ASK Asset & Wealth Management leverages analytics and automation to boost efficiency and drive customer satisfaction

ASK Asset & Wealth Management (ASK) has built a strong reputation for itself as an advisor and partner that serves HNIs and UHNIs in an ethical and transparent manner. A decade ago, this became the launching pad for stellar growth, and the firm went from Rs. 3,000 Crores AUM to Rs. 80,000 Crores AUM in 2022. 

With this rapid growth, the leadership team saw the need to invest in new technologies to maintain its competitive advantage in the digital era.

Investing in technology for speedy transformation

ASK started looking for a CRM that would help teams update data in real-time, break down silos across the company, and be future-ready. Also, the CRM would have to meet the unique demands of wealth management: help build deeper relationships with existing customers over a span of years, and integrate easily with external systems for KYC, real-time payments, legal, audits, and APIfication.

The company evaluated several CRM solutions and settled on Salesforce as the one that met all these criteria.

Creating a frictionless employee experience to boost internal efficiency

The first step in the transformation journey was to empower employees to connect with and serve customers better. 

Workflows around daily activities such as customer onboarding, approvals, compliance, and case resolution were defined and automated in stages.  In parallel, the IT team migrated decades' worth of existing customer data to a new modernised core system and integrated it with Salesforce. The new, agile environment enables speedier API development for integration and automation. 

“Salesforce provides low-code/ no-code options with its Flow-based process, which empowers us to build seamless workflows, and route exceptions quickly and easily with minimal coding,” explains M. A. Kishen Kumar, Group Chief Technology Officer, ASK Wealth & Investment Advisors Private Limited.

Nearly 85% of processes across the customer lifecycle are now digitised on Salesforce, and employees in all the departments function with greater efficiency and customer focus.

Today, Salesforce has become the cornerstone of the company’s digital strategy. Customer onboarding and all transactions such as top-ups and SIPs happen via Salesforce. Aside from the operations team, no one has direct access to the core systems, making Salesforce a secure, central repository of company data.

Simplified and automated processes for faster customer onboarding

The availability of unified data allows ASK Relationship Managers (RMs), to easily access comprehensive customer information and also reduces the need for manual intervention by customers – all helping to deliver frictionless experiences.

On-the-ground RMs use the Salesforce mobile app to capture opportunities and leads. Using the voice capabilities of Salesforce, RMs record their sales conversations directly on Salesforce, reducing manual effort and inaccuracy. Automated reminders alert them about customer appointments. 

When a prospect converts and a new account is created, all verifications (Aadhar, PAN card, NSDL, CKYC, and legal) happen automatically through integrations with external systems.

“With the seamless integration capability of Salesforce, data capture has reduced by about 60%, and automation of data fields has helped reduce data entry by about 80%,” says Kumar. 

The onboarding document can be digitally verified and signed by the customer. Automation has simplified the whole process, requiring only one customer signature – as opposed to 40 earlier. The resulting opening of a DEMAT bank account is now auto-initiated within 30 minutes, down from 2 days.

On the loan origination process as well, integration with external components like CRISIL and NSDL helps populate almost 90% of the fields. The automated process includes all levels of approvals and exception management. Post that, there is seamless integration with the core loan management system.

Analytics from Tableau enrich customer 360 views and equip RMs, distributors, and partners to deliver maximum value during every interaction. RMs, in turn, use rich dashboards for an overview of all the customer relationships managed by distributor RMs, and their product and sales strategies. They use these insights to monitor distributor performance, and help them cross- and up-sell.

“Detailed 360 views and real-time dashboards enable our RMs to understand every customer profile thoroughly. With this, they can respond promptly and sensitively, winning customer trust and deepening the relationship,” observes Kumar.

Service standardisation boosts productivity and customer satisfaction

Once an HNI is onboarded, they expect personalised and prompt service, and ASK uses Service Cloud to automate service processes and deliver this kind of experience. With service streamlining, for instance, monthly statement dispatch to customers, which earlier took up to four months, now happens regularly on the third of every month.

Customer queries are consolidated from multiple channels for speedy actioning and resolution. For example, when a customer raises a request for a tailored statement on any channel, a case is created on Service Cloud. AI-enabled Named Entity Recognition (NER) scans emails to generate these detailed reports that are then auto-dispatched.

ASK currently uses external bots integrated with Salesforce to send out customer statements and handle customer queries, This will soon be migrated to Einstein bots to enhance efficiency and reduce turnaround times (TAT).

These service automations have boosted team productivity considerably. Where earlier the team manually generated 14,000 such reports each month, that number has now dropped to 4,000.  

TAT for most requests is down to a day from an earlier five days. 

Today, at ASK, an operations team of 40 people fulfils requests from 40,000 customers. Enabled by digitisation on Salesforce, existing teams can serve the growing customer base with ease; so, the ASK group can focus on acquiring new customers, as well as on exceeding the expectations of HNIs.

 “These have been very important milestones from a customer satisfaction viewpoint,” says Kumar.

Building a completely digital ecosystem

The ASK Group has been a pioneer in the field of digitisation within the industry, and will continue to automate and digitise to offer highly personalised customer experiences. 

The company will soon go live with Campaign Management on Salesforce for better targeting and outcomes. And Marketing Cloud will underpin all digital marketing initiatives. 

To continue enabling its entire ecosystem, ASK also plans to provide its expanding community of independent financial advisors with access to a dedicated portal on Salesforce.

“We will continue using technology to build systems that will continually empower our stakeholders and help us scale effortlessly,” concludes Kumar.

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