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Customer relationship management in Banking sector

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Nowadays, many businesses such as banks, insurance companies, and other service
providers realize the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and
its potential to help them acquire new customers retain existing ones and maximize
their lifetime value. At this point, close relationship with customers will require a
strong coordination between IT and marketing departments to provide a long-term
retention of selected customers.
Consumers largely selected their banks based on how convenient the location of
bank's branches was to their homes or offices. With the advent of new technologies in
the business of bank, such as Internet Banking and ATMs, now customers can freely
chose any bank for their transactions. The pressures of competitive and dynamic
markets have contributed to the growth of CRM in the Financial Services Sector.
10% Increase in customer retention can increase profitability by 35% in banking
business, 50% in insurance and brokerage, and 125% in the consumer credit card
market. Therefore, banks are now stressing on retaining customers and increasing
market share. Private Banks have traditionally viewed themselves as exceedingly
'Customer Centric' offering what they believe to be highly personalized services to the
High Net Worth Customers.
The wealthier the customers, the more demanding they are - and the clients expect
more and more from their banks, to understand what their wants and needs are, so that
the organization can be built around serving those needs. The structured approach to
CRM provides various benefits to the bank, viz., and a distinctive and consistent
customer experience, clear identification of the organizational, technological and
process-related capabilities and prioritization of these capabilities. The structure and
hierarchy of the customer experiences, needs an objective of CRM in banking sector,
emerging trends in banking sector, and need for better customer services are discussed
in this project.

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector

INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, few people changed their banks unless serious problems occurred. In
the past there was, to certain extent, a committed, often inherited relationship between
a customer and his/her bank. The philosophy, culture and organization of financial
institutions were grounded in this assumption and reflected in their marketing
policies, which were product and transaction-oriented, reactionary, focused on
discrete rather than continuous activities.
Today, financial institutions can no longer rely on these committed relationships or
established marketing techniques to attract and retain customers. As markets break
down into heterogeneous segments, a more precisely targeted marketing technique is
required, which creates a dialogue with smaller groups of customers and identifies
individual needs.
Also, before the Internet revolution, consumers largely selected their banks based on
how convenient the location of bank's branches was to their homes or offices. With
the advent of new technologies in the business of bank, such as Entities situation
coupled with the pressures of competitive and dynamic markets has contributed to the
growth of CRM in the Financial Services Sector. Net banking and ATMs, now
customers can freely chose any bank for their transactions. Thus, the customer base of
banks has increased, and so has the choices of customers for selecting the banks.
To grow their business and solidify customer relationships, financial institutions must
understand customer needs and preferences and respond with the appropriate
products and services. Banks have to take a customer-centric approach that recognizes
customer segmentation and enables the bank to get to know its customers. This is vital
to providing the appropriate products and services and maintaining regulatory
compliance. The key to success is having integrated CRM capabilities that bring
information from disparate systems together and enable decisioning to support a
single, personalized relationship with each customer that works across all layers of
their operating models.

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CRM is a sound business strategy to identify the banks most profitable customers and
prospects, and devotes time and attention to expanding account relationships with
those customers through individualized marketing, repricing, discretionary decision
making, and customized service-all delivered through the various sales channels that
the bank uses. The model developed here answers what the different customer
segments are, who more likely to respond to a given offer is, which customers are the
bank likely to lose, which most likely to default on credit cards is, what the risk
associated with this loan applicant is. Finally, a cluster profile analysis is used for
revealing the distinct characteristics of each cluster, and for modeling product
propensity, which should be implemented in order to increase the sales.
Building meaningful experiences is a daunting challenge in this environment,
particularly given the sheer number of customer interactions any one company must
address across many different businesses within an organization. A new perspective is
needed for delivering customer experiences one that builds a competitively superior
experience while prioritizing a companys resources and investments. The core of this
view is defined by three simple guidelines that apply to each and every customer
interaction:
Delight customers when it makes sense (and cents)
Fix where the company fails on its promise
Right-size delivery when an interaction doesnt matter.

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: THE CONCEPT

Customer Relationship Management is the establishment, development, maintenance


and optimization of long-term mutually valuable relationships between consumers
and the organizations. Successful customer relationship management focuses on
understanding the needs and desires of the customers and is achieved by placing these
needs at the heart of the business by integrating them with the organization's strategy,
people, technology and business processes.
At the heart of a perfect CRM strategy is the creation of mutual value for all the
parties involved in the business process. It is about creating a sustainable competitive
advantage by being the best at understanding, communicating, and delivering, and
developing existing customer relationships in addition to creating and keeping new
customers. So the concept of product life cycle is giving way to the concept of
customer life cycle focusing on the development of products and services that
anticipate the future need of the existing customers and creating additional services
that extend existing customer relationships beyond transactions.
Customer relationship management (CRM) has been a hot topic in industry for a
relatively short period of time. It formalizes best practice into a strategy that enables a
firm to identify its customers and target them in a way which will make them more
profitable and loyal. Fairhurst (2000) [4] argues that the best examples of CRM still
remain the one-to-one services provided by shopkeepers who know their customers
personally. The topic has thus been around for centuries, yet it is only in recent years
that computing technology has been developed which can go some way to replicating
this kind of customer management. The power of computers allows large firms to
apply these techniques on their many customers.
The definition of CRM that we shall use is that of Dych (2002) [3]: The
infrastructure that enables the delineation of and increase in customer value, and the
correct means by which to motivate valuable customers to remain loyal indeed to
buy again. This can be broken down into two specific types; analytical and

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


operational. The distinction is that operational CRM occurs at customer touch points
(i.e. where the customer and firm interact) and is thus concerned with collecting data
and practicing strategies. Analytical CRM occurs in the back office and is concerned
with processing data and forming strategy. Figure 1 shows how the two forms go hand
in hand with one another. Operational CRM produces customer data which can be
analysed in the back office. Using the findings from this, a new strategy can be
developed and operated on the customers, which in turn produces data. This cycle is
continuous with each type of CRM hopefully building on the output of the previous.

