In a bid to remain in sync with competition, United Bank of India recently partnered with Sybase 365 to deliver SMS based enquiry services for their existing and potential customers. One of India’s major public sector commercial banks, UBI maintains an extensive network of 1,365 branches across the country. With a majority of banks already offering SMS and mobile banking services to their customers, it is imperative that they embrace newer forms of media to stay in the running.

Shortening the Messaging System

Earlier, existing or potential UBI customers had to visit the bank branch for any kind of enquiry or new service that they wanted. That was their only point of contact, and took a lot of time, waiting and being redirected to different departments. The bank earlier used only traditional methods of marketing like advertising in print and outdoor media and sales promotions. In order to decrease response time as well as save customers’ time, the marketing and new business initiatives department of UBI decided upon pull-based SMS as the way of marketing their products and services to new prospects.

Pull based SMS allows receiving messages from customers and responding to them. “Enabling our customers to enquire via SMS about our different types of services, such as loans or opening new accounts, frees up a tremendous amount of time for our customer service officers to perform more value-added services,” said Swapan Biswas, GM, Marketing and New Initiatives, United Bank of India.

According to Mahendra Dohare, chief manager - Marketing and New Initiatives, “A basic CRM initiative such as this was needed in order to test the waters before getting into a more comprehensive deployment. “

Pulling customers in a new way

The system functions in a simple way. On sending a service keyword to short-code 56365 any customer, regardless of their mobile operator receives an automated acknowledgement message via SMS. This is immediately followed up by a telephone call from UBI’s relationship manager to address his concern or to provide the requested information. Various services such as loans, deposits, opening accounts, demat services and mutual fund enquiries are covered and cross-sold.

All leads generated via SMS are captured by the Sybase 365 Application Manager. This is a secure, user-friendly, and cost-efficient application platform directly linked to UBI’s central database system. Customer details recorded include name, mobile number, date of SMS enquiry; the mobile operator to which they are subscribed, and which part of India the SMS is sent from. This information is captured through a web portal, and is made available in an online report for viewing. The e-mails are sorted out in the morning and segregated according to the relevant information sought. The marketing department has a team of about 6 people to handle about 800 SMSes a day.

On sifting through 2-3 vendors including ACL, UBI decided upon Sybase 365, based on it’s pro activity. Dohare mentions, “On getting referrals from other customers, we found that the response time for Sybase was very low. They were very pro active and supportive compared to others even while discussing services.”

UBI went live with Sybase 365’s SMS solution on 22nd August, 2007. The system functioned smoothly, until the 1st of September, when TRAI made it mandatory for short codes to be pre-fixed with ‘5’. “This has reduced the SMS inflow since the last few days as some operators are facing problems implementing this. It is sure to pick up once this is sorted out, as the customers are very happy so far.” Happy customers generate word of mouth and result in more leads, which is also one of the core objectives.

From ‘Pull’ to ‘Push’

Having achieved better lead generation and maximising employee potential, UBI has bigger plans for the near future. Based on the performance of this service, they intend to expand their mobile-based CRM applications in the next few months. The first step will be introducing push based SMS, where the bank will be able to communicate account details, balances, confirmations through the medium. They then intend to move on to full-fledged mobile banking services including m-payment.

This will mean more investment in IT as well as inviting tenders. Explains Dohare, “As this was a very basic SMS based service, there wasn’t much IT related infrastructure and implementation. The IT aspects will come into the picture once we go for full fledged mobile phone based banking services. We are a PSU, so when we do have to put in more investment, we will invite tenders and pick the best offer.”

Though late on the mobile services bandwagon, it will be exciting to track how quickly UBI adapts itself to the dynamic changes in media to enhance their CRM applications.