentforce is designed to handle routine customer support, streamline sales funnels, and improve decision-making by taking autonomous actions. Salesforce aims to transform how businesses operate across sales, service, and marketing by embedding intelligent, adaptive automation.The Summer 2025 Release brings advancements in flow approval processes, enhanced debugging, and a new "Get Related Records" element for simplified data retrieval. You may also check a complete review of Salesforce CRM software by Goodfirms.

Should You Explore It?

Whether you're already deeply invested in Salesforce CRM platforms or planning to invest in the best CRM software, and want to automate workflows across sales, service, marketing, HR—at scale,

Best next steps:

1. Identify high-volume, repetitive workflows (e.g., lead triage, service ticket handling).
2. Pilot an out-of-the-box agent, like SDR or Service Agent.
3. Monitor for accuracy, escalations, and ROI improvements.

Salesforce continues expanding the ecosystem—through their Agentforce Partner Network (leveraging third-party agents via AWS/GCP) and AgentExchange marketplace. AI agents are more visible, controllable, interoperable, and scalable for enterprise use cases.

Other notable updates from Salesforce:

Cognizant–Salesforce Deepened Partnership: In late June, Cognizant launched a new suite tied to Salesforce Agentforce, offering enterprises with enhanced customer & operations transformation services.

Salesforce Acquires Convergence.AI: Completed June 11, 2025: this acquisition enhances CRM by letting AI agents navigate complex UIs automatically. Handle multi-step workflows—from onboarding to billing—across systems.

Five9 & Salesforce Contact Center Integration: Five9 deepened its partnership with Salesforce in early June. Enables integration of Five9 CCaaS with Agentforce, enabling intelligent call center automation.

If you are wondering which is more powerful, HubSpot or Salesforce, then do not fail to read this blog.

#2 HubSpot CRM:

With over 258,000+ customers in over 135 countries, HubSpot is today one of the leading CRM platforms backed with the power of artificial intelligence. HubSpot CRM in 2025 is rapidly transitioning into a unified AI-powered growth platform, featuring:

• Embedded agents (Breeze) for intelligent automation
• Advanced customer journey tools and AI segmentation
• Better multi-account oversight
• Strong data governance, workflow intelligence, and predictive analytics

(Source: Hubspot CRM)

HubSpot recently became the first CRM to launch a deep research connector with ChatGPT. The company made an announcement about this big and bold move in June, 2025.

“We’re building tools that help businesses lead through the AI shift, not just adapt to it. By connecting HubSpot CRM data directly to ChatGPT, even small teams without time or data resources can run deep analysis and take action on those insights— fueling better outcomes across marketing, sales, and service,” reportedly mentioned SVP of Product and Partnerships at HubSpot.

The HubSpot deep research connector is a game-changer for go‑to‑market teams. If you are managing HubSpot + ChatGPT, this tool acts like having an intelligent analyst built right within your CRM. Major benefits;

• Instantly queries CRM data using plain-language prompts
• Surfaces strategic insights and actionable recommendations
• Integrates directly back into HubSpot for workflow automation
• Ensures secure, permissioned, private use

Here is a video that has a complete explanation of what deep research connector with ChatGPT means to HubSpot CRM users;

What Is It & Why It is Significant?

• First-ever CRM deep research connector: HubSpot becomes the first CRM to offer a deep research integration directly with ChatGPT, empowering users to apply advanced data analysis to real customer records.
• High-level insights, no coding required: Enables natural language queries over large CRM datasets (contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and their associations), delivering exceptional analysis, hypothesis testing, and opportunity exploration.

A few samples of what this facility can do for the users;

Other News from Hubspot CRM:

HubSpot has unveiled four AI-powered Breeze Agents designed to simplify workflows across marketing, sales, and support teams. Enhancements to Marketing Hub Enterprise include Lookalike Lists, advanced Journey Automation, and Multi-Account Management. Additionally, new AI Workspaces have been rolled out for sales, success, and support teams, offering a unified view to help prioritize tasks and drive action efficiently. The company launched 200+ product updates and features as part of its Spring 2025 Spotlight release.

You may also check a complete review of HubSpot CRM.

#3 Zoho CRM

(Source: Zoho CRM)

Zoho is the most powerful software suite designed for businesses of all sizes and types. The company operates in 150+ countries with its 55+ products serving 130M+ global users with its 18K+ expert team. With over 29 years of experience, the company has come a long way retaining its position as one of the top CRM software providers globally. Zoho CRM is a user-friendly, customizable, and AI-backed customer relationship management software with 360 degree view for businesses.

(Source: Zoho CRM)

Zoho CRM's Q1 and Q2 2025 updates focus on strengthening enterprise functionality, deep customer intelligence, and automation, with a particular emphasis on their in-house AI assistant, Zia, and new AI capabilities.