Figure 3.1:
The
relationship
between
operational
And
analytical
CRM
The

ultimate

goal of CRM
is to provide a
one-tone personalized service to each customer preened post-sale. If a firm can
identify its customers, it can gain data on them individually. Using the individual data
it can compare them with one another. These comparisons give an insight into each
customer. As a result, the firm becomes more aware of customer needs and can
change their marketing strategy moving away from mass marketing towards
database marketing. It is apparent that it would be easier to implement a CRM
strategy in an industry where the firms already have much information on their
customers such as banks and insurance companies. These have information on the
customers, their family and spending habits. Consider also online mail-order retailers
such as Amazon.com which require customers to register before they buy. The

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


Company can then track the purchases and browsing habits of every customer and
tailor their service accordingly. It is however much harder for the traditional bricksand-mortar retailers to achieve the key ingredient of CRM customer data.
Customers can visit the shops virtually anonymously, purchase the goods and leave.
This paper investigates strategies which could be implemented by such companies in
order to better manage their customer relations. Specific reference shall be applied to
the extremely competitive sector of retail sectors, where in recent years the big
players have taken very different routes to obtain customer information.

NATURE AND SCOPE OF CRM

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


The Customer is King! This credo is more powerful, relevant and true today than ever
before. In a truly customer driven economy, success depends on a company's ability to
be with the customer on a round the clock basis satisfying all their product and
service specific needs. Simply stated, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is
about finding, getting, and retaining customers.
Customer Relationship Management is one of the hottest and most talked about topics
in the industry today and for good reason. Industry analysts recently reported that
CRM expenditures will grow from $2.8 billion in 1999 to $11 billion by 2003.
CRM is all about building long term business relationships with your customers. It is
best described as the blending of internal business processes: Sales, Marketing and
Customer support with technology. CRM solutions empower businesses to more
efficiently and effectively manage the activities that affect their relationship with their
customers. The ultimate goal of CRM is to meet and exceed customer expectations,
create a positive customer experience and build customer loyalty.
CRM changes all of this and represents a continuing evolution in managing front
office operations. With CRM, traditional departmental applications for sales,
marketing and customer service are consolidated into a single unified system
capable of managing the entire customer life cycle. This approach allows
employees throughout an organization to have immediate access to a complete profile
of important customer information. Organizations who are implementing CRM
solutions feel confident that providing access to this level of information will assist
their sales and support staff in better understanding the needs and buying patterns of
their customers.
CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for
methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise
manage customer relationships in an organized way.
CRM is at the core of any customer-focused business strategy and includes the
people, processes, and technology questions associated with marketing, sales, and
service. In today's hyper-competitive world, organizations looking to implement
successful CRM strategies need to focus on a common view of the customer using
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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


integrated information systems and contact center implementations that allow the
customer to communicate via any desired communication channel.
What exactly is the definition of Customer Relationship Management? Ask a dozen
professionals, get a dozen different definitions. Here's a general overview:
CRM is used to learn more about your key customers needs in order to develop a
stronger relationship with them.
Customer Relationship Management can be defined as a companies activities
related to increasing the customer base by acquiring new customers and meeting the
needs of the existing customers. CRM is about building partnerships with your
customers. It uses internal business processes from Sales, Customer Service and
Marketing.
The philosophy of CRM is the recognition that your long-term relationships with
your customers can be one of the most important assets of an organization, providing
competitive advantage and improved profitability
The

most important part of CRM is the "customer-focus".

CRM uses technology, strategic planning and personal marketing techniques to build
a relationship that increases profit margins and productivity. It uses a business strategy
that puts the customer at the core of a companies processes and practices. It requires
this customer focused business philosophy to support effective sales, marketing, and
customer service and order fulfillment.
Regardless of company size or industry, businesses have begun to recognize the value
and importance of customer retention and are embracing new technology for
automating customer service and support. For the new millennium, it seems that the
customer has finally become King!!!

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector

4.1Why CRM
Keeping in mind the pace at which technology is changing today, any company which
is a step ahead of others because of some web product or service will not be able to
hold on to that advantage for long. Key to stability in today's dynamic marketplace is
forging long-term relationships with the customers.
Customers can be divided into three zones:
1.

Zone of defection where customers are extremely hostile and have the lowest

level of satisfaction.
2.

Zone of indifference where customers are not sure. They have a medium level

of satisfaction and loyalty towards the company.


3.

The third level of customers is in the zone of affection described as

"Apostles". CRM focuses on bringing customers from level 1 to level 3 and retaining
apostle customers.
A customer demand for customization is increasing with every passing day. This has
made companies shift their focus from "mass production" to "mass customization".
The present scenario of companies using "poorly implemented" multi channel
strategies for living upto the expectations of customers is bringing both customer
satisfaction and customer loyalty down the ladder.
Today any company can copy products or services offered by other companies. If the
new entrant adds features like less order turn around time and direct communication
then established players are bound to have sleepless nights. Organizations that
implement CRM and turn their business into e-businesses will find their competitors'
customers ready to welcome them with a "smile".
Take the example of a small enterprise. Here hard work reaps high quality service and
over the years develops a database of loyal customers. In this enterprise
computers are optional. Then why is the CRM industry attracting
investments of millions and billions of dollars? The reason is simple. The
concept of "Seller's Customer" has just rotated 180 degrees to become
"Customer's Seller". This simply states that, now the customer is more
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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


powerful than the seller. Options for customers have increased with the cycle
of innovation-to-production-to-obsolescence gaining momentum. On the
other hand companies are finding it difficult to differentiate them in the
marketplace. These factors are pushing companies into taking a closer look
at their customer relationships.
Organizing business to satisfy customer demands organizes/simplifies internal
functioning of the organization. Implementing CRM brings to the front the
"pits" that the organization had dug over the years, passing work from one
pit to another. Workflows are reduced, cycle times become shorter,
information flow of non-productive things gets eliminated and the most
important thing - "pits" get covered automatically with all the positive
features. Compact sized organizations get into a position of making more
money. This in turn enables them to please more customers.
For large enterprises, CRM has become a strategic initiative because of its potential
for increased revenues and improved customer service. Smaller businesses
are forging ahead as well, and are using CRM solutions to capture and share
customer information across multiple departments and job functions.
The top four reasons for implementing CRM are:

