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Human beings are visual creatures. 

We tend to believe things faster when we see them with our eyes. I might believe you when you say you made 200 calls today, but if you show me a call log listing all the numbers and their call durations, I will never doubt your claim. 

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Greater Bank came to Corefactors with a similar problem. They wanted to view the actions taken on the leads, have complete visibility into lead stages, and monitor all conversations between their team and customers. 

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Corefactors got on a call with Mr. Anshuman Singh, Senior Manager - CEO Office at The Greater Bombay Co-operative Bank Limited to know how their experience with Corefactors and whether we were able to solve their challenges. 

About Greater Bank

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Greater Bank or The Greater Bombay Co-operative Bank Ltd is one of the leading banks in the co-operative banking sector. The bank is dedicated to supporting, fostering, and actively participating in the digital transformation of MSMEs through initiatives that offer credit support, new enterprise development, formalization, technological assistance, infrastructural development, skill development and training, and market assistance.

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"The Greater Bombay Co-Operative Bank Ltd. is committed to be a niche player in the area of co-operative banking sector by ensuring high standards, professional integrity & regulatory compliance through latest technology & enhancement of services by continuous improvement."

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During the financial year 2023-24, the bank's total business reached ₹3,017 crore. It had ₹1,758 crore in deposits and ₹1,259 crore in loans. Investments totaled ₹615 crore. The bank maintained a CASA ratio of 37.79% and a Net Interest Margin (NIM) of 3.11%. Additionally, its Capital to Risk-weighted Assets Ratio (CRAR) stood at 19.51%, well above the RBI's minimum requirement of 12%.

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Headquartered in Mumbai, Greater Bank offers services like Mutual Funds, Life Insurance, DEMAT, NEFT and RTGS, Non-Life Insurance, Health Insurance, and Lockers. Staying true to its goal of digitalization, its digital services include ATM and Debit Cards, RuPay Insurance Programs, E-Lobby, Mobile Banking, Net Banking, QR Payment, and BBPS. 

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What Challenges Led the Greater Bank to Switch to Corefactors?

Greater Bank was not new to using lead management software. Unfortunately, the ones they used previously were mostly static platforms that were unable to meet Greater Bank’s evolving needs. They have had their stint with major players in the industry like Salesforce and LeadSquared. before choosing Corefactors.  

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It was in 2023, that the bank decided to invest heavily in digital marketing. The major roadblock faced by the bank in its previous lead management system was the lack of visibility. Their digital marketing campaigns bore results and after the data from the Excel file was uploaded to their previous lead management system, it was up to the telecallers to pick up their phones and map the inquiry to the concerned branches. This is where the lack of visibility started showing up as cracks in the pipeline. 

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There was no clear data showing whether the concerned branch followed up with the prospect or what the conversation was like. They had to take the telecalling team’s word for it and had no way of monitoring the calls. 

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The managers did not have comprehensive visibility over the quality of calls made. If someone interested in a gold loan made an inquiry on the personal loan page by mistake, did the caller handhold them to the correct page or connect them with the concerned branch? Unfortunately, that detail was never captured in their existing platform. 

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“Suppose we upload 200 leads and then we let the branches know. In 2 days, we see that almost 200 leads have been closed and their status is Not Interested. We have to take their word for it, we cannot go back and check to confront them with ‘You did not call or message them.’” - Mr. Anshuman Singh narrates this as the dilemma that led Greater Bank to look for alternatives.

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“The initial reason why we chose Corefactors was because the platform gave us complete visibility over the calls made. This was our biggest trust point.” -Mr Anshuman Singh

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Besides visibility problems, Greater Bank’s foray into digital marketing was also met with other challenges. The existing lead management software was not integrated with the digital marketing channels Greater Bank would now be using.

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Team members were also going into the field for loan recovery purposes and using outdated methods to track their workday. The Corefactors mobile app provided an ingenious solution to this challenge. 

How did Corefactors Help?

The list of challenges faced by Greater Bank was pretty long. However, it met its match in Corefactors. This section covers how Corefactors addressed and solved each pain point.

1. Monitor Lead Activity

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A typical lead from Greater Bank’s digital marketing campaigns would go through the following stages

1. Leads filling up a form
2. A telecalling agent calls them to understand their requirements, 
3. Leads being mapped to relevant branches, 
4. The branches reaching out to provide solutions, 
5. Leads get converted 

Corefactors enabled users to track leads through all these stages. 

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The Lead Stage Dashboard not only showed the average time required to convert each lead but also recorded the time these leads spent in each stage. This non-editable dashboard provided the true picture of the leads allocated to each branch and the actions taken. Greater Bank no longer had to rely on word-of-mouth and could track the lead statuses in real time. They could also gain visibility into metrics like branch-wise lead conversion percentage. 

