Postbank is the first financial institution in Southeast Europe to make major changes in the way it does Customer Communication Management
One of the leading banks on the Bulgarian market improves its customer experience by implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud with the help of Next Consult
Postbank is one of the leaders in the Bulgarian banking market, a major contributor in innovation and an industry trend-setter. The company’s philosophy is to provide an excellent user experience through its innovative products and services and premium customer care. As an active player in the retail segment with over 1.2 million individual customers, Postbank places a strong focus on the type of innovation that allows it to offer the best customer service there is. This strategy would not be possible without several key essentials that require the bank to have in-depth knowledge of its customers and offer them tailor-made products and services based on their behaviour and preferences.
That is why Postbank is the first financial institution in Southeast Europe to make some major changes in its approach to customer communications by implementing the high-tech Salesforce Marketing Cloud solution.
“Postbank is one of the clients we are most proud of, as they are the first banking institution in the region to rely on such a high-tech cloud solution. This is definite proof of their innovative approach”, noted Next Consult Customer Experience and Marketing Automation partner Emil Vuchkov.
Lina Varbanova
Postbank Head of CRM Lina Varbanova pointed out that in order to successfully integrate an innovative solution of this scale, going for a customer communication management platform needs to be a strategic decision that requires setting very clear and precise goals. She highlighted the need to change the business processes as a key point of the project and shared that:
“By adapting our processes, making changes in our approach, and doing some excellent communications planning, reaching and servicing customers of the bank is now preeminent”
The large volume of customers and the growing number of communication channels used by the bank were some of the major challenges that needed to be addressed. It was becoming impossible to manually manage these complex processes without affecting the quality of service. This was one of the main deciding factors that drove Postbank to focus on modernising the business processes related to communicating with existing and potential customers.
“First, this is one of our main business directions, namely new sales and activations. Secondly, it is essential to maintain the level of relationship we have with our existing customers”, highlighted Lina Varbanova.
She shared that choosing a suitable platform was a difficult decision to make and in this case it took more time than the implementation of the system itself. Today however, everyone in the bank is satisfied with that choice – both in terms of the Salesforce platform and with Next Consult as an implementation partner!
“The implementation itself was actually extremely fast. This was one of the fastest projects we’ve completed! Only two weeks after signing the deal and purchasing the licenses, we had already activated the first “client journeys”. We used those to deploy the new solution”
The new marketing platform evaluates the preferences of each customer and allows personal and customised communication. This inevitably resulted in positive outcomes. The built-in artificial intelligence in turn processes information about customer behaviour in actual real time and helps optimise the timing and channels for sending each and every message. Last but not least, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides a lot of operating freedom and allows the bank to manage the platform in full independence.
Only 6 months after the deployment of the Salesforce marketing automation platform, Postbank reported a significant increase in its results and efficiency in the targeted segments. The first customers with special journey paths were the new cardholders. One of the most noticeable effects of the new communication model was the increased use of bank cards immediately after their activation.
“The full integration of the bank's communication channels and the way they all work in synch helps us achieve our goal for tailored customer experience. Six months ago, we started with two customer journeys aimed at our new cardholders, and now we have 68 in all segments, creating at least 2-3 new ones every week”, Lina Varbanova adds.
In conclusion, we can say that the success of this project is due to three main decisive factors:
- A client who understands that the implementation of any business system is a strategic project, not an IT one! They know what they want to achieve with this innovation and understand the need to change existing processes and work procedures.
- A software solution that can meet both existing and future business needs, ensuring flexibility and scalability so it can grow together with the company.
- An implementation partner who understands both IT solutions and has intimate knowledge of business logic and processes. A team that is driven to succeed with this project and can offer relevant and diverse alternative solutions to the problem, with a focus on the customer satisfaction and success and its unique experience.
