The company is working on improving customer experience to engage better with its rural customer base
SURESH SHAN
MAHINDRA & MAHINDRA FINANCIAL SERVICES
A process-driven CRM delivers the agility to change customer-facing processes instantly while offering more insight into observations of customer behaviour across multiple channels and provides a hint of our specific interests. This helps optimise customer experience to ensure repeat sales and loyalty. Omnichannel communication tools provide extended social media integration capabilities as social media is now the most generic form of communication.
Rural finance is one of the major drivers in nation building but is a challenging business to be in. However, determined to change the way rural finance is done, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services is going through a digital transformation journey of its own. The company expects to not only become more customer-centric through the exercise but make business more viable in the sector.
“Understanding our digital customer experience is one of the primary aspects of digital transformation. Achieving a proficient level of transformation at the stipulated time, this is the most unique and biggest obstacle and challenge of digital transformation. Social media, mobile devices and other technologies have become the fabric of modern life and this necessitates drastic changes within our organisation and forcing us to adapt to maintain relevancy,” says Suresh Shan, Head - Innovation & Future Technologies BITS, M&M Financial Services.
According to Shan, omnichannel for rural customer experience transformation is more of e-business where there is less of electronics and more of emotions. One of the recent internal researches at the company revealed that the main drivers of digital transformation are “profitability, customer satisfaction and increased speed-to-market”. The company, therefore, made one strategic priority over the next year for “improving the experience of customers” followed by revenue growth and cost reduction. Building engaging experiences across different channels is incredibly important and should not be underestimated, feels Shan.
M&M Financial Services has built future ready systems which cater to the rural dynamic exposure-based technology solutions to fight against competition and ensure the framework and flow patterns to sustain and ensure regulatory environments. “We are using Big Data to deliver the solutions faster and commit to deliver the finance products when the same is in demand from the end customer,” Shan says, adding that digitalisation is a given and to ensure the cost of operations with automation through digital which controls and manages the risk when we operate the same through life cycle of the customer requirements.
In the digital era, rural customers are increasingly empowered and financial institutions as NBFC and Mahindra are made to further rethink their concepts and strategies of servicing rural customers lifecycle. “The financial sector has been fighting to keep up with changes in the rural market and the challenges presented by digital disruption. For us, every deployment of technology is an innovative solution and demand from remote rural solutions,” says Shan.
Mahindra plans to succeed and stay competitive in the rural market by putting customer experience at the core of its services and as the key enabler of its evolution and growth strategy. “In rural India with limited Internet penetration rate, digitally empowered customers are looking to access services from offline & online rather than through 'traditional' channels. Younger financial consumers (millennials) have a different view on financial services and value that banks can deliver. To satisfy the ever-growing demands of future customers and to better serve their needs financial fee-based services, We have to seize this opportunity through leveraging digital available and affordable technologies at last mile,” Shan says.
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