Indian Banks Betting Big On Customer Management

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Kolkata: : The banking industry in India has undergone many changes in last decade and one of the major areas of change is customer services. Today, customers are demanding “anytime anywhere banking”. This is only possible when a customer relationship software is implemented over a wide area network, in banks with Internet banking facilities, as one of the multiple delivery channels.

According to IDBI Bank state head, West Bengal and Ranchi, Baishaki Banerjee, “Among the few businesses which understood technology to be blended with human touch was banking, especially retail banking. Today, retail banking is primarily expanding and maintaining the existing customer base. This is only possible if the bank has a long-term plan of customer relationship management.”

Customer relationship management (CRM) is not just using software and making the data available across all bank branches or sending gift items to a bank’s priority customers. A good CRM solution sits on multiple channels like Internet, ATM, branches, and call centres to provide customers the facility of 24 hours banking.

Take the case of ICICI Bank. The bank has implemented Siebel solutions across all its channels, said a bank spokes-person. “We have around 450 branches. Except some rural branches, all the branches are connected and the required customer information is available to all the channels,” the spokesperson said.

A CRM software with customer database aims to sell multiple products to a single customer. The software not only helps the bank to look for customers who will be attracted to different products of the bank, but also will do the required analysis to have cross-selling of products.

According to a spokesperson of Standard Chartered Bank, “Previously the customer operation were limited to current and saving account operations. Now more and more customers are going beyond the deposit function and showing interest in various bank products like credit cards, personal, house building and educational loans. This change made imperative for every bank to have a full-blown CRM solution.”

At present, most banks does not have a separate CRM package. Banks like UTI, IDBI or Standard Chartered use various CRM tools to analyse customer information. But, as most of the banks have a centralised database and the branches are networked, so customer information is available to all the branches.