gaining customer confidence and loyalty

providing personalized service to customers

acquiring better knowledge of customers and their buying habits

differentiating themselves from the competition

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BIRTH OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Throughout the 90s businesses were focused on improving internal operations. CEOs
tried to distinguish their company through operational excellence and product
innovation. Middle management focused on automating departmental functions such
as sales and help desk support. They believed that automation and better management
of their sales and customer service process would lead to increased revenue and
customer satisfaction. Vendors were all too happy to support this belief and raced to
the scene with independent solutions for sales force automation, help desk and
customer service functions. While many of these applications provided increased
productivity, the approach of using independent solutions to address departmental
needs served only to created islands of information and database duplication.
Furthermore, the lack of system integration and workflow between these departments
meant that vital customer information was unavailable to sales and support personnel
without jumping from system to system. This did little to support cross selling
opportunities or increase customer satisfaction.
By the time customers walk into your business - or log-on to your website or call your
sales center - most already know what they want and how much they're willing to pay.
With easy access to mountains of information, today's customers do their homework,
and they now have the upper hand in most purchase transactions.
In response, sellers are bending over backwards to improve offerings and services.
However, rather than adopt a streamlined "you-want-it-we've-got-it" approach,
sellers have created a marketplace where products and services are sold, serviced and
marketed in an increasingly fragmented and ultimately frustrating way.
Never before has so much "clutter" bombarded consumers from so many online and
offline sources. Trying to be all things to all buyers, sellers face a harsh reality that
brings an old adage to life: You can please some of the people most of the time and

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most of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the
time.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which
swept through the business landscape in the early 1990s, brought the promise of
helping sellers please most of the people most of the time. Riding the coattails of
customer satisfaction would come increased organizational efficiency and, better still,
increased revenues.
That dream has been slow in coming. While incremental improvements have
occurred, CRM has not yet delivered its ultimate promise - the transformed customer
experience.
Yes, companies have implemented call centers and sales force automation software
and customer sales representative training. However, while improving the sales and
service components of customer transactions, companies have largely ignored the
very piece required to attract customers in the first place. It's the piece that ensures
sales and service efforts are effective and integrated. It's the piece that allows sellers
to segment and analyze their customer information in order to create a more
personalized, long-term relationship. It's the piece called "marketing" (see Figure 1).
Figure 5.1 - Completing the CRM vision

We're not saying that the last decade's investment in CRM has been wasted. Quite the
contrary: what began as a solution for providing more efficient customer transactions
evolved into a process by which companies could foster more meaningful customer

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interactions (see Figure 2). This was the right direction to take. However, companies
haven't reached the end of the CRM road. Today, the challenge is to take this
evolution one step farther - to focus on building lasting and profitable customer
dialogues at all interaction and transaction touch points to build customer and brand
value.

Figure 5.2: Evolution of CRM


As CRM evolved, many companies assumed that just bolting on new technology (e.g.,
client/server, call centers, sales force automation software, data warehouses, etc.) or
adding new services would enhance customer relationships. This assumption was as
pernicious as it was false. After all, you can't sell what people don't want to buy, no
matter how efficient and service-oriented your sales channel. And as for gathering
customer insights, be careful what you wish for. Many companies faced the unsettling
paradox of having advanced data availability and analytic techniques that quickly
outpaced their ability to absorb and apply the information. They were left with
sophisticated tools that offered little real value.
The belief is that the third wave of CRM will bring about the ultimate transformation
of customer experiences - not just by strengthening sales and service or even
promoting interactions with your customers - but by creating a series of "intelligent
conversations" that build over time into a long-term, meaningful dialogue.

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ROLE OF MARKETING IN CRM

To continuously attract and retain the most valuable customers, companies must act
aggressively to increase the economic value of both their brand and customer
relationships. In addition, they must sustain bottom-line performance in the face of
skyrocketing marketing costs. To realize these goals, companies must continue their
efforts to maximize their investments in the sales and service technologies that help
reach, understand and interact intelligently with customers. But they must also extend
this traditional scope of CRM to reach a higher standard of excellence in three distinct
disciplines: analytical, creative and operational marketing.

Figure 6.1 -The revitalization of marketing


Once these improved marketing processes are linked with core CRM capabilities,
companies will be able to drive seamless, consistent and real-time response across
marketing, sales and customer service. The result will be a sustainable process that not
only enables lasting customer relationships but also harnesses that elusive construct:
superior brand value.

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Analytical Marketing drives market segmentation and identifies your most


profitable customers. Information from each customer interaction channel is collected,
analyzed and used to develop predictions of your individual customer's behaviors.
Analytical marketing utilizes those processes and sophisticated technologies that
allow businesses to direct their overall marketing investment across the brand and
customer. In a sense, analytical marketing tools are the "nuts and bolts" of the
marketing engine.
Specifically, analytical marketing converts customer data, gathered at various touch
points, into relevant insights that direct market segmentation activities and feed into
more effective campaign design. Through predictive modeling, analytics lead to a
more robust understanding of customers and markets and an improved ability to make
strategic and operational decisions about customer treatment. The ultimate outcome is
increased profitability, based on customer differentiation, and more informed
decisions related to the development of product, pricing, promotion, packaging, and
channels.
Without analytics, companies will keep investing in CRM without ever knowing
where their money is having the greatest impact. In short, analytical marketing puts
customer insights to work for the organization and prevents the company from
delivering the wrong content to the wrong person at the wrong time.

