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The banking, financial services and insurance sector (BFSI) in India has been working hard to satisfy the consumer's demand for convenience by giving him what he wants, where he wants and when he wants. The expansion of the universe of touch points through which a consumer can interact with his bank or insurer today beyond the physical branch to on-the-go mediums like phone, mobile or internet is simply a manifestation of this. This however presents the sector with a unique problem - that of an entitled customer - who expects to be treated more than just another 'lead'.
The industry consensus is that if the lead generated is that of a customer who is actively shopping around, it is likely to go cold within 24-36 hours if the customer doesn't get a satisfactory response. Therefore, while lead generation is one side of the coin, managing the company's response mechanism is the other, equally important side, if you are really interested in maintaining the competitive edge.
Designing the response mechanism is as complex as it is critical for the growth of the business. Thanks to the multiple touch points set up, the system is constantly getting updated with leads from varied sources at the same time. Take the example of a consumer wanting to buy insurance. He may put in a request for product information via an online aggregator like PolicyBazaar, check the company website, ask to be contacted through a request at an automated teller machine after finishing his transaction, call up at the call centre, send an SMS etc. The same consumer can use a combination of options to reach out to the company, resulting in the duplication of 'leads', so far as the company is concerned.
Technology aids in creating a platform in the form a lead management system where all these leads can converge and provide a direction in devising the response mechanism. The lead management system in itself is critical as it gives the company a snapshot of where each lead and its progress stands, especially in a multi-sales channel environment. At Bharti Axa Life Insurance, for instance, if a lead comes in, with the possibility of response from say three different teams, it will get allotted to the team that responds first. The lead stays with the team for two weeks. In case there is no change, it is then moved to another team. All along, the information on the lead's progress from one point to the next, sits snugly in the lead management system.
In this article we will concentrate on the process that financial institutions must outline to convert a lead into a sale and look closely at how technology can help in polishing the response mechanism. As Ashish Desai, head of inclusive banking and digital business, FirstRand Bank, puts it, a response management system is not so much about "providing the consumer with instant gratification but rather with instant delight". Here's why.
Plugging the gaps
Desai elaborates on the "instant delight" aspect by pointing out a gap in most companies' response systems. He says, "In a flowchart, most companies would start the process with lead generation and move to the first response. They miss the in-between step, the acknowledgement time. This is crucial as it is the company's first engagement with the consumer." It can be as simple as sending a received-your- request note or go a step further and promise a timeline for taking the conversation ahead from there.
The response may vary in form and the medium used to convey it to the consumer depending on where the lead has come from. The acknowledgement time may vary accordingly.
Consider here the process established by Aegon Religare Life Insurance. Say a consumer browsing the internet spots an Aegon Religare banner advertisement and clicks on it, he is directed to the concerned landing page, giving further details on the advertised product. There is a digital trail here that will allow the company to trace the consumer's steps and possibly make a cold call so to say over a period of time. However, should the customer decide to proactively seek information, there is a click to call option he can use. As soon as he fills the lead form, it moves to the company's customer relationship management (CRM) system and then gets connected to an outbound caller.
Harshal Shah, director, marketing, Aegon Religare Life Insurance, says, "The response time can be as short as 60 seconds in these cases. One needs to be quick with online leads as the customer may lose interest as soon as he logs off your page." Since the time the internet has emerged as a key medium for the consumer to engage with companies, expectations for a quick first-level response have gone up, say experts. Shah says his experience shows that a consumer who engages with the company online expects a response within three hours compared to one who fills up a physical form. The latter would be prepared to wait for a day or two for the company to get back on his query.
It is also the nature of the products and services consumed that govern the response time expectations. For instance, a consumer may be okay buying a fairly standard auto insurance or travel insurance policy online. But he may want personalised guidance for a complex unit-linked insurance product, seeking face to face time with the company and allowing more room for reaction time.
