The Experience Deficit in Indian Banking
Indian banks are still stuck in the slow lane of customer experience.
Consumers have grown accustomed to intuitive, personalized experiences while shopping online, listening to music, watching movies, or renting a car. Yet, the customer journey with their banking partners remains fragmented, impersonal, and unengaging, to say the least.
As we step into 2025, delivering superior customer experiences should no longer be a choice. In this era of seamless digital interactions, it’s a mandate for growth.
Why Customer Communications Matter More Than Ever
Customer communications is at the heart of exceptional customer experiences. Even in an era of shrinking attention span, financial transactional updates still win the battle of eyeballs. Despite this, customer communications management (CCM) is often relegated to a compliance task, treated as a back-office operation rather than a strategic asset.
Data is the backbone of efficient customer communications. While Indian banks possess plenty of it, their approach to CCM remains trapped in legacy frameworks. This outdated model is not just inefficient; it’s a missed opportunity.
Most Indian banks have yet to deploy a centralized communication system. Instead, they rely on a patchwork of disconnected tools. The result?
Impersonal messages such as, “Your credit card outstanding for the month of XXX is XXXX. Pay by DD/MM/YYYY to avoid late payment fees. Ignore if already paid.” These one-size-fits-all templated communications fail to build connections or deliver value, reducing CCM to a mere compliance checkbox or a transaction facilitator at best.
Rethinking CCM as a Revenue Driver
But the table turns when we start looking at CCM drastically through the lens of revenue potential.
Imagine this – a customer’s transaction history indicates she is nearing her account’s overdraft limit. Her bank’s CCM system automatically detects this and sends a personalized alert with tips to avoid fees. Or perhaps, it suggests a product that better fits her financial habits.
Then it’s no longer a transactional correspondence—it’s a proactive, value-added experience. Proactive, hyper-personalized, real-time, and seamless. That creates the proverbial ‘Aha moment.’ A value-added experience is delivered through the CCM, and the bank is viewed by the customer as a trusted partner that anticipates needs and makes tailored recommendations.
Modern CCM can enable Indian banks to shift from reactive to proactive communication, turn everyday transactions into opportunities for meaningful engagement, and drive profitability.
Farming Insights to Fuel Growth
Fintech challengers are fast encroaching on areas like loans, payments, and cards which have been traditional bastions of banks. To stay competitive, Indian banks must renew their focus on fostering trust and loyalty among existing customers and invest in a data-driven customer communications approach.
Customers often voluntarily provide data to their banks. However, legacy solutions fail to extract meaningful insights from this data, depriving banks of the speed, scalability, and intelligence they need to succeed. A modern CCM solution transforms raw data into actionable insights, integrating individual customer profiles into every interaction and creating moments that truly matter.
FCI Builds Tomorrow’s CCM Engine Today
FCI aims to transform customer communications management for Indian banks with this groundbreaking approach. Drawing on decades of focussed domain expertise, FCI’s flagship CCM solution, VARTA, empowers Indian banks to anticipate customer needs, deliver hyper-personalized insights, and build trust through consistent, value-driven communication strategies.
Infusing Speed, Agility, and Scalability into CCM
VARTA also enables banks to swiftly adapt to regulatory changes, consolidate communication templates, and automate routine processes. This streamlines operations and frees IT teams to focus on strategic innovations. With intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces, business users can align communication strategies with growth objectives and accelerate time-to-market.
Unlike legacy CCM solutions commonly available in the market, VARTA supports advanced features such as analytics, end-to-end automation, and customer journey mapping. Its hybrid deployment model offers flexibility, working seamlessly in on-premises datacenters and the cloud.
Many of India’s largest and most prominent banks have already adopted this data-driven, scalable, and customer-centric approach, embracing VARTA as their enterprise-wide CCM platform.
A golden moment for Indian banks
With enhanced infrastructure spending, speedy implementation, and continuation of reforms, the Indian banking sector is poised for robust growth (Ref. IBEF). To borrow the words from a 2023 Accenture report, this is a “golden moment” for Indian banks to pivot their strategies. The journey to deeper customer loyalty, increased profitability, and sustained growth begins with rethinking CCM. It’s time to recognize CCM as a strategic enabler of exceptional customer experiences rather than a back-office function. With breakthrough solutions like VARTA, Indian banks are uniquely positioned to transform their communications approach and seize new growth opportunities in 2025 and beyond. author – Tanmay Guha Roy.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content