Creative Marketing relies on analytical tools and customer insight capabilities to


improve marketing programs, optimize the overall marketing investment and deliver
the brand promise. As the number of customer channels has exploded, so has the need
for creative marketing, which involves all the activities associated with building and
sustaining a compelling brand and ensuring that customer interactions reflect a
satisfying brand experience.
In the past, creative marketing efforts have been applied to CRM efforts in much the
same way as technology. It's been far too easy for companies to develop a host of
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messages - from ad campaigns to customer service representative scripts - that are
unintentionally inconsistent. Such inconsistent messages delivered via a number of
different channels - when coupled with poor understanding of why brand and message
consistency is so critical to the customer experience - often produce fragmented
experiences that frustrate the customer who probably won't come back.
Fortunately, companies are changing the way they approach creative marketing. By
integrating its processes with those of analytical and operational marketing, and by
focusing on the total customer experience, creative marketing can now be used to
build a unified brand across all of a company's online and offline channels. In other
words, creative marketing is no longer considered an "afterthought".

Operational Marketing relies on customer insight information to personalize


interactions, differentiate sales and service across segments, drive continuous
improvement across customer interaction processes and generate revenue lift.
When these marketing disciplines work in tandem with your existing sales and service
capabilities, your entire CRM effort becomes revitalized. Information becomes
dynamic. Insights become powerful barometers of customers' likes and dislikes.
Comprehensive marketing campaigns become targeted and compelling. The result is a
customer base that is pleased with the unique and personalized interactions you
provide. Customer loyalty rises, as does your brand value and, ultimately, your
revenue.
Its efforts encompass all the activities of data mining and data warehousing, which
continuously harvest customer information from a variety of contact points.
Leveraged by creative and analytical marketing capabilities, this information is
assessed and converted into meaningful insights that drive ongoing, personalized
marketing efforts. The goal of operational marketing is to enable ongoing
"conversations" with individual customers across all channels.

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WHAT IS GOING AGAINST CRM


CRM has been in India for over seven years now. But its penetration in the Industry in
general and that in the financial services market has been rather uninspiring despite its
professed advantages. The surprising aspect that came out from the study was that
though the banks were aware of the CRM' benefits, they are skeptical about its
applicability to their organization. The root cause for this is the astonishing growth
that the banks are experiencing at the moment. Most of the Retail banks are
witnessing a tremendous expansion in their customer base: one bank even claim to be
adding over 100% customer on y-on-y basis.
Apart from this, there are many other factors that have undermined the acceptance of
CRM. The chart shown below enlists the various factors (and their relative weight
ages on a scale of 5) that are believed to have played a role in the sluggish penetration
of CRM in the retail-banking sector:

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Figure 7.1 the various factors (and their relative weight ages on a scale of 5)
The above chart clearly shows that it is the implementation time that has had affected
the way people in banks look at CRM the most. In order to further CRM in this
segment, it is of paramount importance to reduce the implementation time to
minimum possible. This factor makes CRM on Demand (web based CRM services
offered by service providers) a particularly attractive alternative. The second
important parameter that came out from the study was the cost. To sum up, Indian
retail banking players want less risk and faster returns at lesser costs.
Hence, from a CRM service providers' view, there is a need to find means to enhance
the appeal of CRM to these prospective firms. There can be many factors, which
when properly fine-tuned, can go a long way in convincing retail-banking institutions
to embrace CRM. But not all factors are similar: changes in cost incurred can't be
expected to have the same appeal to the customer as the changes in the
implementation time. And more often than not, these factors are mutually
contradictory. So, software service providers need to prioritize their specific offerings
depending upon the relative weight age accorded to these factors by the interested
firms. The retail industry, on an average, believes that the following are the
parameters changes in which will have most prominent bearing on the CRM adoption.

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The percentage values give the relative weight ages of the individual factors.

Since, companies generally cant do with an investment that takes a long time to get
running, implementation time figures as the top-most criteria closely followed by
initial costs and training required. Training requirement factor figures prominently in
the case of mid-market banks due to the fact that these firms generally make do with
just the required amount of manpower and it is very difficult for them to spare them.
That will immediately start affecting their operations. Current customer attrition level
is surprisingly lowest in priority. This might be due to the fact that most of the banks
surveyed are undergoing tremendous expansion in terms of customer base and hence
are really not that concerned about customer attrition.

BANK MARKETING: A TWO PRONGED APPROACH

Bank marketing in general and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in


particular are of vital importance for Indian banks, particularly in the current context
when banks are facing tough competition from other agencies, both local and foreign,
that offer value-added services.
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Competition is confined not only to resource mobilization but also to lending and
other revenue generating areas of services offered by banks. Under the circumstances,
it has become essential to develop a close relationship with valued customers and
come out with innovative measures to satisfy their needs. Customer expectations for
quality services and returns are increasing rapidly and, therefore, quality in future will
be the sole determinant of successful banking corporations. It is, thus, high time that
Indian banks organically realize the imperative of proactive Bank Marketing and
Customer Relationship Management and take systematic steps in this direction.

8.1 Marketing Approach


Banking industry is essentially a service industry which provides various types of
banking and allied services to its clients. Bank customers are such persons and
organizations that have surplus or shortage of funds and those who need various types
of financial and related services provided by the banking sector. These customers
belong to different strata of economy, different geographical locations and different
professions and businesses. Naturally, the need of each individual group of customers
is distinct from the needs of other groups. It is, therefore, necessary to identify
different homogenous groups and even sub-groups of customers, and then with utmost
precision determine their needs, design schemes to suit their exact needs, and deliver
them most efficiently.
Banks, generally, have been working out various services and products at the level of
the Head Office and these are traded through their retail outlets (branches) to different
customers at the grass-roots level. This is the so called 'Top to Bottom' approach.
However, bank marketing requires a change in this traditional outlook. It should be
'bottom to top' approach with customers at the grass-roots level as the focal point for
working out various products / schemes to suit the needs of different homogenous
groups of customers. Thus, bank marketing approach, in general, is a group or
"Collective" approach.
Customers Relationship Management, on the other hand, is an individualistic
approach which concentrates on certain select customers from the homogeneous
groups, and develops sustainable relationships with them for adding value to the bank.
This may be termed as a "Selective" approach.
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Thus, bank marketing concept, whether "collective" approach or "selective" approach,
is a fundamental recognition of the fact that banks need customer oriented approach.
In other words, bank marketing is the design and delivery of customer needed services
worked out by keeping in view the corporate objectives of the bank and
environmental constraints.

