Financial Services - Customer Insight

Over the last two decades financial services organisations have moved their focus away from simply recording and accounting transactions to capturing and analysing customer data and information.

This evolution has enabled them to better understand how customers buy and use products as well as using the data to analyse risk. These approaches – through the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications combined with refined techniques such as Data Mining - have led to an ability to predict buying and user behaviour or to segment a customer base.

This is particularly useful when looking at areas such as New Product Development or Delivery Channel Optimisation. Having a single view of customer – picking up all the information of how the customer interacts with the organisation – leads to a more robust understanding of how profitable (or loss making) a customer is.

The challenge for financial services organisations is to apply these applications and techniques in a consistent way, enterprise wide. Too often data and information is produced for other purposes and is held in different repositories, in different areas of the organisation; therefore, a degree of adaptation is often required.

The objective of Customer Insight is to acquire, develop and retain customers using data and information from a customer’s dealings with the organisation to offer the ‘right’ products and services at the most appropriate time. Simply installing a CRM suite, or undertaking a Data Mining exercise, without understanding the wider business objectives or the potential shortcomings in data quality would be highly risky.

Expert knowledge is required to develop and support a Customer Insight programme. Greymatters Reply has extensive expertise in this area and also partners with specialist providers of applications and systems that support these initiatives.