Swapping tales of implementation

DestinationCRM 2006 in San Jose, Calif. is in full swing and businesses in banking and financial services are daily stepping up to the mic to detail their experiences with the CRM implementation process.

“Leading the Finance Industry Forward” introduced Eric Acree, executive vice president of operations for Vantage Credit Union, a full-service nonprofit financial cooperative. Acree stated that Vantage had been performing at “mediocre” levels: growth of 3-5 percent. Vantage consulted ISM to help develop a vision and strategy. Acree mentioned that this part of the process was most useful and opined that “It seems like a lot of companies forget to do this, to demonstrate ROI up front.”

Though the Vantage CRM implementation has taken two years already and remains imcomplete, Acree is not sweating, saying that “CRM is not a project, and it’s not a technology. CRM is an ongoing process of improvement.” Besides, Acree claims 50 percent improvement in sales efficiency, 20 percent improvement in sales production, 70 percent improvement in lending efficiency, and 15 percent improvement in member satisfaction already.

Gustavo Martinez Lira, CRM director of HSBC Mexico, followed Acree. HSBC Mexico is a chain of 1,400 branches and 5,176 ATMs with 6.2 million customers, making it the third largest bank in Mexico. HSBC Mexico had to protect-bundle in order to get many customers to take advantage of new services (and justify a radical switch in user fees), but has seen some success.

Lira also noted that HSBC needed to work harder at having the right relationship with the right customer, and that long-neglected data collection practices were properly addressed. “We used to have a lot of artists as customers, because that was the first profession listed in the account creation field,” he said.

Lira also told an interesting story of how fact can overcome culture stereotyping: “Our agents used to believe that a customer who dressed well, or drove a nice car, or even one who was always coming into the branch was a high value customer. The analytics system said otherwise, but the agents didn’t believe it–until we tied compensation to the system. Then they saw.”

Today, according to Lira, HBSC’s CRM program has led to 82 percent of new personal loans, 65 percent of new credit cards, and 10 percent of new auto loans being made through channels other than the branches. In a typical month the branches see about 72,400 contacts, but 260,000 at ATMs, 19,500 in the call center, and 40,000 over the internet.