The following chart gives an overview of the Two Pronged Approach to Bank
Marketing. Figure 8.1
Bank marketing
A two prolonged approach

Design and delivery of customer needed


service worked out by in keeping view
corporate objective and environmental

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constraints

Collective approach

Selective approach

To satisfy all customer of bank


and to develop positive image
of the bank in terms of quality
of service.

To devlop sustainable
relationship with selective high
value customer and making
efforts for their retention for
added value to the bank.

Objective
s

To introduce system of
objective assessment of the
Methodolog
standard of customer service to
y
To concentrate on selective
find out areas and causes of
valuable customer through CRM
deficiencies and take
to find out their latent and felt
appropriate corrective action.
needs
and to develop ways and
1. definition of target groups
of customer
means to satisfy them to ensure
and their needs
sustainable
relationship.
2. development of proper marketing
mix
in
terms of product, price, place and
promotion

8.2 Principal Aspects of Bank Marketing

Customer Oriented Services


Services offered by the banks are to be worked out in such a manner that they fulfil
the needs of the customers. Traditionally, bankers have been accustomed to think in
terms of what banks can offer and not what customers want. However, bank
marketing concept requires them to change this orientation, and start working out
schemes and services by keeping changing customer needs as the focus of their new
and novel products. In order to design and deliver customer needed services, the

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banks must learn to seek information about the existing and potential customers, and
their perceived and latent needs on a regular and systematic basis.

Design & Delivery of Such Services


The word design implies that good marketing services need to be properly designed
and painstakingly crafted so as to suit a particular well-defined group of clients. They
do not just emerge effortlessly. Moreover, such properly designed services must be
properly traded. In fact, poor delivery of smartly designed services is just as bad as
smart delivery of poorly designed services. The quality of delivery is to be ensured
not only through focussed advertisement, but also through proper customer services
offered at the bank's retail outlets. Customer satisfaction is a dynamic process and it is
necessary to keep pace with rising expectations of the customers. Further, the
development of IT and spread of Internet are opening up newer mechanisms of
customer contact and services.

Corporate Objectives of the Bank


The corporate objectives of the bank are to be worked out within the broad framework
of the national policy. The corporate objectives are of two types, Short Term and Long
Term.
The Short Term Objectives could be of the type: a) Increasing profitability of the bank next year,
b) widening customer base by offering new services,
c) increasing growth rate of credit next year, etc.
The Long Term Objectives could be: a) To rise to number one position in five years,
b) to become the universal bank over the period of next 3 years, etc.

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Once the corporate objectives are clearly spelt out, various schemes can be designed
to fulfill the needs of the customers within the framework of the chosen corporate
objectives. Further, the resources made available for systematic marketing efforts are
also constrained by policies, vision and attitudes of the management.

Environmental & Other Constraints


Environmental and other constraints play an important role in bank marketing
decisions. Generally, the environmental constraints fall into four categories:
Economic, Cultural, Legal and Political.
A thorough understanding of local and national economy is essential for taking
effective decisions about what product to be offered, where it is to be offered, at what
price it is to be offered, and how it is to be offered?
Banking schemes which are suitable for a developed economy might not be suitable
for a developing economy. It is essential to have intimate knowledge of income
pattern of potential customers, population growth, nature of industrial and trading
activities, extent of agricultural development, employment levels, wage structures,
and other relevant factors, in order to make decisions about services to be offered.
The cultural environment in which the bank operates also has a bearing on bank
marketing decisions. This includes attitude of local people about saving, borrowing
and spending, and also their traditions and values. The schemes suited for urban sector
would be different from those suited for rural sector.
Legal and political environment mainly constrains the decisions about the price of
product to be offered and the place for offering the product. For example, price of
deposits and various types of advances is constrained by the interest rate policies of
the regulators.
Thus, the knowledge of environmental constraints is an essential factor in the
designing and delivery of various types of customer-oriented schemes and services.

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8.3 Marketing Strategies


The marketing strategy consists of a very clear definition of prospective customers
and their needs and the creation of marketing mix to satisfy them. A recent
development in this regard is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It is a
business strategy to learn more and more about customer behavior in order to create
long term and sustainable relationship with them. It is a comprehensive process of
acquiring and retaining selective customers to generate value for the bank and its
customers.
Under CRM, acquisition of customers is done through personal visits, media
advertisement or word of mouth from existing customers. Customer retention is
carried out through data warehousing and mining tools, customer service and call
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services, and improved customer value is obtained through cross-selling and upselling
to the retained customers.

Identification of Target Customers & their Needs


This is an important area in formulation of a marketing strategy. Unless the bank has
clear idea about the customers it wants to serve, it is not possible to work out products
to satisfy their needs. This identification process involves:

Finding out profile of present customers in terms of their education, occupation,


income, geographical location, population group, age, sex, marital status,
products and services they purchase, their habits, tastes and preferences, their
businesses and future prospects, etc.

Finding out opinions of existing customers about the services provided by the
bank and their suggestions for improvement in present services and introduction
of new services.

Collecting such information from the persons who are not currently customers
of the bank.

All this can be done by conducting a survey of customers and non-customers of the
bank. Moreover, this process of seeking information about the market must form an
integral part of the system and must be done on a regular basis. The survey would
give valuable information about profiles and opinions of customers and noncustomers of the bank, and it can be analyzed to find out the target group of the
customers and their felt and latent needs.
The concept of data warehousing and data mining used in CRM helps in seeking
information about individual customers and their needs on a regular and systematic
basis. Data warehousing builds customer wise data by mapping it from various
services and products used by the customers such as deposits, credits, foreign
exchange, e-business, safe custody, lockers, bill collection, etc.
Data mining carries out various types of analysis on collected data to determine
customer behavior with respect to product, price and distribution channels, and offers

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a holistic view of every customer at a given point of time. The customer information
gathered by the bank in their day-to-day banking operations is often sufficient for
effective data storage. However, many times, it needs to be supported by data
collected from outside sources and agencies.
Further, the Customer Relations Management focuses on customer classification by
classifying the customers into: a high value (a more profitable) customer and a low
value (a less profitable) customer. Once bank differentiates the customers in terms of
their profitability and other traits, it becomes easy for the banks to customize their
services and products to maximize overall value of their customer portfolio.

