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Improving Customer AwarenessUS Bank enhances CRM efforts with great success using SAS®In the competitive world of banking, the winners are those that play on the cutting edge. That's how Minneapolis-based US Bancorp rose to become the nation's sixth-largest financial-services holding company. View Video (Runtime: 4 min. 57 sec)You have questions; our customers have answers. Check out this video Q&A. View Video View Video View Video (Requires Windows Media Player 6.4.7 or higher or RealPlayer 6 or higher) "Long before CRM was a popular acronym, we were using behavioral insights and predictive analytics to drive relationship strategies that created real value for our customers and for the bank," Richard Martino, US Bank's senior vice president of market information and research, says of customer relationship management. With more than 13 million consumer banking customers and 1 million business customers – not to mention more than 10,000 database variables and up to 16 million transactions a day – US Bank needed to mine customer data efficiently and then deliver insights regularly across a variety of segments. To ensure success in those efforts, US Bank chose SAS Customer Intelligence. "Customers become loyal when we consistently offer them solutions that are truly relevant to them," Martino says. "That's what SAS helps us to do." Using the SAS Marketing Automation and SAS Interaction Management components of SAS Customer Intelligence, US Bank has built a comprehensive system for managing a large number of diverse marketing campaigns as well as a system for tracking customer behavior to trigger timely customer contacts.
How does US Bank use SAS®?
"A change in behavior can be like a customer raising her hand to say, 'Hey, I have a new need,'" says Martino. "That's when customers really need to hear from a banker." For example, these banker alerts recently helped one determine that an important customer was moving funds to another bank to secure commercial financing. That knowledge gave the banker the opportunity to join forces with a commercial lender, ultimately winning the loan deal and additional financing. "That's just one example of how an alert provided a banker with insight that we might not otherwise have had. That banker was able to convert that into value for both the customer and the bank," Martino says. "That would have been difficult to do without a tool like SAS Interaction Management."
Because US Bank is using SAS 9.1, users at all experience levels have transparent access to their SAS CRM solutions. "SAS®9 integrates the technology across all these applications," explains Gerry Gaerlan, US Bank's marketing analytics manager. "It works for my most senior power user and my most junior newbie. Regardless of your experience, you can work with the application."
What benefits has US Bank seen?
Such is the power of a reliable database, says Jill Enabnit, US Bank's database marketing manager. "We have data coming in from so many different sources – whether from the account level to household information. We've worked hard to have a centralized data mart that allows us to have a holistic view of the customer," she says. "So, using SAS, we're able to go through, process and gain intelligence from those 16 million transactions that occur each day."
Making better, faster decisions gives US Bank the edge to compete among the nation's largest banks. A bright and hard-working staff and great working relationships with channel managers get the credit for the bank's successes. Using SAS as an integral part of turning huge stores of data into intelligence just made it easier. "SAS has been a great partner in helping us achieve our goals," Martino says. "But there's a big difference between putting software into production and being productive. And SAS is helping ensure that we achieve productivity." Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Richard Martino
Senior Vice President, Market Information and Research, US Bank US Bank
Challenge:
Enhance competitive advantage through more insightful customer relationships.
Solution:
SAS allows US Bank to understand customer behavior over time so that its personnel can act on significant changes immediately – when intervention is likely to have the most impact.
Benefits:
Significant payback and impressive shareholder returns. A change in behavior can be like a customer raising her hand to say, 'Hey, I have a new need.' That's when customers really need to hear from a banker. Richard Martino, Senior Vice President, Market Information and Research Read more:
This story appears in the Third Quarter 2006 issue of
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