Citigroup Follows The MoneyCitigroup Follows The Money

Citigroup wants to develop a tailored yet consistent customer-service strategy for its 1 billion worldwide customers, regardless of whether they do business with the company's insurance, retail banking, or investment divisions.

The strategy sounds straightforward, but the company faces challenges, Citigroup VP Asif Mumtaz says. "We have a rapidly changing business climate," he says. "That makes it difficult to have a consistent relationship with each customer across all business units."

Like many businesses, Citigroup wants customers to have the same level of service regardless of the channel they're using to interact with the company. But it also wants to tailor responses and promotional offers, depending on a customer's value to Citigroup.

To help meet the challenges, Citigroup says it has implemented Xchange Inc.'s analytical customer-relationship management tools. The software helps the company determine the value of each customer in each division; that way, it can devote more resources to its most-profitable customers. Xchange also aggregates customer data into reports, giving Citigroup an overview of each division and making it easier to tailor offerings to each customer.

A key goal is to increase the profitability of each customer by identifying appropriate new products based on a life event, such as a marriage or retirement. Citigroup plans to use the software to develop targeted product pricing and discounts for its most profitable customers.

Citigroup relies on Xchange's E-messaging application to automate responses to customer inquiries, which Mumtaz says has significantly improved response rates. Citigroup also sends E-mails to welcome new customers and acknowledge transactions.

The next step, to be completed by March, is to implement Xchange Real Time so Citigroup can perform real-time analysis and make decisions on the fly. Mumtaz had wanted to finish the implementation sooner, but had to shift the focus away from new deployments in light of the economy. The Xchange 8 suite starts at $475,000.