Axis Bank eyes Apple-like customer focus

MUMBAI: While it is not unusual for companies manufacturing consumer goods to aspire to be the 'Apple Inc' of the segment that they are in, Axis Bank has ventured to announce that its digital offerings will be inspired by the customer experience provided by the world's largest tech company.

"Technology will be dime a dozen. We do not care what others have done. If you look at Apple, their focus is completely on customer experience. Do the things that customers care for and do it in the simplest possible way ," said Shikha Sharma, MD & CEO, Axis Bank, who has declared Steve Jobs to be a big role model.

According to Sharma, the razor sharp focus on customer experience is difficult in a physical world where this is achieved by bundling products for the customer. But the game changes in the digital world where the experience can be embodied in apps, she said. Axis Bank's mobile banking app has scored better than its rivals, according to Forrester Research.

The latest offering 'Lime' brings a host of features -digital wallet, prepaid card and aggregation of accounts across banks. Besides the standard features in banking apps, Lime has a couple of first -it uses sound waves to transfer funds from app to app. It also incorporates gamification where a person moves to higher levels depending on his financial proficiency.

The app also contains a floating widget -'Lime Pay' -which can be used to instantly pay on any website or app on the customer's phone without having to enter card details. Since the app has a prepaid wallet feature, it can be used by those who are not customers of the bank.

"The real effort has been in the end-to-end digitization that we have worked on for over a year," said Sharma. The bank already has 2.4 million of its 16 million customers banking using mobile applica tions. "I think the mobile will be the main channel. Many things that were being done on the computer are now being done on the mobile. I do believe that as telecom infrastructure improves, more and more customers will migrate," said Sharma.

"We are not looking at digital to solve problems or to generate revenue. But we feel that if customers start transacting under the digital platform they will, as a result, maintain larger balances in their account," said Sharma.

Already 40 pct of the bank's customers use the digital channel. Going forward, the bank will be using its backend analytics engine to recommend products and services to customers based on the customer history and what account holders of a similar profile are doing.