Marketing Mix
The second element in formulation of marketing strategy is development of proper
marketing mix, so as to satisfy the needs of the target group of customers. This would
involve decisions regarding product, place, price and promotion. Decisions about
product would answer questions about the design of the services offered to suit
customer needs, the desirable hours for offering such services, the attractive names of
such services and so on. Various alternative ways to provide the basic services might
have to be worked out depending on the needs of the various target groups.
Decisions about place should answer questions about location of the prospective
customers and, therefore, location for offering such services.
Decisions about price should answer questions about right price for services offered,
worked out by taking into consideration the cost of such services, competitor's
charges and other factors.
Decision about promotion answers questions about communication with the customer.
After getting information on needs and location of the prospective customer and after
designing schemes to suit their needs, it is necessary to take decisions on making
schemes known to the prospective customers through proper communication media
and through proper words, so as to bring out the salient features of the scheme. Actual
delivery of the schemes at the counters and at the manager's desk also plays a vital
role in determining the success of the scheme. Expectations of the customers in post-

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reforms period have been changing very fast and customers have started shifting
loyalty to better banks. It is, therefore, all the more necessary to ensure that not only
the felt needs but also the latent needs of the customers are foreseen and satisfied.
A very good example of formulation of a market strategy under the "collective"
approach is development of the product, "Kisan Credit Cards". The target group
identified for this was farmers with the purpose of dispensation of agricultural and
rural credit to them. Agricultural credit cards and cash credit facilities which were
niche-marketed and were exclusively preserved for the privileged class of farmers
were, thus, extended to the small and marginal farmers since 1999.
Keeping this need of target group in mind, the decision on product was made. This
product decision involved questions regarding types of needs to be covered, number
of withdrawals and repayments to be permitted, basis of determination of limits,
validity period of the cards, its re-scheduling, the name of the product, and so on. The
place decision answered questions about the location where the KCCs can be
obtained. This involved all branches engaged in agricultural lending. Price decision
required answering questions on margins, collateral, interest rates to be charged for
different slabs, and so on. The promotion decisions answered questions regarding
mode of advertising the KCCs so that it becomes widely known. These methods
included radio and TV commercials and personal contacts by the employees of the
bank apart from news paper insertions.
An example of marketing strategy under "selective approach" is selecting a depositor
with good track record and offering him services for "car loan", "housing loan", etc.,
by personal contacts or through tale-marketing or selecting a valuable borrower,
keeping track of his interests and offering him some surprise gifts to ensure manifold
increase in his satisfaction. This approach requires thinking ahead of time to find out
what customers might need in future and fulfill these needs.

Promotional Strategy for Bank Marketing

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Even if a scheme is properly developed and designed to suit customer needs, it will
not pick up, unless it is properly marketed at all levels. Some of the strategies which
would help banks in their promotional efforts are given below:

To promote "Personal Selling", whether performed by counter clerk, bank


officer or customer service representatives of the bank.

To ensure "Proper Knowledge and Awareness" of various schemes of the


bank among the employees of the bank.

To make efforts so that the "Selling Attitude" becomes part of the


"Corporate Culture" of the bank.

To impart "Sales and Product Training" including tele-banking and netbanking concepts to employees of the bank. One of the ways of doing this
is to organise periodical in-branch departmental meetings of the employees
addressed by Branch Managers / Departmental Heads.

To develop incentive programmes which reward good-customer oriented


selling behaviour. The incentives need not be necessarily in terms of a cash
payment but several other alternatives can also be thought of, e.g., if a
particular employee brings certain minimum amount of business to the
bank, he/she should be eligible for certain special leave or they can be
made members of a special club called "Chairman's Club" for a particular
period. Several other such ways giving cashless incentives to the
employees can be worked out.

To ensure conversion of the entire employees organization of the bank into


a well-informed, disciplined and professional force committed to the
corporate values and objectives.

To make effective use of the large network of the retail outlets of the bank
visited by a large number of customers every day. A typical bank customer
visits his/her branch two or more times a month so one can imagine how

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many customer visits each branch will have per year. The use of "In-bank
Advertising" would, therefore, help a lot in marketing bank services.
In this connection the bank may have to think of retail shopkeepers' strategy of
exhibiting their products in an attractive manner. This would include:

Careful physical layout of the branch and creation of inviting


environment.

Exhibition windows as found in many departmental stores


displaying various products of the bank in an attractive
manner.

Attractive table with glass box on top exhibiting literature on


various products offered by the bank to be kept at an
appropriate location on the branch floor.

Creative ideas to exhibit "intangible products" in "tangible


manner", e.g., visual images, small models / photographs of
life style, customer could achieve with the help of proper
financial planning done through bank schemes.

Creation and updating of literature on various schemes and


services offered by the bank and ensuring its availability at
each branch.

Specially designed in-branch video visuals exhibiting various


products and services of the bank.

Public sector banks with a large network of branches have an excellent


opportunity to expand customer relationships and provide them with additional
complementary services. Personal contacts in any case are much better as
compared to contacts through phones or Internet.
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Customer relationship management in Banking sector

In Customer Relationship Management (CRM), results of data warehousing and


mining must be made available to all the concerned employees so that they have
complete knowledge about the value / profit each individual customer adds to the
bank, their future needs and ways and means to satisfy them

DATA WAREHOUSE AND DATA MINING

The Data warehouse is the core of any decision support system and hence of the
CRM. In implementing Data Warehouse, Bank has selected an incremental approach;
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here the development of information systems is integrated with the business strategy.
Instead of developing a complete design of a corporate Data Warehouse before
implementing it, the bank has decided to develop a portion of the Data Warehouse to
be used for customer relationship management and for the production of accurate and
consistent management reports. The Data Warehouse has been designed according to
the IBM BDW (Banking Data Warehouse) model, which has been developed as a
consequence of the collaboration between IBM and many banking customers. The
model is currently being used by 800 banks worldwide.

