(CRM) is one of the most important phrases in the banking industry – or at least it should be.
In today's financial world CRM should be linked with the following mission: "Gain a competitive advantage by identifying, attracting, and retaining profitable clients."
Financial institutions today are facing the same challenge today as 15 years ago. Management is still trying to figure out "how do we obtain a complete picture (a 360-degree view) of our customers that is consistent throughout all contact points of the company?"
Why is this challenge always a top priority for the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industries? The answer is that it leads to a better bottom line.
The Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) industries are in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The truth is, the next “Uber” of the financial industry is looming, and you should be ready for it.
Due to the global financial crisis, the BFSI industry has placed a huge focus on customer relationship and experience. Many companies are faced with reducing costs (whilst scaling up the business), improving efficiencies, and offering flexibility for skilled resources that are client facing which will improve performance and efficiencies.
The top 3 challenges facing banks and financial institutions
1. Consumer expectations
These days it’s all about the customer experience, and many banks are feeling pressure because they are not delivering the level of service that consumers are demanding, especially with regards to technology. Customers want to manage all of their needs from one interface and want banking to be simple, fast and secure.
2. Increasing competition from financial technology companies
Financial technology (FinTech) companies comprise start-ups that use software to make financial services more efficient and reliable. The increasing popularity of FinTech companies is disrupting the way traditional banking has been done. The traditional companies need to adjust to the changing demands of consumers to ensure competitiveness.
3. Regulatory pressure
Regulatory requirements continue to expand, and banks need to spend a large part of their discretionary budget on being compliant and building systems and processes to keep up with the escalating requirements. At the same time, they must constantly evaluate and improve their operations in order to keep up with the fast pace of change in the banking and financial industry today.
Deloitte reports that the BFSI industry has been experiencing adverse economic conditions and exceedingly stringent regulatory control, with a resultant increase in the amount of capital required. Enormous pressure to reduce costs while upscaling operations is also evident. Simultaneously, customers are becoming highly demanding and expect services and simple communications across a range of emerging channels such as texts, tweets, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Leveraging CRM for Unprecedented Customer Visibility
The aim of CRM is to help businesses use technology to gain insight into the behaviour of customers and the subsequent value of those customers.
If it works as planned, a BFSI providers can: provide better customer service, make call centres more efficient, cross-sell financial products more effectively, help sales staff close deals faster, simplify marketing and sales processes, discover new customers, and, ultimately, increase customer revenue.
How? With Dynamics CRM, customer service agents in financial organisations are able find their records easily across entities, use the built-In workflow/processes to facilitate and define their own business process, synchronise emails, appointments and contact information via outlook, have access to records across the organisation and keep them updated through built-in collaboration tools , and also enjoy access to customer information from a single screen, thereby, enabling a seamless multichannel experience.
The benefits of such a solution include:
- The relationship and the intuitive user interface within Dynamics CRM helps users to see the 360 degree of customer-view perspective.
- Dashboard and reporting are integral parts for analysis to measure performance and gain new target-and-business insight.
- Activities are tracked, history is stored, plans are scheduled, everything is centralized in one database.
- The social features and team collaboration features will help users to stay abreast and stay close to each other, increasing productivity.
But creating such a system does not simply happen through the procurement and installation of a CRM system. For CRM to be truly effective, an organisation must first decide what kind of customer information it requires and what it intends to do with that information.
Customer information is a valuable asset of the BFSI community. CRM solutions are vital in helping financial institutions solve the problem of disparate, disconnected systems and product silos to create a single integrated sales and service platform that provides users with streamlined and comprehensive customer information. These systems also provide customers with access to products and services across all channels.
Financial institutions that are focused on surpassing customer expectations will be best positioned to increase their share of investable assets or share-of-wallet. CRM systems are essential to effective business growth, empowering users with comprehensive client information and tools to help them deliver exceptional service and meet the unfilled needs of their valuable clients.
The future of customer experience is now. Customers demand experiences that are predictive, omni-channel, and social. Conversations should be intelligent, connected, and results-oriented. Financial institutions can respond to these demands, differentiating themselves from their peers in the inevitable economic recovery.
The objective for every BFSI business should be to leave customers feeling so great about their experiences that they end up wanting to share them with everyone they know. Financial institutions continue to collect data; now it's time to put that data to work for the benefit of the customer. Influencing and empowering customers to rave about service experiences is what companies in the BFSI industry need to aspire to as we inevitably move more into the 'new wo
Mint Management Technologies is a global IT consultancy that is in the top 5% of global CRM providers as well as a member of the Microsoft President Club. The company enables better business by digitally leading its clients through and in the digital space.
Nice blog, was very interesting, good information is given about CRM Software.Will be useful in future.Thanks for sharing the blog.