Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, inaugrated the Union Bank Of India on November 11, 1919. It covers all the sectors of the society, be it agriculture, industry, trade and commerce, services or infrastructure, the bank plays a major role in rendering services to the financial needs of every section. Apart from this, the bank also extended financial support to educational, housing and trade sector.
In June 2000, Union Bank acquired Bank of America’s highly profitable operations in Pakistan and went on to become one of the largest private commercial banks. The acquisition added a new dimension to Union Bank’s business and enhanced its customer base, deposits, and loan portfolio quality. This acquisition also enhanced Union Bank’s corporate image in the domestic financial market.
Nowadays, many businesses such as banks, insurance companies, and other service providers realize the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and its potential to help them acquire new customers retain existing ones and maximize their lifetime value. At this point, close relationship with customers will require a strong coordination between IT and marketing departments to provide a long-term retention of selected customers.
Union Bank aims to increase customer profitability with any customer retention. It is a sound business strategy to identify the bank’s most profitable customers and prospects, and devotes time and attention to expanding account relationships with those customers through individualized marketing, pricing, discretionary decision making.
The present day CRM includes developing customer base. The bank has to pay adequate attention to increase customer base by all means, it is possible if the performance is at satisfactory level, the existing clients can recommend others to have banking connection with the bank he is operating. Hence asking reference from the existing customers can develop their client base. If the base increased, the profitability is also increase.
Hence the bank has to implement lot of innovative CRM to capture and retain the customers.There is a shift from bank centric activities to customer centric activities are opted. The private sector banks in India deployed much innovative strategies to attract new customers and to retain existing customers. CRM in banking sector is still in evolutionary stage, it is the time for taking ideas from customers to enrich its service. The use of CRM in banking has gained importance with the aggressive strategies for customer acquisition and retention being employed by the bank in today’s competitive milieu. This has resulted in the adoption of various CRM initiatives by these banks.
Private Sector Banks have been able to implement the CRM practices more effectively as compared to the Public Sector on the basis of of the service quality level being provided by these banks.