Customer Relationship Management in Financial Services

By Priya Chetty on September 6, 2011

Today, many financial institutions like banks, asset management agencies, insurance companies, etc. are turning to CRM to reap the same benefits as most other organization:  maintain data bases of potential customers and make every effort to win their confidence, retain them and increase life-time value. CRM helps simplify processes, discover new customers, and offer better services to Financial Institutions too. Financial institutions need CRM to ascertain when to follow up with schemes such as life insurances (in case of life insurance companies), mortgages (in case of home loans), credit cards (in case of affluent employees/ frequent transactions by a customer), etc. Next, the organization must look into all of the different ways information about customers comes into a business, where and how this data is stored and how it is currently used. For example, one company may utilize the available information by putting it to a number of uses: tele-marketing, web services, establishing call centers, brick-and-mortar stores, mobile marketing force, etc. The difference between banking institutions and banking & insurance firms are condensing each day in the eyes of the consumer. Financial Services firms need to rethink their promotional and customer retention strategies to establish a firm ground in the long-term.

Curiosity of researchers and customers in evaluating the satisfaction quotient in the banking sector is increasing. The importance for the bank of managing the relationships with their customers has been the drive of the joint projects that have been developed with IBM in the last three years. During the projects a number of crucial technological and architecture choices have been made to implement the entire process.  Globally, organizations are struggling to understand the implications of CRM, what it means for them, its techniques and the efficiency of which it can be put to use. Financial institutions can no longer depend on a one-way strategy for its goals. They are branching out to a more customer-oriented approach to impress the customers better.

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