Bank of the Philippine Islands Transforms Retail Customer Experience with CRM

The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) enjoys a strong reputation for being the most innovative bank in the Philippines—and deservedly so — BPI pioneered in the country what today are typical services offered by other banks such as automated teller machines, cashless shopping, banking kiosks, and telephone banking.

With the consolidation in the local banking industry and the entry of multinational banks into the country, BPI has been actively pursuing strategies to differentiate itself and sustain its banking leadership. To this end, BPI has embarked on a journey to transform its retail banking relationship management practices into a concentric and comprehensive experience for the customer.

In March 2001, Headstrong assisted BPI roll out a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution and is already seeing early successes. In the twelve months since the rollout of Siebel eFinance to more than 250 users at BPI’s call center, headquarters, and 25 branches, BPI reports that it has increased auto loan sales by 82 percent and housing loan sales by 35 percent. Credit card acceptance rates increased by 51 percent already in the 10 branches involved in the initial roll out.

FOCUS ON CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS | With the growing commoditization of banking products, the Manila-based full-service universal bank needed to find new ways to differentiate itself amid an increasingly competitive industry – specifically it realized it needed to strengthen the relationships it has with its customers. Like most universal banks, BPI offers a multitude of products and services distributed across different channels. BPI enjoys a leadership position in consumer banking, trust banking and asset management, corporate banking/corporate finance and bancassurance (provision of insurance and banking products over common distribution channels). With over 700 branches and almost 1,100 automated teller machines, BPI boasts the largest combined network of branches/kiosk units and ATMs, servicing some 3 million depositors. BPI’s objective was to leverage customer information across its products and channels, and put that rich information into the hands of call center agents, frontline employees, marketers and decision markers. They, in turn, would use the information to devise targeted campaigns, measure the results, and refine future initiatives.

BPI CHOOSES HEADSTRONG | BPI believes that implementing a strategy based on CRM technology is the key to their transformation towards a more customer-centric enterprise. After evaluating a number of different options, BPI chose Headstrong to implement the solution. As a Siebel Partner with 70 Siebel certified consultants, Headstrong brought to bear the technical know how and change management expertise required for the project. Headstrong delivered the preliminary business analysis and technical environment validation before recommending an enterprise CRM strategy for BPI as well as providing several implementation options.

Headstrong implemented the Siebel solutions in the following order:

• Siebel eFinance Sales (subsequently upgraded to version 7)
• Siebel eFinance Call Center
• Siebel Marketing with Analytics

REAL RESULTS FROM CRM | SALES FORCE AUTOMATION | The CRM solution supports the increase of cross-sell capabilities by providing the branches with the following features:

• List of targeted sales prospects
• Sales scripts to guide in telemarketing
• Sales tools (Product Encyclopedia, Competitor Database, Loan Calculator, Opportunity Management System, Activity Management System,Sales Reporting and Monitoring System)

While the application enables the Relationship Managers to keep track and manage customer interactions and sales opportunities, it also enables Management to assess, using real time data, the performance of the sales team– making them pro-active thus adding more value to the sales chain.

CALL CENTER | With Siebel Call Center, BPI can scale their service center in response to increasing demand and customer base as well as allow their Phone Bankers to have accurate and essential information that would help shorten the decision process (i.e. decision making can be handled more by the Phone Bankers). The call center’s improved feedback monitoring mechanism allows inquiries, complaints, and requests to be tracked and acted on in a timely and efficient manner. Improved reporting likewise facilitates in tracking down statistical information about customer satisfaction, call center efficiency, call duration, call volumes, pending requests, closed requests, and database maintenance.

SIEBEL MARKETING WITH ANALYTICS | Analytics enable BPI to leverage the latest transactional, demographic, and behavioral data to optimize targeting and return of investment (ROI), and to focus on customers who matter most. BPI marketers have access to the information they need to better understand their customers, assess the effectiveness of campaigns across the different channels, and then use the insight to refine future campaigns. BPI can also use analytics to derive statistics on the performance of their relationship managers and sales managers. The CRM solution designed and implemented by Headstrong continues to support BPI’s transformation into a customer centric organization.