Any change in business environment comes along with a new business opportunity. ICICI Bank NRI Services endeavours to provide a one-stop shop to address the home linked financial needs of the Non Resident Indian (NRI) community spread across the globe. The NRI product suite has evolved over time to include a variety of savings and deposit products, investment options, online remittances & money transfer solutions, mortgages, insurance and equity linked products addressing the entire gamut of financial needs of this 22 million strong overseas NRI community.
ICICI Bank NRI Services has recieved several international awards in various categories e.g. Recognition by the Asian Banker association for “Excellence in Business Modeling and Revenue Distribution” in 2009 and “Excellence in Remittance Business” in 2007 and 2008; and by World Finance “Best Bank for NRI Services Worldwide” in 2008 and 2009.
Business model
NRIs around the world today expect global banking expertise and high level services. The bank strives to exceed these expectations and maintain its leadership position as the NRI Bank of choice. ICICI Bank, in its remittance and NRI product suites, has over the years, built a comprehensive product and service architecture around the various segments of the migrant population that is unrivaled in Asia. What has differentiated ICICI bank from the rest is the NRI lifecycle approach that identifies the various stages of the NRI lifecycle and aligns specific products and services to it.
With a strong understanding of NRI segment dynamics acquired over years of presence in the NRI Business, the bank has now sharpened its focus to improve customer experience. Customer Relationship Management has been embraced as a critical business success factor and the theme has been incorporated in all the new initiatives taken right from the marketing initiatives to customer service programs and engagement initiatives.
Customer service
As the NRI customer is away from India for most of the time, most of the engagement takes place through remote channels. ICICI Bank is one of the few banks in India to provide 24/7 phone banking toll-free numbers in key NRI geographies, powerful Internet Banking platform, email and chat options to NRIs. Aspects to improve customer interactions at these channels cover a huge spectrum ranging from providing a consistent and relevant response to the customer in the very first interaction to reduce the number of subsequent interactions to minute aspects like personalizing the interaction and providing empathy to the customer, whenever needed. The “Click2Call” initiative is the first of its kind in Indian banking, whereby the customer only has to click a link on the bank website and provide his details. The customer representative then gets in touch in 30 minutes.
The NRI Remote Relationship Channel, an outbound international relationship management operation manages key client experience 365 days in a year. The channel services premium NRI clients and the Remote Relationship Manager acts as the single point of contact for all the India banking needs of the NRI client.
NRI engage
ICICI Bank recognises that retaining and expanding the existing portfolio of customers is very critical. In such a scenario, the need for a thoughtfully planned and well-executed Customer Engagement strategy is self-evident. This led to the birth of NRI Engage an innovative and first of its kind structured customer relationship program designed with the objective of engaging with the NRI customer and enhancing their experience.
Under the NRI Engage umbrella a spectrum of initiatives like Swagat (on boarding programme for new clients), webinars and seminars (India based) on topics of NRI interest like India investments and taxation, referral programs, event-based marketing campaigns etc. are carried out. In case the NRI clients are visiting India, they are also given the opportunity to fix up meetings in advance with their Branch Managers to ensure that all the India banking requirements get completed at one go.
Service2sales
The customer care centre of ICICI Bank services around 65,000 contacts and caters to over 1,000,000 transactions per month. This unit is well equipped to understand and resolve customer issues through its expertise in product / process knowledge. These customer led interactions present a great opportunity for the bank to expand its business potential at the same time aligning to the organizational goals of controlling cost and augmenting customer convenience. The journey of Service2Sales (S2S) for NRIs was initiated to capitalize on the up-sell/ cross-sell opportunity presented by customers contacting for service queries.
The key ingredient for the Service2Sales initiative is to make available a right offer/ product to the right customer to ensure optimum success rates. The right offers are arrived at using customer-profiling models and a complex set of data analytics and are flagged off in the customer relationship management tool. Only once the client service query in answered satisfactorily, the customer service officer pitches the up-sell offer/ product to the client. CRM has been used a key differentiator by ICICI Bank NRI Services to maintain its lead over competitors consistently. Through a battery of innovative initiatives, the bank ensures an enhanced customer experience at every interaction. The endeavour will be to deliver superior customer experience to ensure that ICICI Bank will stay top amongst the entire NRI diaspora for their India banking requirements.
