BFSI

Aviva uses CRM to insure success

What happens when you're late for a party and the fun has already begun? You catch up, as Aviva did. Helping it
was Talisma's e-CRM suite, which the insurance company used to integrate its customer-facing departments

According to TARUN PANDEY, Aviva went in for Talisma's suite primarily because it offered integration with the company's call centre operations-which no other vendor was offering

There has been an influx of private life insurance companies in India after the liberalisation of the Indian insurance sector. When Aviva entered the country in 2002, it was one of the last players to enter the market. The key to success therefore lay in knowing potential customers better, and in bringing out products and services
tailored to specific customer requirements.

A common platform

To do this, Aviva decided to go in for an enterprise-wide deployment of an e-CRM suite even before it launched Indian operations in June 2002.
A stringent assessment exercise began, during which four vendors, including Talisma, were evaluated by a team of 10 people. This team had representatives from its IT department and also from customer-facing departments such as sales, marketing and customer services.
Recalls Tarun Pandey, manager, applications, Aviva, "After a thorough evaluation process, we went in for Talisma's suite primarily because it offered integration with our call centre operations, which no other vendor was offering. The suite promised a common integrated platform for different customer-facing departments [sales, marketing and customer services] within the organisation."

Module this

The implementation of the CRM suite was a smooth affair. The exercise began in December 2001 and went live six months later. Pandey explains, "Since we went in for the CRM suite before launching our business in India, the implementation was smooth. If an organisation is already in business the implementation exercise can be a prolonged affair."
The suite has been deployed in marketing, sales and service, as well as in the partner and sales ecosystem (comprising bank assurance partners and insurance agents). Aviva has implemented several modules of Talisma e-CRM, such as marketing, sales, servicing and contact centre. The only component it hasn't used is the chat module. Today, there are 450 personnel using the e-CRM suite at Aviva.

Multi-step campaign

Pandey explains, "The implementation of Talisma e-CRM has helped us share real-time customer information across different customer-facing departments across locations. This has helped departments track customer details and respond to queries at short notice."
The implementation has also facilitated quick analysis of Aviva's sales and marketing initiatives, which has, in turn, helped the company modify its products and services before offering them to customers. This has helped it win more customers and retain existing ones by offering them products and services that fit their needs.
It has also helped Aviva develop multi-step marketing campaigns. Based on the type of response at each stage of an advertising campaign, appropriate processes can be triggered automatically in the e-CRM suite. Aviva's entire sales and marketing operation has been integrated through this deployment. The company's customer service team has successfully leveraged the suite to provide superior service across multiple channels.
Aviva has made its mark in the Indian insurance industry in just two years. It has no doubt been aided in this by the deployment of Talisma's e-CRM suite that has helped it launch new products and services to differentiate itself from competitors.