Max New Life Insurance Wins over Customers with CRM

The problem with these multiple  customer touch points was that the organization didn't have single view of the customer. This had an impact in multiple areas: from customer service to agent management and training and a decline in the company's ability to effectively control collections, renewals, and retention processes. It also impacted Max New York Life's ability to increase profitability. "One of the key business challenges that paved the way for this project was a lack of an efficient lead management system, which could enhance our ability to increase our wallet share from existing customers," says Hitesh Arora, EVP and head-IT, Max New York Life Insurance.

These problems brought about the decision to implement a "pivotal enterprise CRM" says Arora. It would lead to the implementation of a customer service management system, a lead management system, a policy holder portal, a collection, renewals and agent management and performance system.

Because it sought to fix many problems in many departments, the project needed to be wide and deep. And that made it unwieldy. "Managing cost and schedule overruns of a project of this magnitude was a major challenge," says Arora.

The project was also the first of its kind in the Indian insurance industry, which left Arora and his team with little guidance. They had to start from scratch by documenting requirements and working out the flow and design of the system - and simultaneously manage changing requirements and additional request that impacted the project's timelines.

Despite these challenges the first three phases of the Rs 4.5-crore project were launched by August 2009 and they have seen wide acceptance. Today, the system has over 1,600 simultaneous users and it has served about 75,000 customers. "It has also resulted in fewer customer calls because they can access information for themselves. The system has registered more than our target expectations," says Arora.

The Person Behind It

Hitesh Arora

EVP and Head-IT, Max New York Life Insurance

"Managing cost and schedule overruns of a project of this magnitude was a major challenge."