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> Posted by Shaheen Hasan, Manager, FI2020 at CFI
The “customer centricity” mantra has become a common refrain among donors, policymakers, practitioners, and providers working on financial inclusion. Indeed we would be hard-pressed to find anyone working in the sector who wouldn’t identify him or herself as focused on customer needs. In the Addressing Customer Needs section of the Financial Inclusion 2020 Progress Report, however, we report that the number of financial service providers who are actually investing in and implementing these ideas at a scalable level are still few and far between. Although the truly customer-centric organizations are in the minority, we found a host of good examples, and we highlight some examples we like in the report.
A critical element of addressing customer needs is building the right consumer insights infrastructure to gather and translate data into better product offerings and the targeting of new market segments. Organizations use a multitude of methods to assemble insights. Some players, such as Equity Bank in Kenya and Tigo in multiple countries have built up in-house research capabilities. Banco Azteca in Mexico, for example, has one of the most sophisticated market research systems to amass and analyze information on customers. It has used that information to build up a clientele of millions of savers, borrowers, remittance receivers (and some senders), and insurance policy holders. Janalakshmi, an Indian microfinance institution, with the support of CGAP, developed a tool, Kaleido, which utilizes its front-line staff to get a “360 degree” view of a household, providing a rich source of data for developing new products as well as assessing the financial progress of a household.
With increasing availability of data on client behavior and new techniques to analyze that data, there is a rich wellspring to mine for insights relevant to market segmentation, product design, and delivery improvements.
> Posted by Brianna Nelson, Project Associate, CFI
(click for larger graphic)
The idea of customer-centricity doesn’t sound complicated. Shouldn’t every business be focused on its customers? However, even for businesses that do endorse a customer-centric approach, endorsement doesn’t necessarily translate into action. Financial service providers organize their businesses around their services. Even small tweaks to refocus the organization around the customer can require major institutional shifts.
Gerhard Coetzee, Senior Financial Sector Specialist at CGAP, recently presented at the Center for Financial Inclusion offices in Washington, D.C. on CGAP’s work on business models for customer-centricity. To assist institutions not only to prioritize but to effectively implement customer-centric products, CGAP is piloting a new tool to help financial providers better understand the complex needs of their customers.
In collaboration with LIVELABS, CGAP created the innovative Kaleido tool, a 360° customer profiling tool for designing financial services. The goal behind Kaleido is to understand and map the financial context of a household, which in turn provides valuable insights into the needs of clients. It is being piloted with Janalakshmi, an Indian financial service provider that serves over 1 million urban clients.
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