Raiffeisen Bank International is a key entity of the Raiffeisen Banking Group in Austria, and specialises in providing corporate and investment banking products and services to companies and institutional investors in Central and Eastern Europe.

Wanda Rich, editor of Global Banking & Finance Review, interviewed Raiffeisen Bank’s Head of Group Customer Growth, Iryna Arzner, to discuss the significant transformation that the bank has recently undertaken in its CRM and client engagement strategies, and that has seen it collect Global Banking & Finance Awards in 2024 for Best Bank CRM Transformation in Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Central Europe.

Iryna began by speaking about what inspired this approach and how she envisions its impact on the bank’s future. “One of the signature strengths of our banking services is the quality of advisory and support that our relationship managers and service units provide,” she said. “Every employee is committed to understanding and supporting customer needs with the best-fitting banking solutions. With millions of customers taking advantage of our digital offering, we are striving to offer a personalised banking experience in every digital interaction, just like we do in a physical branch. Modern CRM powered by data is pivotal to this endeavour, allowing us to promptly capture and react to customer insights.”

As part of its mission to build a digital bank with a human touch, RBI invested not only in cutting-edge technology but also in its teams in order to position itself as a leader in the personalisation space across the CEE markets. The implementation of the bank’s CRM strategy in this region introduced some significant challenges that had to be overcome.

“Challenges are an integral part of any transformation, especially when it is set to happen across commercial and IT areas, on multiple markets in a high-velocity function responsible for a significant share of retail gross income at the same time,” Iryna said. “Shortly after defining our vision, we realised that we were missing some essential technological components we needed to make it happen. A couple of months into the tech upgrade, we recognised that changing the technology alone wouldn’t achieve our CRM business transformation. Therefore, we simultaneously focused on both the technology and the business transformation, ensuring an incremental value creation supporting further necessary investments.”

One major challenge was launching the model infrastructure in multiple countries, each with its own core banking system and internal tools, making it difficult to predict and address all potential issues. “To overcome this, we created an agile tribe as an end-to-end delivery vehicle, adhering to agile principles to maintain focus on delivering incremental results,” Iryna explained. “This approach allowed us to adapt quickly to unforeseen challenges and ensure a smooth implementation across the region. And sure enough, change management became our daily job, as any big organisation has a lot of inertia slowing down the planned changes if not account for.”

Since the deployment of its suite of CRM solutions, it has been important for the bank to measure the impact on customer communication, engagement and overall business success. “We are focusing on a few leading and lagging indicators,” Iryna said. “Leading indicators include KPIs showing how our CRM communication is transforming: share of personalised communication, frequency and coverage of the customer base with digital proactive communication and so on. Lagging indicators show us the impact of CRM communication on customer behaviours (e.g. the share of engaged customers), sales (e.g. digital sales uplift) and overall portfolio profitability. We introduced representative control groups across all RBI markets to measure and optimise the CRM uplift impact.”

Four years into the transformation, she reported, the results have been highly encouraging. “We’ve seen a substantial increase in customer engagement, sales and ‘2+ product holders’ KPIs, giving us confidence that being consistently relevant to our customers leads to higher overall business performance.”

An additional challenge to manage was the learning and upskilling required, an essential element of any large transformation. “To help our people grow into their exciting new roles, we created a Customer Value Management Academy for structured training,” Iryna revealed. “We also developed a robust community that promotes experimentation and knowledge sharing, allowing us to quickly identify and spread successful practices across different banks during integration.

“In addition, we established knowledge transfer processes through our Customer Value Management departments to facilitate ongoing learning and adaptation. This approach proved highly effective and has been recognised by Gartner and Harvard Business Review as a leading global practice in talent development.”

Iryna went on to discuss the topic of reusability, a central component of RBI’s tech upgrade strategy. “This topic can be viewed from two key perspectives: business reusability and technology reusability,” she said. “In terms of the former, given our solution has been deployed across multiple countries, we ensured it was designed for easy reusability. For example, personalised insights can be transferred between countries with just a few clicks, and visuals, content and customer journeys can be quickly localised. This approach allowed us to scale efficiently and maintain a leading position in delivering relevant experiences throughout the region.

“With regard to technology reusability, we aimed to maximise the potential of our tools by applying them to new opportunities,” she continued. “For instance, our tools were repurposed to develop solutions like carbon footprint calculation, smart widgets, member-get-member programmes and modernised lead management. This high level of reusability not only reduced costs but also accelerated the launch of new products.”

Finally, in the wake of RBI’s award-winning CRM transformation, Iryna has offered her advice to other financial institutions considering a similar transformation in their CRM strategy, in the shape of seven key steps she regards as essential to the process.

“Number one is to create the vision. Establish a clear and compelling vision for your CRM strategy, aligned with the vision of your organisation. This vision should guide all aspects of the transformation and align with your overall business goals.

“Number two: build a strong team. Assemble a dedicated team with the right skills and expertise to drive the transformation. Ensure the team is motivated and aligned with the vision.

“Third is to create an engaging community. Foster a community that shares the same vision and encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing. This helps in maintaining momentum and ensuring buy-in from all stakeholders.

“The fourth step is to ensure parallel business transformation. Align your CRM strategy with business transformation efforts. Both should progress in tandem to ensure that technological advancements translate into real business improvements.

“Number five is to track incremental progress. Monitor progress through incremental milestones. This approach allows you to make adjustments as needed and demonstrate tangible results throughout the transformation.

“Six: invest in employee upskilling. Don’t underestimate the importance of upskilling your employees. Effective training and knowledge development are crucial for leveraging new tools and ensuring the success of the transformation.

“Lastly, number seven is to communicate. Never assume full alignment, either on the plan or on the progress. Communicate your vision and your progress towards it within your community and within your broader organisation with key partners.”

Iryna Arzner Head of Group Customer Growth Raiffeisen Bank International