Figure9.1. the process of Relational Marketing


It includes customers' demographic data, product ownership data and transaction data
or, more generally product usage data as well as risk and profitability data. As new
data are produced they are placed temporarily in an intermediate, from which they are
preprocessed and transferred to the warehouse. The importance of the Data
Warehouse stems from the analysis of Figure 1. As a result of strategic decisions
customer analysis is carried out by using data continuously updated as well the
analytical methods and tools to be described later on. The CRM group analyzes
results obtained and designs action plans, such as campaigns, promotions, special
marketing initiatives, etc. Plans developed are then implemented by means of the
several channels used by the bank to reach customers. Evaluation or results completes
the cycle. The results become an integral part of the description of the bank-customer
relationship in the warehouse. The learning cycle is thus complete and results

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


obtained can be reused in future analyses and in future marketing plans. It is easy to
understand that the Data Warehouse cannot actually be built 'once for all' but is a kind
of living structure continuously enriched and updated as the Relational Marketing
activity develops. OLAP (On Line Application Programming) analyses are developed
by means of Business Object in its web version. CRM analysts use this tool to issue
complex SQL queries on the Data Warehouse or on the Analytical Data mart and carry
out mono and bivariate statistics on the whole customers' population or on selected
groups. Figure 2 shows general structure of Relational Marketing Activity.

Figure9.2.The Relational marketing process is supported by a computing


infrastructure where many software packages are integrated with the bank's
information system.
Data Mining analyses are not carried out directly on the Data Warehouse, but on the
Analytical Data mart by means of the software package IBM Intelligent Miner
[Cabena et.al. 1999], using as a computing and data server the same mainframe where
The Data Warehouse resides. Now days Bank believes these tools and methodologies
are a powerful competitive weapon and is investing heavily in the human resources
needed to develop these analyses.
The Analytical Data mart is derived from the Data Warehouse through the
following steps:

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


1) Raw data processing: data selection, data extraction, and data verification and
rectification
2) Data modeling and variable preprocessing: variable selection, new variable
creation, variable statistics, variable discrimination.
The above processing, based on traditional data analysis, is strictly dependent on the
investigated process; new variable creation, for instance, is intended to aggregate
information contained in the raw data into more expressive variables. A simple
example is the number of credit transaction on current account that contains much of
the information contained in the individual transactions, but is easier to analyze and
represent. Variable discrimination, based on the distribution of the original variables,
is intended to generate categorical variables that better express the physical reality of
the problem under investigation. The Analytical Data mart is customer centric and
contains the following data:
1. Demographic (age, sex, cultural level, marital status, etc.)
2. Ownership of bank's product/services
3. product/services usage (balance, transactions, etc.)
4. Global variables: profit, cost, risk, assets, liabilities
5. Relationship with the bank: segment, portfolio, etc.

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Customer relationship management in Banking sector


Figure 9.3. The marketing campaign process and the software supporting it.

9.1 Marketing Campaigns


After analyzing strategic and analytical CRM bank concentrate here on the equally
important operational aspects. Marketing Campaigns is the first method that Banks
normally used to test the above described analyses and techniques. The overall
campaign process is reported in Figure 3, which shows that propensity determination
and targeting are the first step of the whole activity. A number of experimental
campaigns have been designed and carried out to test the soundness of the approach
by banks before attempting a large scale roll-out. An education process has been
started by meeting sales forces in the branch offices, by distribution of an explanation
booklet and by publishing on the Intranet a note explaining the whole process. System
interfaces have been modified in order to track the customers under promotion, as
well as to enable salespeople in the branch office to complete the sales on promoted
customers as well as to record the fact that the sale was a consequence of the
promotion. The bank has so far used for promotion two channels: the salespeople in
the branches and the call center. Each channel was used in four different campaigns.

EMERGING TRENDS IN CRM IN BANKING SECTOR

The biggest management challenge in the new millennium of liberalization and


globalization for a business is to serve and maintain good relations with the king-the
customer. In the past, producers took their customers for granted because at that time
customers were not demanding nor had many alternative sources of supply or
suppliers. Since he was a passive customer, the producer dictated terms and had little
customer commitment. But today there is a radical transformation. The changing
business environment is characterized by economic liberalization, increasing
competition, high consumer choice, enlightened and demanding customer, more
emphasis on quality and value of purchase.

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All these changes have made today's producer shift from traditional marketing to
modern marketing. Modern marketing calls for more than developing a product,
pricing it, promoting it and making it accessible to target customers. It demands
building trust, a binding force and value added relationship with the customers to win
their hearts. The new age marketing aims at winning customers for ever, where
companies greet the customers, create products to suit their needs, work hard to
develop life time customers through the principles of customer delight, approval and
enthusiasm.

Customer focus in banking service


As the intense competition becomes a way of doing business, it is the customer who
calls the shot in deciding the nature of products and services offered in the market.
The customers are becoming demanding, dominant and selective. In fact the
perceptions and the expectations of the customers have undergone a sea change, with
the availability of banking services to the customers at their door steps through the
help of technology.
Marketing of customer services aims at two important goals: prosperity to the bank
and satisfied customers. Banks offer tangible services like loan schemes, interest rates
and kinds of account and the intangible services like behavior and efficiency of staff,
speed of transactions and the ambience. The banks may need to include customer
oriented approach or customer focus in their five areas of businesses such as Cash
accessibility, asset security, money transfer, deferred payment and financial advices.
There are four strategies available to customer relations' managers:
To win back or save customers
To attract new and potential customers
To create loyalty among existing customers and
To up sell or offer cross services.

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The future of banking business very much depends upon the ability of the banks to
develop close relationship with the customers. In order to develop close relationship
with the customers the banking industry has to focus on the technology oriented
innovations that offer convenience to the customers. Today customers are offered
ATM services, access to internet banking and phone banking facilities and credit
cards. These have elevated banking beyond the barriers of time and space.

