Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a broad approach for creating, maintaining and expanding customer relationships. CRM is the business strategy that aims to understand, anticipate, manage and personalize the needs of current and potential customers in an organization and build loyalty.
Vision 8 Academy (V8A) has taken an initiative to address this concern and initiated programs since March 2015 to address how CRM can be used by the present day Banking & Finance Company employee to provide a superior customer service, while enhancing the capability to cross-sell financial services / products to the customer.
V8A is headed by Tissa Jayaweera and Amintha de Silva is the Chief Visionary Officer.
V8A has conducted training for 15 Banks, 28 Finance Companies and three Insurance Companies staff on subject. They had trained the entire staff of National Savings Bank recently. At present they are in the process of training staff of a leading Commercial Bank and a Regional Development Bank.
CRM is a process and it involves re-structuring or re-engineering business processes of the organization, re-aligning customer service channels and building a caring culture within the organization.
CRM in banking sector & finance sector is entirely different from other sectors, because banking & finance industry purely relates to financial services, which needs to create the trust among the people.
Customers in the modern banking environment expect flexibility in hours of operation, greater convenience, customization in products and services, user friendly IT facilities, transparency in transactions, wider accessibility, control and secured operations, personalized, friendly service.
With the increased number of banks to choose from, customers now demand better quality, more customized products and services from their banks. In this customer-centric business environment, attracting and retaining the customers in the long-run has become a key challenge for the banks. This has led to a shift in the business focus in the modern banking environment from ‘transactional marketing’ to ‘relationship marketing’.
As a result, the customer is at the centre of all business activities. Banks have positioned their staff to attend to the needs of the customers in a highly customized and responsive manner, introducing Relationship Managers, each designated as the prime contact for an assigned group of customers.