Taking the SMAC route to connect with customers

By: Jayakrishnan P, Associate Vice President-IT, Muthoot

Pappachan Technologies

Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud (SMAC) is emerging as a key business enabler for many organizations. It creates an ecosystem which enables organizations to get closer to customers and get maximum reach with minimum overheads. At Muthoot Fincorp, we are aggressively using SMAC technologies for driving customer engagement and improving transparency. With customers becoming more tech-savvy, the need for more services powered by digital technologies such as SMAC is becoming profound.

Social media has provided businesses with new ways to reach and interact with customers, while mobile technologies have changed the way people communicate. To share an example, for granting gold loans and unsecured loans, we are experimenting with rating the customers through social media. This is happening for the first time in the retail business and has gained momentum in our branches.

Further, we have provided a ‘missed call’ facility to our customers to get the balance and transaction history. The same facility is being used across our call centers for more customer acquisition and for providing business with more cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

THE VALUE OF ANALYTICS

Analytics allows businesses to see when and where to grow and invest. Given this, we are investing a lot in data management analytics and reporting.

Data management and analytics have helped us create a robust customer platform for our new product named ‘Muthoot Special Gold Loan’ where customer data is deduped across our data mart to analyze if any miss-sell has

taken place.

With our huge database, business and marketing teams are sending SMSes to raise awareness about various products and also trying to bring more and new customers by analyzing the transaction history of customers and providing customers with the right product at the right time. We have launched an online payment portal, which enables customers for repayment of their loans and also a dynamic cloud-based portal for customers to buy gold online.

We have provided our customers smartphone apps for locating branches, getting connected with the branches for real-time updates, and also for various other services. As a part of our corporate social responsibility initiative, we are providing customers with blood donor information through the smartphone application. Further, we have provided employees with smartphone apps for updating daily collections and microfinance collections, thereby reducing the burden on the branches for effective monitoring and management.

As a part of Muthoot Fincorp’s cloud initiative, we have a replica of our branches’ database in the cloud on a real-time sync basis and the cloud data is being used in real time for various online audits for assessing the portfolios, as well as for providing instant reminders to various hierarchies for business triggers,

approvals, etc. Using the cloud data, we are providing senior management with business-critical MIS for managing business, which helps them in instant decision making. In addition, smartphone applications have been provided to top management members for managing, monitoring, and analyzing business on the move.

REACHING OUT TO TECH-SAVVY COMMUNITIES

Through Muthoot Fincorp website and social media marketing tools, we are trying to reach and connect with the tech-savvy communities and increase engagement through discussions and debates on new products. This helps in product analysis and getting instant feedback from customers.

SMAC technologies are spreading faster than any other technologies in the recent past. With today’s customers demanding personalized service, the use of SMAC technologies is only going to grow further.

To sum up, a satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all—and this is where SMAC technologies deliver true value.