Over the past few years, the scope of CRM has gradually been elevated to cover various facets of the customer’s behavior. We have lately witnessed that corporates are even using CRM to not only conduct customer analytics but also use this data for ‘socially’ engaging with the customers on social platforms. Use of customer analytics gathered through the implementation of big data analysis with CRM has been the cornerstone of customer relationship management systems. This change in focus has been driven mainly by organizations wanting to service their customers better 24X7.
ICICI Securities has developed in-house systems to leverage the availability of data across systems; this helps to understand our 39 lakh customers better.
By helping us understand the investment patterns, CRM has aided us in building better solutions for our customers. This customer analytics help our customers use our investment platform, ICICIdirect.com more effectively. This has led us to become the leading financial investments portal in the country.
We have also extended our CRM tool to our sales teams. By using various customer investment profile parameters, our relationship managers are able to engage with our customers better and have more meaningful discussions.
CRM tool also empowers the relationship manager with the right information on the various products and offerings. Based on the feedbacks that we receive, we believe that customers are appreciative as they promptly receive the required information from the RMs.
CRM has also helped our RMs in making the right pitch. This is what builds better customer satisfaction and encourages longevity of the relationship between the customer and the organization.
From a service perspective, displaying a 360 degree view of the customer is always a must-have for the servicing agent. Integration of these systems with ticketing systems to understand the customers' service history before engaging with the customer helps the servicing manager to understand the customer’s mood when he engages with the customer. Very often customers who are dissatisfied with the services of a company are skeptical while dealing with any fresh engagement even though these may be completely diverse needs. Providing service history prompts the service manager of the customer’s past experiences. The service manager is thus able to deal with the new engagement more sensitively and improve the customers’ expectations.
The flexibility of mobile phones and tablet devices have provided us over the last few years, a mobile friendly version of the CRM which is the best solution that helps the relationship manager while he is on the move. There has been a virtual explosion in the mobile space and given the kind of hardware and quality of software available on devices and extending CRM systems to the mobile simply help increase the efficiency of the sales manager by Multi-folds.
Keeping in mind that our relationship managers are always on the move, we have developed a mobile friendly CRM that helps guide the relationship manager while he is away from his workstation. This has immensely made the lives of our sales team more convenient as it helped them manage their time effectively in meeting more customers.
Looking ahead, customers are going to be more demanding in their service expectations and organizations will really need to be ahead of the curve to be successful. This, I believe will lead to a CRM ecosystem that will deepen and broaden in the future.