We capture over 500 data points of customers to deliver a personalized experience: Manavjeet Singh, CEO, Bestdealfinance.com

Digitization has completely changed the financial services sector, and customers are demanding instant and superior products and services.  Startup bestdealfinance.com, which does not have a technology legacy to deal with is taking advantage of its lean structure to completely automate traditional processes. Dataquest met the firm’s CEO, Manavjeet Singh, who tells us how  his firm is trying to carve its own unique space by creating a technology backed foundation in all its processes

Some edited excerpts:

1. In a digitized era, how do you think technology is influencing the financial services sector?
The financial service has undergone tremendous changes in recent history. There has been cut throat competition between companies to increase customer reach, to innovate for cost reduction & improve process efficiency. Even the emergence of digital technology has added the dynamics of this industry. Today customers are demanding for ‘Instant, Faster & Superior’ products & services.

2. If you look at the traditional areas in the financial services sector, which areas do you think are ripe for digital transformation? Why?
The first & foremost important aspect which has been affected due to digital revolution is user experience. Customers have become demanding & companies are aligning themselves to offer personalized products & services to customers so they can attract customers & retain the existing ones.  Even at bestdealfinance.com, we are working towards UX/UI to offer our customers superior experience throughout his journey.

The digital transformation have also impacted the business processes. Earlier approach of standardized process has now being replaced by adaptive processes. Today when the cost of switching between the companies is minimum, the companies are facing a challenge to retain their customers. And to stay ahead in competition, companies are making their business processes agile so they can be customer centric & proactive in nature. With this approach, the lead time for new product development & addressing customer queries has drastically reduced. Bestdealfinance.com has also crafted its technology foundation on agile methods to ensure quick TATs & adaptability towards market changes.

The traditional distribution model has also undergone revolution where organizations are including most accessible & highest reach mediums like mobile, tablets, social media in their distribution model. Our model too includes all digital touch points to ensure maximum reach & accessibility among customers. In fact we have taken a step ahead to digitize our sales force so they can reach out to traditional customers who are still averse to use the online for transactions & create affinity for this medium among them.

3. How has your firm digitized processes and what has been the impact?
Being a technology driven company, we are aiming to create a technology backed foundation in all our processes.  We believe that well-structured processes play a vital role to create superior operational efficiencies, ensuring people productivity & customer satisfaction. Hence through multichannel integrated CRM, we have digitized & automated operational flow which lets us to be on right path towards our endeavor. This approach has not only helped us to streamline the operational efficiency & but also to reduce turnaround time for the services we are offering.

We are also working closely with our partnered institutions to help them with customized solutions to reduce TATs & streamline processes.  To reach out to a larger associate base, we are developing mobile applications which will empower with instant & real time access to product information, business tracking, market insights, updates on tie-ups & product offers.
4. How does your firm leverage technologies like analytics, social media and enterprise mobility to improve customer experience and build better products? Please give us some examples, as it would make for some interesting reading

There is a need of an hour to follow your customers closely, understand their needs & be present whenever they need you. The organizations who have cracked this equation; been able to sustain in the fierce competition. Technologies like analytics, enterprise mobility & social media are the keys for success to achieve this.

“Know your customer” is imperative when you craft product proposition & keeping this in mind, analytics approach through predictive modeling & trend analysis implemented at bestdealfinance.com does not only capture explicit requirements but also captures implicit requirements to understand my customer better. Currently we are capturing over 500 data points through a multi-channel touch-points framework to attain this.

Being the most accessible & highest reach medium, we are focusing on creating various kinds of mobile applications. The current mobile applications that we are working on, aims at personalization and leveraging the entire ecosystem. We have also equipped our sales force with tablets where they visit customers & collect over 100 data points through which we can help customer to get the best & the most accurate deal.

In the last few years, social media has demonstrated a tremendous power in amplifying customer voice. It’s essential that you are there to listen to them 24X7. We too have implemented social media listening where our internal team closely monitors social media space as well as we are working on a model which will help us to understand customer journey & insights by tracking social media footprints. We are also working on implementing NPS measures to ensure customer loyalty.

5. Do you see a future where every financial product will be personalized where companies use analytics aggressively to offer personalized plans based on specific parameters?

There is a rapid shift in the banking sector from the traditional way where customers are associated with one bank (and single branch) towards reduced stickiness with the advent of multichannel (web, smartphones etc.) ecosystem.

The effective solution to address this challenge and to retain personal touch is to effectively use analytics to improve customer experience. ‘Customer Convenience’ has been at core of bestdealfinance.com’s propositions, hence it has been our constant endeavor to work towards it. We are aligning ourselves to our promise by working on advisory and goal based financial tools which will help to deliver superior financial advice.

Our multi-lingual, multi-product mobile application approach takes into account analytics and the entire ecosystem to offer a personalized experience to our customers. We are also developing goal based calculators to offer more value to our loan customers.