Technology also provides tremendous mobility to a company's salesforce, aiding closing of leads on the go. Sample this: ICICI Bank's account opening process until six months ago took three to five days. If you requested a home visit, a bank representative would show up at your doorstep with an i-kit. The kit included account details, personal identification numbers, debit card etc. He would collect the know-your-customer (KYC) documents and put them in for a second verification. The account would be activated in a few hours of processing the documents. The entire process would typically take about three days.
The same timeline is now down to a few hours, thanks to the use of handheld devices like tablets. "We call it tab banking," says Rajiv Sabharwal, executive director, ICICI Bank. "Our salesforce carries a tablet to the customer's. The form can be filled on the tablet. Documents are photographed and the pictures function as scanned copies of the KYC documents. The pictures immediately move to the back-end, kickstarting the verification process. The bank account is ready to be used in a matter of hours," Sabharwal lays out the process.
The bank started giving out tablets about six months ago and are available with the bank's sales teams in 29 cities. While the tablets are being used mostly for facilitating opening of new accounts, over the last month or so the bank has been looking to use them during sales of asset products like home loans as well. "The tablet can come handy in collecting information and giving away primary decisions. For example, it helps us to quickly understand whether a particular construction is approved by us for loans or not," says Sabharwal.
Not just about speed
Being the quickest to respond does not mean the deal is yours to sign. At best it is the first step to meeting the customer's expectations. Here Desai of FirstRand brings in, what he calls, the 'voice personality' of the caller on behalf of the company/brand. Mind you, this 'voice personality' is not about the caller putting on a foreign accent but more about matching the nature of the product being sold. When voice is the only connect you have with the company-and especially considering the call would at some point involve some discussion about the money a customer needs to commit-one needs a voice that inspires confidence. Also a caller dealing with high net worth clients should not ideally be the one speaking with first-time investors.
This brings us to the next issue: indefinite call transfers and therefore endless waits for the customers even after he receives some sort of response from the company. Shah of Aegon Religare suggests a way out: call funneling. When the customer dials in, he automatically gets directed to a handler who is equipped to deal with the geographical location, answer all questions pertaining to the specific scheme/offer he would have called in for and be comfortable with the local language.
How does this work? Simple, really. When a campaign is run in a particular region, there is a number given that a prospective consumer needs to dial to gather more information. This is a regular toll free number. But the geography of the campaign is defined and one knows the area from which the calls would come in. Once you factor in this information, it is easy to determine the specific location of calls so that they get directed to a certain team well versed with the campaign, the regional language, the geography of the caller's location.
Call location of the lead is considered important by companies to determine the best course of response as well as in ascertaining the team member best suited to handle it. It is not enough for the relationship managers to know their products like the back of their hand. They also need to be able to build rapport with their customer. A south Mumbai resident being serviced by a south Mumbai-based relationship manager is not often only about matching locations. It is about similar socio-economic environment, and possibly better trigger points for an extended relationship. "When a lead comes through, we try to do a demographic match between our relationship managers and leads. The process is partly manual, partly led by technology. That said, we are not in the position yet to map a lead to a certain handler depending on the profile of customers he handles, interests, locations etc as one sees internationally," says Vineet Patni, chief distribution officer, Bharti AXA Life Insurance. But it is surely a sound step towards converting a lead into a sale.
Analytics, not just for internal application but also for external use, could be a game changer. Arindam Mukherjee, manager, regional sales, BFSI, Cisco India & SAARC, describes the process as "scoping leads better using socially-mined data". Basically, the contact centre (outbound call centre) crawls through the web for the database a company has generated. The two sets of data are matched for a better, closer understanding of the customer, resulting in better targeting and a personalised response mechanism. The usage of big data in a nutshell. The only problem Mukherjee sees here is that financial institutions are wary of opening up their data banks. "What they have right now is a data warehouse, data generated internally. If they want to marry this data with social data, they must agree to opening up their data warehouses at least once." Until they do so, big data shall continue to be a shiny object to be admired, not played with for the BFSI sector.
| 5 steps towards an effective response system |
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