Marketing of banking services


Marketing of banking services means organizing right activities and programmes in
rendering right services to the right people at the right place, at the right time at the
right price and with right communication and promotion. Marketing of banking
services embrace the following unique features.
There are four distinctive characteristics of service, which create challenges and
opportunities. They are commonly known as the four Is namely:
1. Intangibility
2. Inconsistency
3. Inseparability
4. Inventory

Technological Advancement
The advent of technology both in terms of computers and communications has
drastically altered the methodology of banking business. In the banking sector, the
technology has opened new vistas and in turn has brought new possibilities for doing
the same work differently and in a most cost-effective manner. Technology helps to
have 24 hours a day banking, all seven days in a week. Tele banking, Internet banking
and E-banking have opened new business potentials and opportunities which hither to
remained unexplored. All these technological advancement may pave the way for
home banking rather than branch banking.

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Innovation
Another important force of change in the Indian banking sector is innovation. Banks
are innovative, pro-active now-a-days and offer top class service to customers. They
play a dynamic role not only as a provider of finance but also as a departmental store
of finance. As a result of this, new products like merchant banking, mutual funds,
leasing, factoring, forfeiting, corporate advisory services and venture capital are
emerging. These innovative services may augment revenue with cost effective
measures.

Development Of The Skills Of Bank Personnel


To meet the new challenges, banks have to devise novel ways of meeting the
customer's demands. To help the banking staff to get sufficient exposure to
technology, suitable packages relating to hardware and software applications in
relation to their works are to be provided. Further, a separate marketing wing may be
created in every bank to market their banking services. They must be trained suitably
to keep pace with the changing environment. In order to meet the challenges, the
Human Resource Department in banks have to prepare appropriate manpower plans
and strategies.

GOOD CUSTOMER SEVICE

When we are asked to define good customer service what are the first thoughts that
come to mind? The ability to supply your customers' wants and needs, whether they
are new or existing customers.
Providing exceptional customer service centers around ensuring our customers are
happy. Our overall objective is to ensure that they are coming back for more or
referring our services. By doing this we will be ensuring our continuing lively hood in
the business that we have chosen to create.

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There are several points that need to be considered if we wish to provide
exceptional customer service these are a must for all businesses.

Supply our finest service and ensure that it is provided on time. If we promise
a product at a certain time ensure that it is delivered then. If for any reason we
have to delay delivery, be honest with our client and inform them of the
situation. Compensate or alleviate the problem if it causes your client any
inconvenience.

Listen to what our client wants and needs. Work with your client to provide
them with the product that they need. Provide the advice that they need but
also listen to their suggestions. We never know when what they suggest can
help us improve our own business.

Keep up with technology. Always strive to improve our services. With


technology advancing at the rate it is we need to be sure that our skills are up
to date as well. Enhancing our services allows us to offer more to our clients
and thus keeps them happy.

There is nothing like a guarantee. This is an important point of exceptional


customer service. When a customer is 100% happy with what we have
provided for them they are the biggest asset to our future. we will find that
referrals come from their happiness. If they are not happy ensure that it is
fixed right a way.

Provide prompt responses to all communications & inquiries. There is nothing


a customer hates more than being kept waiting. If we have to get back to a
customer do it with 24 hours. The longer we leave to respond to an enquiry the
greater the chance the client will move onto another business.

Don't forget our manners - Always say thank you! How good do you feel when
someone says thank you to you? Send out thank you cards to those who
request a quote and when a new client comes on board. To save costs, send ecards or emails of thanks.
So if we had to define good customer service it should be easy. Keep your clients
happy by adding value to your business and the services you provide. And if all else
fails think on how you would like to be treated if you went into their business.

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IMPORTANT FACTORS FOR BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE


IN BANKING
"There is only one boss-The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company
from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." - Sam
Walton
The success of any business depends on how well it treats its customers. Customer
service refers to the ability of an organization to consistently give the customer what
he or she wants and needs. Following are the factors which help to improve the level
of customer service in banking sector and boost its image.
A. Stay in contact

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Asking customers if they want to be updated on developments that might interest
them. If bank product is sophisticated and does not fall into the "impulse buy"
category, chances are that bank will need to adopt a counseling approach to sell. In
such a case, after every sale, follow-up with the customers to see if they are satisfied
with their purchase.
B. Creating a customer focus group
Get ten to twenty of most loyal customers to meet regularly. Encourage them to give
ideas and inputs on how to improved bank customer service levels.
C. Resolving customer complaints quickly
Answer all customer complaints, whether through e-mail, in person or by way of a
phone call, at the earliest. If possible, bank should personally take care of the
problem.
D. Be easily available
Give customers as many ways to contact bank as possible. Allow them to reach bank
24x7 via e-mail. Offer toll free numbers for phone and fax contacts.

E. Treat clients well


E-mail online greeting cards on holidays or birthdays. Be flexible about the way bank
deal with every customer; each one has different concerns, needs and wants.
F. Be polite to clients
Bank employee should be polite to customer even if they are annoyed with them. A
smiling face and comforting words will go a long way in soothing frayed nerves.
Admit bank mistakes quickly and always apologize.
G. Building strong relationships with customers

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Invite customer to bank meetings, luncheons, workshops or seminars. It will make
them feel important when bank will include them in regular business operations and
special events.
H. Listen to customers
Hear what they have to say. Sometimes, customers may say one thing but mean
another. Employee must pay attention to their body language and tone of voice, not
just the words.
I. Always keep promises
Make promises sparingly, and keep them faithfully, no matter what it costs. Bank
should not promise anything that they cannot deliver to customer.
J. Never forget what it's like to be a customer
The most important factors is to always remember that bank also are a customer to
another party! Treat customers as bank would like to be treated. One satisfied
customer is equivalent to many marketing dollars in terms of favorable word-ofmouth!

WHAT CAN CRM DO FOR BANKING SECTOR?


CRM are some well-proven and documented models that support the argument for
putting resources behind better customer relationship management in banking sector.

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