CRM in Financial Services: Mining Data to Retain Customers

Ranjit Rajan George
3 min readJan 20, 2017
Credit: sensenet.com

Long gone are the days when financial companies sat on good customer data and let it go to waste.

Currently, many of these companies have recognized such data as a gold mine that can increase customer loyalty with the help of CRM in financial services, unlocking hidden profitability and reducing client churn. In other words, forward-thinking firms have embarked on an analytical discovery process that uncover many new market opportunities. More importantly, from existing customers.

Financial institutions through CRM software often identify market segments containing relevant customers who come with a high-profit potential. While the identification process may be simple, retaining these customers has always been considered a daunting task.

Mining data is dependent on the right offer or product, the right customer, the right time and the right channel. Smart modelers powered by financial services CRM manages all its relevant interactions with its customers while making sure any risks are minimized. How can you mine big data through CRM solutions.

1. Evaluating the use of credit cards
A majority of customers are known to use their credit cards in order to cater for a number of online bills. As such, financial companies can step in by mining credit card data in order to find patterns that might suggest fraud or even subject the cards to a variation of limits. As such, customers can be confident in their online shopping endeavors.

2. Database marketing
The examination of customer purchasing demographics enables various financial institutions to create services and products that will sell themselves. For example, as most individuals seek loans through a long and tiring bank process, an established microfinance can be able to use this to its advantage. It can opt to mine data and create short loan services that are disbursed in three minutes as opposed to three days.

3. Acquisition and retention of customers through the social media
Data mining and retention of customers helps to reduce customer churn by enlightening the company of favorable financial rates through the social media. Such practices will value both the firm and the client. Through a social media technique called customer cluster, the company is able to mine data that depicts customer behavior and this turn this will lead to customer satisfaction and an increase in loyalty.

Top 3 advantages of data mining for retaining customers:

Data mining can help the financial institutions to reap the following benefits:

1. Identification of customers with specific needs which leads to finding ways to fulfill their desires.

2. Stimulation of customer relationships with the company by improving the dissemination of services.

3. Customer loyalty that comes as a result of the identification of their behavior and finding motivational ways to appease them.

Good data mining practices with the help of CRM software prepare financial institutions in taking proper action in any stage of the customer life cycle. As a result, such companies can be able to acquire and retain their customers with lower risks and higher profitability.

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