Research On The Marketing Strategy For Individual Client Relationship Management In The State-owned Commercial Banks

The state-owned commercial banks are the most powerful executants of the financial policies of the government, the mainstay of the prosperous and stable finance in China. Their operation and development directly affects the stability of finance inChina and the international status of banking after China's entry to the WTO. In the future competition, the four major state-owned commercial banks would suffer unprecedented impact, and foreign banks will primarily aim at their markets and customers. State-owned commercial banks have to continue to maintain the dominant market position, when they want to promote the vigorous development of other joint-equity banks and local commercial banks, form a good pattern of full competition with foreign banks, and develop the stability of financial industry and economic environment in China.Currently, financial innovations, caused by economic globalization and financial internationalization, make commercial banks of China gradually convert their financial management strategies from the"product-centered"to"customer-centered". As the important resources of bank, customers are the study objects that the industry has focused on. Developing Customer Relationship Management (CRM), improving service quality, reducing costs and increasing economic returns are the main channels for the banks to integrate resources from the outside. The commercial banks in China are experiencing challenges in many areas such as management strategy, operation concept and scientific and technological application. How to effectively integrate the existing external resources, discard the traditional thinking about pursuing scale but ignoring quality, seek more valuable customers and expand the value of banks, recently, have become the focuses of the commercial banks.On the basis of the current situations of CRM in commercial banks, this thesis aims at finding out the problems in CRM of commercial banks, providing business strategies for further improving the CRM quality with integration of theories on CRM.The CRM of the state-owned commercial banks is facing the following 3 problems in business operation:Firstly, the concept of customer service lags. A few years ago, the state-owned commercial banks developed the"customer-centered"concept, and have achieved some success. But the traditional operation pattern and service mode under the planned economic system, still influence the state-owned commercial banks strongly. State-owned commercial banks have not fully understood that the customers, especially the key customers, are the most valuable strategic resources, and not recognized that a long-term and stable cooperation with customers of good quality has a great significance for the survival and development of the banks.Secondly, the framework of customer service is rigidified. Too many administrative levels and departments and the low efficiency are typical characteristics of the traditional management system of the state-owned commercial banks in China, and the rigidified customer service institutions in nature. This framework reduces the customers'perceived value, influences adversely the customers'satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately constrains the promotion of the value of commercial banks.Thirdly, the mode of customer service is extensive. The extensive customer service mode of state-owned commercial banks can be shown in four aspects: the blurred orientation of customers, networks, channels, and the scattered information resources. The blurred orientation of customers leads to ill-defined target market, inaccurate market orientation and the failure of the personalized service. The blurred orientation of network cannot form a hierarchical mode of network orientation and a clear mode of network service, nor provide the "one-to-one" personalized service for customers of good quality. The blurred orientation of channels cannot enable us to create a systematic marketing of personal finance and a powerful service system for customers of good quality, or engage in high value-added work such as specialized financing service and CRM. The scattered information resources make the state-owned commercial banks unable to effectively deliver targeted, hierarchical and differentiated financing services based on the contribution of different customers.To solve these problems, on the basis of a thorough analysis of the marketing environment of the state-owned commercial banks and the opportunity and advantage of the future strategic development, this paper develops a combined marketing strategy for further improving the CRM, in particular, the CRM for the key customers.Firstly, take a reasonable position of the customer service functions of banks and internal branches. The purpose of CRM is to achieve the maximization of customer value. In addition to expanding capital strength, optimizing the positioning of institutional networks, raising the technological content and enhancing product innovation, a reasonable positioning of the functions of banks and internal branches will give full play to the functional benefit, process benefit and relationship benefit. Secondly, segment relationship customers for the key ones. Commercial banks should pay more attention to the most valuable customers, namely, those of the good quality and high-end, maintain the relations with those customers at any cost, and convert the current low-value customers with potentials into high-value customers in the future so as to enhance the ability of making profits on the whole. The segmentation of the relationship customers is the premise to achieve the above objectives. It is suggested to assess the customers for their value from the past and current value (real contribution degrees), future value (potential contribution degrees) and the risk degree. Commercial banks will be able to implement an effective management of customer relationship value and increase the quality of CRM.Thirdly, establish the hierarchical management organization framework of individual customer relationship. The establishment of a longitudinal and multilevel individual customer management system will give play to the advantages of state-owned commercial banks in the customers, services, personnel and the team so as to form an integrated team of individual customer service of good quality. When the individual customers of good quality enjoy the high-quality individual financial service from individual customer managers in networks, in the meanwhile, they will have the strong technological support and expert services from the entire state-owned commercial banks, including the headquarters, branches and networks. In this way the resources in an integrated form of all state-owned commercial banks will be displayed in front of individual high-quality customers.Fourthly, improve the management of individual customer relationship and promote the satisfaction and loyalty of the high-quality customers. According to the various individual customer values and different types of individual financial services, customers and businesses should be allocated to the most economical service resources (e.g. business networks, individual customer managers, self-service equipments, telephone banking, online banking, etc.) in order to achieve the maximization of service benefit and the optimization of customer service efficiency. The satisfaction and loyalty of high-quality customers will also be enhanced.