Attracting and retaining the individual high net worth and profitable customers is a key challenge for banks, today. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can help the retail bank managers in facing this challenge. In order to drive the maximum benefit from CRM, banks must prepare their processes compatible to the CRM.
With the opening up of the economy, a number of private sector banks have joined the fray and are offering a plethora of products and servicesrechristening themselves as financial boutiques'. Knowledge dissemination has been propelled by electronic and mass media campaigns. Today's knowledge savvy consumer is challenging the Indian retail banking industry to redefine itself. In the current competitive scenariofor a bank to survive competition, succeed and profit, it has little choice but to learn from and actively respond to `consumers' needs. Banks offering retail products need to reorient their strategy from a product-centric to a customer-centric focus to attract and retain High Net-worth Individuals (HNIs) and profitable customers. Emphasis on CRM arises on account of the challenges confronting retail managersmanaging multiple customer touch points through which to sell the burgeoning complex products, with the attendant risks and rewards, to sustain and achieve growth and profits.
What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) all about? According to Kotler, CRM principally revolves around marketing. It involves integrating information gathered from all the distribution channels and analyzing the data, with the help of IT, to understand customer behavior. The continuous analysis and improvement over a long period of time should result in enhancing customers' lifetime value with the firm. |
