Avanse Financial Services, an education-focused new-age NBFC, chooses Freshsales and Freshdesk to sell and support online student loans

About Avanse

Avanse is an education-focused new-age NBFC (Non-Banking Financial Company) specializing in providing hyper-personalized education loans to students. It offers a wide range of education financing solutions to students and education institutions. So far, the company has fulfilled the academic aspirations of ~3,50,000 students across 30,000+ courses and 3,000+ institutes in ~50+ countries.

Avanse is a technologically advanced NBFC on a mission to provide seamless and affordable education financing for every deserving Indian student. The financial institution leverages an omnichannel presence across offline and online platforms offering a simplified loan application journey. To offer quicker and more personalized services to prospective students, Avanse needed a sales and support system that could provide a unified view of prospects.

Overcoming product innovation hurdles

Before Freshworks, sales operations were largely split between two main platforms: Microsoft Dynamics (Sales and Support) for support and reporting, and Softcell as the Loan Origination System (LOS). As soon as a new lead came in, it would enter the LOS, from where the verification and approval process would occur. A team of 25 operated out of Microsoft Dynamics Sales, but a large portion of the sales activity continued to be tracked within the LOS. 

As Avanse began to introduce new innovations, the shortcomings of this system started to become evident. One of the most important features launched was a self-service option for student loans. Students can now log in, apply for the loan, submit the necessary documents and get the approval online by themselves. In this new system, the touchpoints with the sales team would be extremely limited. 

The sales team, therefore, needed to be automatically alerted each time a student had taken a specific action so the required follow-ups could be carried out. For example, if someone had just signed up, the lead should automatically be routed to a call center agent who could follow up and update the customer’s response. Similarly, once a student had received a quote, an email had to be sent automatically with all the information required to complete the loan processing.

However, the team found that their existing sales and support platforms were not able to keep up with their needs as they required a scalable solution. They could not get complete visibility of their customers or support new features easily using these systems. 

Building a complete sales and support function

Once the team decided to replace Microsoft Dynamics, the process of finding the best replacement kickstarted. The team evaluated three main CRM solutions: Salesforce, LeadSquared, and Freshworks CRM solution. 

Salesforce required a substantial investment over the long run, and the team did not believe it would be cost-effective in the future. LeadSquared, a standalone sales application, would need to be integrated if the team wanted a complete CRM solution. Ultimately, the scale tipped in favor of Freshworks CRM because it could provide one user interface across sales, support, and marketing, and the team would only have to work with a single vendor. 

Similarly, for support, the company selected Freshdesk over Zendesk, as making customizations and managing integrations within a single product suite would be easier. 

When Avanse initially started its engagement with Freshworks, the plan was to replace Dynamics's sales and support function with Freshsales, Freshmarketer, and Freshdesk. The LOS had to be integrated with both solutions to track the complete lead flow. During the implementation stage, however, the team realized these solutions had more significant potential to track the entire lead flow within a single system. Ultimately, Freshworks’ solutions replaced not just Dynamics but also the LOS. 

From an initial plan of having 40 users on Freshdesk and 25 on Freshworks sales and marketing solution, today there are 100s of users operating with Freshworks CRM, comprising Freshsales, Freshmarketer, and Freshdesk. This includes field managers and regional heads, ensuring everyone has complete visibility of the leads and pipeline.  

A personalized lead journey

With Freshworks CRM, the team now enjoys a 360-degree view of all support tickets that are raised. This was not possible before as the data was spread across LOS, the website, Microsoft Dynamics, and Microsoft Support. Several key benefits were cited:

• 360-degree view of the customer: Support tickets can now be raised after sales and during the sales process. Tickets raised can be resolved through Freshdesk and automatically tagged to the lead profile in Freshsales. This is one of the main reasons the entire team moved to Freshworks CRM solution.

• Intelligent automation rules: Assigning the right tasks to the right people in the right teams was essential to cut down on customer response times. With Freshworks CRM solution, this could be easily automated.

• Sales sequencing: The sales sequencing option has helped the sales team deliver personalized messaging to leads depending on the stage of their journey. For example, a student might sign up for a loan quote but not return to complete the next steps. An automated reminder will be sent to the student using sales sequencing to increase their chances of converting.

These features have been critical in helping the team improve customer experience and deliver a targeted and effective lead conversion strategy. 

Looking ahead

Freshworks CRM solution has transformed the lead nurturing and support process within Avanse. The team plans to take this integrated view one step further by connecting Freshworks’ solutions with its back-end loan management system. This will undoubtedly empower the sales and support teams to deliver a customer experience that is uniquely personalized and differentiated from its competitors.