Vikram Krishna, Head of Group Marketing and Customer Experience at Emirates NBD
Brian Pereira: What is the big marketing challenge you face, specific to your region or market?
Vikram Krishna: Emirates NBD is well positioned at the moment and our main challenge is keeping up with customer expectations. We have to continue to innovate to keep customers happy as well as manage revenues and costs in a volatile economic environment. Having said that, we see several areas of new business opportunities even in this highly competitive market – there is a lot to look forward to. We will also continue to invest in making a positive difference to the welfare of the community we work in.
How does the bank manage relationships with its different types of customers?
Relationships are the cornerstone of good banking and we invest heavily in training our relationship managers in soft and technical skills to equip them to provide the right advice and support to customers.
We also invest heavily in digital tools to enhance the relationship function. For example, our partnership with LinkedIn on their Sales Navigator tool enables us to refine our advisory capabilities through a precise and targeted approach. Using proactive, targeted identification and communication has enhanced our customer engagement and interaction.
Q. How often does the bank get in touch with its customers? What are the different engagement channels you have to interact and communicate with these different customers?
As the world gets increasingly digital, we are witnessing an increasing level of customer sophistication. We adopt multiple approaches to engage with customers and listen to their needs.
In addition to a direct relationship approach, we also use our social media channels to engage with and listen to our customers. We continuously conduct social listening using Social Relationship Management tools to listen to discussions related to the brand across different blogs, twitter, websites and forums and react accordingly and proactively.
Q. How does the bank go about delivering customer value proposition?
Our mission is to make our customers’ lives simpler by providing solutions that help fulfill their financial and complement their needs, wants and lifestyle. This is a value that stands out across our product and service offering, whether it is using digital innovation to enhance our mobile banking app or educating our customers through informative ‘how to’ videos on our YouTube channel.
Q. How do you go about developing trust and relationships with customers?
Among Emirates NBD’s biggest strengths is its ability to provide customers innovative products and services that deliver unparalleled value and convenience. Our focus on innovation and accessibility through a wide network of branches, ATMs, mobile and online banking has helped us win and retain a loyal customer base.
This is complemented by consistent and market leading customer experience that matches the growing expectations of our clients, which is especially important for a large and growing brand in a multicultural environment where customers’ needs and expectations vary.
Q. Tell us about the type of customers you have. How do you classify them?
We currently have over a million customers across different nationalities that are serviced through our segment-driven business model that focusses on delivering market leading value to Personal, Priority, Private, Business and Wholesale Banking clients.
Each segment has a customized and extensive portfolio of products, partnerships and channels to cater to their unique needs and lifestyles. At the heart of every customer proposition is innovation to enhance and simplify a customer’s life be it through our award winning mobile banking app or the suite of hospitality, travel or business benefits we offer.
Q. Tell us about the loyalty schemes that your bank uses to retain customers.
We deliver loyalty through a relentless focus on excellent service and reliable, convenient banking. Our award 
winning and innovative online and mobile banking platforms offer unparalleled convenience and our customers value our effort to keep innovating to make banking easy. As an example, our customers can remit money to India in 60 seconds through our DirectRemit proposition or deposit a cheque within seconds through the mobile banking app.
In addition, we have a range of card offerings with in-built loyalty schemes that are packed with value and benefits. We focus on offering substantial value through our extensive partner network that complement our customers’ lifestyles. Our partners include dining experiences (Bon Appetit), Wellness (LiveWell), Travel (Emirates Airlines Skywards Card), Entertainment (Cinema, events), Electronics (zero% Instalment Plans), Automobile Financing (preferred interest rates across all leading car brands), Lifestyle benefits (Manchester United Card) etc.
Q. What are the premium products that you have and how do you market these to a specific segment of customers?
We have a range of product and service offerings across our retail and wholesale business units that offer a range of benefits. These include lifestyle benefits such as the Emirates NBD Skywards Card or the Emirates NBD SPG World Preferred Guest MasterCard, experiential marketing such as fine dining experiences for our priority customers via our Bon Appetit dining programme or an opportunity to enjoy world renowned classical musical talent though our Emirates NBD Classics programme.
We also raise awareness of financial planning through insightful social experiments on insurance and wealth management.
In addition, we provide our customers with valuable learning tools and investment insights. These include bespoke advice and regular market analysis to our HNW or corporate customers from the bank’s Chief Investment Officer and Chief Economist as well as the Purchasing Managers Index research in collaboration with IHS Markitt that provides helpful industry level insight on key sectors in the economy.
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