ABN AMRO boosts Employee Net Promoter Scores by 46% and lowers costs by 40% with Dynamics 365.

ABN AMRO may be one of the largest banks in the Netherlands, but the approach it takes to customer relationships is hyper-personal. Pepijn Brinkhoff, Lead Product Owner, CRM at ABN AMRO, uses this phrase to describe how the bank envisioned the role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software across the business. “We wanted to have the ability to be in continuous dialogue with our customers, through all channels, while remaining hyper-personal” he says. In the past, ABN AMRO employees used a variety of CRM tools that primarily had an administrative function, lacked agility, and had a high cost of ownership. “We needed a single CRM solution that our employees embraced, was cost effective, and proved it could grow with us as a business,” says Brinkhoff. “That’s why we chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales.” 

Today, ABN AMRO uses Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and Dynamics 365 Sales to reimagine employee and customer experiences at the bank, save on costs, improve efficiency, and make the most of its data to inform customer journeys and campaigns. So far, the bank has migrated 12,000 users to Dynamics 365, and employees are embracing the new tool: “We have seen our eNPS improve from 4.8 to an average of 7.0 as a result of the move to Dynamics 365,” says Brinkhoff.  

Lowering total cost of ownership by 40 percent with Dynamics 365

In the past, ABN AMRO employees had to contend with multiple CRM tools, many of them on-premises solutions. Unifying those disparate products into a single, interoperable cloud-based platform was a big motivator for the switch to Dynamics 365, explains Brinkhoff. “Our main goal with Dynamics 365 was to create a single cockpit for all employees to serve all customers,” he says. Brinkhoff and his colleagues recognized that a new CRM solution could deliver more value to the employees and grow alongside the business. “With Dynamics 365, we discovered a future-proof solution that was easy to connect to other next generation applications and fit into the IT landscape of ABN AMRO,” he says. 

High cost of ownership was another challenge posed by ABN AMRO’s previous CRM tools. “With Dynamics 365, total cost of ownership went down by as much as 40 percent compared to our previous solution,” says Brinkhoff. Consolidating on a single platform for CRM has helped employees save time and work more effectively, he also notes: “Having one platform for all customer-focused employees gives us the opportunity to work more uniformly, be more efficient, and get more out of the data we have.” 

Addressing customer queries faster from a single, highly interoperable platform

Resie Verbeek, IT Lead Customer Relationship Management and Sales at ABN AMRO explains how the customer experience was enhanced by making a series of in-person visits to the bank’s customer contact center. The goal was to make sure that customer-facing employees had all the tools they needed to provide a great experience. From those visits, it became clear that customer service agents were losing time switching between applications and wanted a single, holistic view of customer information so they could better focus on their real-time interactions. “It was an eye opener for us in IT and inspired us to create a more tailor-made solution using Dynamics 365,” says Verbeek. 

Today, all customer-facing team members have access to Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Sales, as well as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. ABN AMRO customer service agents use Dynamics 365 Customer Service to address customer queries quickly and accurately. “Dynamics 365 is heavily integrated with more than 20 applications within the bank,” Brinkhoff explains. “It acts as a single portal where customer service employees are guided to the applications and processes they need in the moment. For instance, if a customer is calling to block a lost debit card, an employee will use Dynamics 365 to navigate to the appropriate application to do that.” 

Using Dynamics 365 as a single point of entry to navigate through thousands of processes and applications has helped save time, improve issue resolution, and customer service at ABN AMRO. “The complaint process has dramatically improved compared to the previous solution,” says Brinkhoff. By incorporating Microsoft Teams and other applications within the Dynamics 365 platform productivity was boosted.  

Improving customer relationships thanks to powerful insights

For ABN AMRO marketing employees, using data from Dynamics 365 Customer Service has helped inform new campaigns and journeys that resonate with customers. And, for the sales team, Dynamics 365 Sales helps ensure that customer engagements are always supported by real-time insights. “Lead flow coming from marketing to sales has improved dramatically with the intuitive Dynamics 365 solution,” says Brinkhoff. ABN AMRO employees also use Microsoft Power BI dashboards to share relevant, lead-related insights between functions. “The insights surfaced in Dynamics 365 have helped improve the dialogue with customers,” says Brinkhoff. 

Overall, cross-functional collaboration at ABN AMRO is supported by the use of Dynamics 365, all in the service of more personalized customer experiences. And ABN AMRO also uses Dynamics 365 to streamline collaboration with external partners. Brinkhoff explains: “In some segments, including B2B, adding the intermediary portal capability, which was easy and fast to setup, also contributed to the sales effectiveness and relationship building with our partners.”

Working with Microsoft FastTrack and embracing next-generation AI

When switching to Dynamics 365 from Siebel CRM, ABN AMRO chose to work with Microsoft FastTrack, a service aimed at optimizing user adoption of cloud solutions and streamlining implementation. “FastTrack was a tremendous help at the very start,” says Brinkhoff. “The FastTrack team helped us ramp up our knowledge of the Dynamics 365 solution and determine the best architecture and migration approach.” Ultimately, ABN AMRO deployed the new solution in half the time it took to implement its previous solution. “It was a big improvement,” says Brinkhoff. Even post-implementation, ABN AMRO continues to use FastTrack to make the most of Dynamics 365. “FastTrack is our connection to the product teams, giving us better insight into new features that will be arriving in the future,” says Brinkhoff. 

One thing that ABN AMRO is highly anticipating is Copilot for Dynamics 365 Sales." Pradeep Pandey, IT Lead for Customer Relationship Management Services at ABN AMRO, explains how the bank began internal deliberations to understand the potential to use AI to advance its business goals. “We got together to understand policies, regulations restrictions and also opportunities,” says Pandey. Initially, Copilot for Dynamics 365 Sales stood out as a way to harness AI for improved productivity with capabilities like summarizing opportunities or assisting with meeting preparation. Today, ABN AMRO is in the proof-of-concept stage with Copilot for Dynamics 365 Sales and is focused on improving knowledge and acceptance of AI within the workforce through events and workshops. “It's really important that we invest in the knowledge of our people so they can be empowered to transform business processes,” says Verbeek. 

Find out more about ABN AMRO on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.