Visibility of action taken on a lead is especially important since every lead comes at a cost, especially with Greater Banks' heavy investment in digital marketing. If the leads generated via an ad are sitting idle, the money is ultimately wasted.

The lead dashboard also helps in holding the marketing team or agency accountable. It paints a clear picture of the number of leads generated for every dollar spent. If the ratio is not good enough, the feedback helps in re-calibrating the target audience for the campaigns. 

‍2. Track and Audit Calls 

The previous lead management system had no solutions in place to audit calls. Because of its built-in cloud telephony feature, Corefactors keeps a record of each call made through the platform. This was just what Greater Bank needed.

Suppose a telecaller made a cold call to pitch a gold loan and the prospect says that he is not interested in the gold loan, but would like a personal loan. With Corefactors, Greater Bank could now observe that some telecallers used to close the lead as not interested without pitching them the personal loan option. This bottleneck became clearly visible with the Corefactors call records.

“Corefactors helped us improve the quality of telecalling. We started hearing the calls and helped train the callers to guide customers with appropriate placing product requirements. It also helped us optimize sales pitches according to customer requirements.” - Mr. Anshuman Singh.

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The Call Log feature in Corefactors keeps a record of all calls made through the platform (both incoming and outgoing). The call records are easy to download and accessible online and offline. 

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3. Advanced Integration Capabilities‍

Tracking leads generated from social media and WhatsApp campaigns, website landing pages, and missed call campaigns became easier because of the interaction capabilities of Corefactors. 

There was a learning curve of three to four months where the Greater Bank team got used to using Corefactors to handle leads coming from these avenues. Meta API integration is already in place. 

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“When we are doing a campaign on Facebook and someone has filled a form, the lead gets automatically created in Corefactors. At the backend, I can do the lead assignment workflow setup. The entire process becomes very easy and streamlined. We have also started working on Website integration, where if anyone comes to our website and fills up a form, the lead is automatically generated in the system and goes to the concerned telecaller. The telecaller does the calling and if the person is interested, pushes it to the branch.” - Mr. Anshuman Singh.

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Greater Bank has currently put in a request to integrate its website and would also like to get a WhatsApp API integrated next. 

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4. An App for the On-Field Sales Team‍

A loan recovery process involves an on-field sales team. Greater Bank wanted to put a process in place to streamline the work of its on-field sales team. 

Earlier, their on-field sales team collected different information about the loan defaulter's status. All that information used to come at the end of the day as a WhatsApp message. The next day, a designated person would have to go through each WhatsApp message and capture the information. This was again a tedious process because all on-field sales professionals did not follow the same messaging format on WhatsApp.

To establish an easy-to-follow process, the on-field sales team was used to ask the Corefactors app. The fields were customized to include questionnaires and parameters that fit the loan recovery perspective. The on-field sales agents could now select different field values from the drop-down option. This eliminated the challenge faced in tracking information via WhatsApp messages. 

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“We used the Corefactors mobile app and gave it to 35 people on the field. Your app allows fields to be customized. So we created fields from a recovery point of view where as far as possible we gave them dropdowns, you don’t type, you select. You select the date you visited, you select what the borrower said, You select the amount the borrower was ready to give for settlement, and you select the total outstanding amount. You can select all of that information.  The next morning, a person has to just download or export the report and that’s it. No more extra effort is needed. We now have all the data in place.” - Mr. Anshuman Singh.

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5. Prompt Response and Stellar Customer Support‍

When asked to rate Corefactors Support according to this experience, Mr Anshuman Singh said, “On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being best, I would rate Corefactors a 9 because I normally don’t give 10 to anyone. I would like to mention that you have connected almost daily in the first few months. There were many minute things I discovered while using Corefactors and the team was always available to help me out. I don’t think in the history of all businesses and other companies, anyone has gone live with a CRM in 15 days. That happened purely because of your support. I know that if I send an email at 11 a.m. I know I don’t have to wait more than an hour and a half to get a reply. Which is phenomenal. Very well done”

‍Does the Greater Bank Recommend Corefactors?

‍When asked if he would recommend Corefactors to his peers, he said, “Till date this was the biggest investment that we as a bank have made on something. We have gone from 35 users to 173 users in less than 45 days.  This expansion in the number of users is only because our experience with the initial 35 users was worth it. Having worked with Leadsquared and Salesforce before this, trust me when I say this, you guys are way better.”

Greater Bank aptly pointed out that a platform and the company using that platform evolve together. The Corefactors they received on Day 1 was not the same they worked with on Day 200. Since Corefactors is highly customizable, and flexible to meet client needs. Greater Bank was happy that they need not have to get in touch with an implementation partner for their customizations and go through a lengthy integration process.

Mr. Anshuman aptly points out, “The whole idea is to reach a point where you guys are affordable and also give us the space to implement new features and customizations that can also be used by others. It has to be a brilliant hand-in-glove relationship where both are helping each other.”

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