Freeing IT and Comforting Customers

France-based Societe Generale (SG) is the fifth largest financial services group in the Euro zone, employing nearly 88,000 people in the sectors of retail banking and financial services, asset management and private banking, and corporate and investment banking. The company caters to more than 15 million retail customers worldwide, and recently decided the time had come to start relying more heavily on its Web site for client interactions. SG sought a method to better understand the prospects and customers who were visiting its site. It also needed a way to improve application conversion rates--the number of applications completed as compared to those started--and to increase the quantity and quality of online leads. At the same time SG was hesitant to constantly push the burden of developing and implementing marketing strategies onto its IT team. Kefta, whose solution made it possible to customize important customer interactions based on client and prospect profiles, provided a happy medium. Implementation was under way in less than a week, and required the bank only to place probes on some of its Web-site pages. "Once we defined the problems we were trying to address, and agreed on the best marketing tactic to solve them, we had very limited efforts on our side--putting together the creatives and copying a few lines of html code on our Web site," says Olivier Chedeville, vice president of market research and development at SG Predefined business rules make it possible for the technology to personalize everything from email messages to requests to offline bankers, to the individual customer's Web-experience itself, without heavy intervention from the IT team. Since SG no longer relies on IT to make adjustments to campaigns, it has benefited from much more confident, effective marketing efforts. Before implementing Kefta the group's marketing team was intensely focused on direct marketing efforts, but not so largely on Web services. The solution, however, "has dramatically impacted our own marketing culture and has made the Web a key marketing communication channel," Chedeville says. When changes need to be made to online campaigns, they can presently be implemented in a matter of days. In addition to a more comprehensive view of online customers' needs, SG is now able to reengage clients who drop an application prior to completion--an efficiency that has translated to a 30 percent increase in online application rates. The firm has boosted its online revenues, cut servicing costs, and significantly increased its online channel's ROI. According to Chedeville, SG has grown more secure in the idea that customers are viewing its online channel as an integral part of their banking experience. The company has recently renewed its contract with Kefta, and plans to use the solution to increasingly grow its customer base. Related articles Tailored to Success The Price of Personalization