Prioritising customer experience for growth

Many people dream of owning their own home, and since pioneering India’s mortgage industry more than 45 years ago, HDFC Ltd. has helped to make those dreams a reality for millions. As the country’s premier housing finance company, the firm provides customer service excellence across its offline and online customer touchpoints.

Buying a home is an exciting time in people’s lives. HDFC Ltd. values the role it plays in helping them achieve this milestone and wants the borrowing process to be as seamless as possible. To support this goal, in 2022 HDFC Ltd. set out to transform its digital experience ecosystem.

“We needed to enable higher performance, greater scalability, and more efficient marketing workflows,” says Rushit Davda, Senior Manager Digital, Martech and Branding at HDFC Ltd. “We also wanted to provide consistent experiences for our customers across all channels, from the website to our mobile app and beyond.”

Re-platforming the website and implementing a new digital asset management (DAM) system was a complex project for a financial services institution that built up customer trust over decades. The company needed to migrate everything without disrupting ongoing business operations, ensure data security and compliance, and also maintain its top search engine results page (SERP) rankings.

Lending better help to loan applicants

The company rolled out a new digital experience ecosystem based on Adobe Experience Manager Managed Services. With just three months to complete the website migration, Rushit Davda and his team worked with Tekno Point/DEPT® to make it happen in a phased manner.

“At Tekno Point/DEPT® we are proud to have contributed to HDFC Ltd.’s digital evolution by implementing Experience Manager in a short timespan, empowering the company to accelerate its time to market,” says Himanshu Mody, Founder & CEO of Tekno Point/DEPT®.

First, the partner completed a smooth “lift and shift” of the website to the new CMS. The team maintained data security and compliance while migrating to the new environment, which integrates seamlessly with third-party tools. Pre-built Experience Manager core components helped expedite website development, reducing costs and accelerating deployments. Extensive customisation capabilities enabled developers to accommodate unique internal requirements and seamlessly integrate website components.

The team used Context-Aware Configurations supporting inheritance to configure global settings, while making specific changes to web pages, such as for each of HDFC Ltd.’s six regional language websites in addition to the site in English. This increases the appeal of the company’s loan products to more people who are more comfortable with one of India’s regional languages.

Setting up a headless architecture for the new environment made it easier for cross-functional teams to streamline content management across various channels. For example, loan interest rates are updated using Experience Fragments, and the new rates automatically populate a variety of calculators, web pages, a chatbot, and promotional widgets featured across HDFC Ltd.’s online properties. This helps the company quickly provide up-to-date, consistent information for home loan applicants.

Keeping up with changing interest rates was a time-consuming task for the internal team. What used to take up to six hours of one person’s day can now easily be completed in less than 30 minutes — a 12x improvement. Experience Manager automations have simplified many everyday processes, enabling the team to get timely marketing information out to audiences a lot faster for better customer service.

Elevating user experiences with accurate, quality content

Using Content Fragments, the HDFC Ltd. team easily publishes disclaimers and other regulatory information that must appear on various loan product pages. The unified capabilities for authoring and automatically publishing from one console help ensure accuracy and regulatory compliance while further boosting marketing efficiency.

Real-time, dynamic form creation offers authoring flexibility for lead generation while expertly orchestrated AWS database setup via Lambda helps ensure efficient lead data storage and retrieval. Overall, the robust architecture scales to meet the evolving demands of the large enterprise, helping to ensure consistent, high-performance experiences across diverse devices and platforms.

The new DAM setup was meticulously structured during migration to significantly improve asset management and taxonomy organisation. With automated metadata and tag assignment, Experience Manager optimises efficiency when managing HDFC Ltd.’s extensive content repositories. By adopting a centralised DAM system, the company is redefining how it manages content and enhancing global collaboration and asset structuring.

"We are thrilled to have partnered with HDFC Ltd. to achieve significant site performance improvements, faster loan interest rate updates, and streamlined asset management,” says Yash Mody, CTO of Tekno Point/DEPT®. “This collaboration represents our commitment to help the company deliver exceptional digital journeys for future homeowners.”

Keshav Rao, GM – Digital, Martech and Branding at HDFC Ltd., agrees. “In the dynamic world of business, we recognised the importance of adaptability and progress. Our decision to migrate was born from the desire to not only overcome challenges but to embrace growth actively. We are enhancing website performance, scalability, and operational efficiency to position ourselves as leaders in our industry. This strategic move signifies not just a technological upgrade but a transformation, setting the stage for our continued success in the digital realm.”

Rolling out the welcome mat with performance and SEO mastery

For the second phase, website optimisation, the team executed intricate performance optimisation strategies, fortifying the website’s speed and operational efficiency to meet the demands of HDFC Ltd.’s global audience. SEO changes were configured to be easily authorable, expediting go-to-market SEO implementations while maintaining flexibility. It didn’t take long for the changes to start positively impacting website traffic and performance.

“We not only reached our performance targets, but also surpassed our competition, bolstering our leading position in the market,” says Rushit Davda. Following the launch of the new website, HDFC Ltd. saw an 11% lift in its SEO score. Organic click-through rates improved by more than 10%, total impressions increased by 11%, and mobile traffic jumped by 17%.

“We’re excited about the surge in traffic, combined with an API integration from Experience Manager to our internal lead management system,” says Rushit Davda. “It’s straightforward for us to follow up on new lending prospects to expand our customer base.”

The HDFC Ltd. team expected website performance improvements of about 60% and were pleasantly surprised that the new, faster page loading times exceeded those expectations. “We improved site performance by 75%, which has a big impact on delivering positive customer experiences,” says Rushit Davda.

Once HDFC Ltd. achieved stability and optimisation for its website, the team delved into the third phase, design refresh. With the help of the Tekno Point/DEPT® team, HDFC Ltd. completed its product page redesign process in less than 20 days. The improved look and feel provides a consistent brand experience for the lender’s new and existing customers.

The team is pleased to have completed a fast and seamless website migration in less than three months, with terrific results so far. “Our digital transformation journey at HDFC Ltd. reflects our unwavering commitment to innovation and customer-centricity,” says Rushit Davda. “With the implementation of Adobe Experience Manager we’ve not only enhanced operational efficiency but also empowered our teams to deliver up-to-date, personalised experiences to our home buyers. This step exemplifies our dedication to redefining the future of housing finance.”

“In our journey of growth, Adobe Experience Manager takes the lead, smoothly handling migrations, strengthening IT, and ensuring strong security,” says Keshav Rao. “Careful planning turned challenges into proof of commitment, fostering impressive growth. The teamwork of Tekno Point/DEPT® and our digital, technology, IT, and security teams turned difficulties into a successful story. Adobe Experience Manager was crucial, making sure every part of our digital transformation reflected excellence. Here's to a future with consistent leadership, unmatched user experiences, and continuous growth.”

"Adobe Experience Manager excels in elevating digital experiences by seamlessly combining agility, advanced security protocols, robust content management capabilities, and cutting-edge data privacy features, making the transition from on-premises solutions a strategic advantage for organisations seeking to thrive securely in today's dynamic digital landscape while safeguarding valuable assets and customer information with top-tier security measures,” says Nilesh Khot, CISO at HDFC Ltd.

Recommended for you

Content as a Service v2 - Tuesday, December 19, 2023 at 16:09 (no-lazy)

See all customer stories

https://main--bacom--adobecom.hlx.page/fragments/customer-success-stories/contact-footer