• Zia AI Enhancements: Zia, Zoho's AI assistant, now monitors performance deviations and sends alerts to sales leaders when anomalies are detected. Zoho has also launched its own in-house Large Language Model (LLM) to power all AI offerings in Zoho CRM, beginning with the Smart Prompts feature in Zia for drafting emails, summarizing notes, and gathering record-specific information.
• QuickML Integration: Zoho CRM introduces QuickML, enabling no-code machine learning model creation directly within the platform. This gives businesses control over data preparation and model optimization to build AI solutions tailored to specific use cases.
• Expanded Messaging Integrations and ABM Tools: Zoho CRM has strengthened its communication capabilities with deeper integrations with WhatsApp for Business and Line, allowing for template management, automated message delivery, and threaded replies. New Account-Based Marketing (ABM) add-ons enable businesses to segment high-value accounts using various metrics and execute personalized campaigns.
• Enhanced CPQ and Data Management: The CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) engine has been enhanced with support for dynamic actions in Product Configurator and the ability to clone price rules. Improvements in data management include enhanced subforms, formula fields, and a revamped UI for data sharing rules.
• Improved User Interface and Collaboration: Updates include an updated user interface with separate sections for reports and analytics, the ability to organize modules into collapsible folders, and new "Team Modules" for granular access control.

• folders, and new "Team Modules" for granular access control, enhancing overall user experience and team collaboration.

Other Notable CRM Vendor Updates and Focus Areas (as of early July 2025):

• Pipedrive: Revamped its solution provider partner program, continuing to focus on ease of use and sales pipeline management for small businesses.
• Nutshell: Incorporating AI features like timeline summarization, Zoom call transcription, voice-to-text note-taking, and AI data enrichment.
• Verint: Recognized for its CX automation capabilities, particularly its AI-powered bots (like Agent Copilot and TimeFlex Bot) to increase agent capacity and improve customer and agent experience.
• Genesys Cloud AI Studio: Also in the June 27 roundup, Genesys debuted Cloud AI Studio, featuring tools like Cloud AI Guides to build, deploy, and govern fully autonomous virtual agents.Designed for scalable, enterprise-wide agentic AI across complex customer journeys.
• Freshworks Freddy Agentic AI Enhancements: In June, Freshworks rolled out: Multiple Freddy AI agents tailored for use cases like email support, unified search, and root-cause analysis. Freddy AI Agent Studio, a no-code visual tool for building autonomous agents.
• Cresta Omnichannel AI Agent: In mid-June, Cresta introduced an omnichannel AI agent that maintains context across voice and digital channels. Auto-adjusts tone and uses customer data to guide users to optimal resolutions.
• Amplitude, CallMiner, Hightouch, Intuit (Mailchimp), Jasper, Upstream Works: These are other players actively releasing new AI-powered tools and integrations focused on areas like product innovation, conversation analytics, omnichannel AI agents, personalization, and marketing enablement.

What Does These Updates and Innovations Mean for Your Business?

If you wish to know your customers, you should know AI CRM. Precisely, today’s customer acquisition is a huge challenge and this can be easily mitigated by investing in an AI-packed customer relationship management (CRM) tool. The above-given updates from leading CRM companies are valuable. This means a lot to businesses who are serious about their quick customer acquisition, retention and experiences.

• Adopt Now or Fall Behind: Late adopters risk losing relevancy as customer-facing AI agents filter brand exposure based on preferences.
• Productivity & Cost Gains: AI in CRM is delivering real benefits—Zurich’s 70% cut in service time and Salesforce’s reassigning of support roles show tangible gains.
• Shift to Autonomous Agents: CRMs are transitioning from analytics tools to proactive digital labor—automating tasks end-to-end with agentic AI

AI-CRM Revolution:

The AI-CRM revolution isn't just about automation—it's about unlocking human potential by transforming customer relationships into intelligent, adaptive conversations. By leveraging advanced AI and data capabilities, these vendors are empowering businesses to build stronger customer relationships, optimize operations, and drive sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive market.

CRM today can be an all-in-one customer engagement platform.

AI-powered CRM software features a selection of AI tools to automate tasks, simplify communication and effortlessly close more deals.

• Stay one step ahead with your own personal assistant
• Streamline communication with our AI email generator
• Get tailored AI app recommendations
• Enjoy enhanced efficiency
• Proactive Automation
• Data Archiving
• AI Security

Conclusion:

Overall, the CRM market is heavily invested in AI to drive smarter, more personalized, and more efficient customer interactions across all touchpoints, while also focusing on seamless integration and user empowerment.These updates underscore a clear trend in the CRM industry: a move towards more intelligent, automated, and integrated platforms.

Interestingly, no-code customer relationship management, or CRM tools backed by AI is widely adopted by several businesses today. Startups or small businesses have a facility to adopt the top free and open source CRM software, and open-source real estate CRM to start with a CRM tool.