Citibank is offering $75 for customers who open a checking account online.
Fine print:
$1,500 minimum deposit
must initiate 2 bill payments within 60 days of account opening
Online Banking Report #105/106: E-Service 2.0
The latest report from Online Banking Report was published today, E-Service 2.0: Service with a :)
Subscribers may access the report immediately at Online Banking Report.
Others may download the abstract.
Local Option Boosts Google AdWords Appeal for Financial Institutions
Now that Google has begun identifying search engine users by their IP addresses, advertising via Google has become a whole lot more lucrative for community banks and credit unions.
Financial institutions now have the ability to target their keyword ads via city, state, or MSA.
See OBR 95 for a full report on search engine marketing.
Ebay Toolbar Provides Phishing Defense
We’ve been a proponent of increasing your presence on the desktop through browser toolbars, pushed content, and other means . We were looking at it from a usability and marketing standpoint. It turns out there’s another use, as a security enhancement.
Leave it to eBay to come up with the first proactive anti-phishing system. Ebay toolbar users received the Account Guard upgrade in February. It has two functions. First, whenever a user visits a valid eBay URL, the background color of the account-alert section of the toolbar changes to green. It’s a subtle but effective technique – quite noticeable when a spot on the top browser controls suddenly changes color, and much more effective than a locked or unlocked padlock in the lower corner. Second, an optional feature launches an alert box whenever you type your eBay username into a non-eBay URL.
It’s not a foolproof system. It…
Who Has the Best E-Service?
It’s difficult for outsiders to judge a bank’s service levels unless you
interview a number of customers as Vividence and others are doing or use the
bank’s products yourself. However, the bank’s website does provide clues to
the relative value placed on e-service. Here are the things we would look
for as a prospective customer, all of which are affordable even to the
smallest organization:
Table 35
Ten Clues You Are Dealing with a Top E-Service
Organization
1. Help function accessible from every page
2. Easy-to-find prices (not buried on the eighth page of the
account agreement)
3. Contact Us or About Us section prominently
displays telephone numbers, email,
and mail addresses
4. Service standards and guarantees prominently posted
5. Detailed and up-to-date FAQs
6. Customer feedback encouraged; for example, suggestion box or
satisfaction survey
7. Third-party endorsements/affiliations displayed, such as
Member Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, …
The Critical Role of Web Self-Service
By Annette M. Jacobs, CEO SafeHarbor
Online banking is no longer a competitive advantage. Today, the value is to offer an experience that is simple, user-friendly and provides the highest completion rates. Customer satisfaction with the quality is critical. Online banking customers have high expectations regarding system reliability and content quality. The level of sophistication among this customer segment is also driving the need for site integration and personalized service options.
It can be difficult for online banking programs to duplicate the high touch of personalized service that customers have grown to expect from a branch-bank experience. Offering customers effective online support can substitute for most of the personal attention offered by the neighborhood teller. Whether customers are finding answers for themselves through a FAQ page or by using assisted alternatives like on-line chat or telephone support, financial institutions need a comprehensive program maintain high customer satisfaction while decreasing support…
What to Do Now Regarding Self-Service and Customer Service
Customer service is one of those topics that engender passionate calls to action at staff meetings, but little follow-through. Why? Because it’s tedious work, difficult to measure, and expensive. Yankee Group estimates the total cost of a $200,000 Web-based self-service application is $1.3 million over five years, including IT support, knowledge-based maintenance, user training, and so on (see Table 30, below).
However, if you expect to profit from your online services, you must pay attention to the subject. Following are several tables to help you prioritize your investments. Table x lists the high-level priorities. Table y lists 10 ways to get the biggest bang for your buck today. Finally, we list more than 50 techniques for delivering service beyond customer expectations, while deflecting calls from your call center and branches.
Online Service Rules
# 1: Anticipate questions and tripping points;
remove the ambiguity in the product-design phase
#…
Responsive Service Techniques – Email Support is the Key
Techniques: Email, Web inquiry, chat, instant
messaging, call back, co-browsing
Web self-service may be the key to cutting servicing costs online, but
email support is the key to retaining customers. Responsive support (chat,
email, and telephone) is preferred by about 70% of online banking users
according to Vividence . Concerned, distraught, or impatient customers
aren’t about to wade through FAQs looking for answers. They want immediate
assurances that their concerns are valid and will be addressed. Typically
that’s required a telephone call, but more and more users are turning to
chat and email options. What’s holding back email today is poor service. In
a recent Forrester survey, only 25% of respondents expressed satisfaction
with email service, a satisfaction rate barely one-third that for
traditional branch and phone channel.
Once financial institutions provide a user experience on par with
telephone and branch, email will dominate as the primary medium for…
Ten Self-Service Lessons From Online Retailers
Because online customer service is required for
survival, ecommerce companies often have the most highly evolved
self-service facilities.
One
Drive users through self-diagnosis
To maintain high customer satisfaction without driving servicing
costs through the roof, online retailers and consumer service companies
attempt to answer basic questions through a Web-based self-diagnosis.
Only after the user has finished the diagnosis is the option given to
submit questions via webform. Even then, a newer technique called email
deflection uses automated logic to attempt to answer the user’s
free-form text question, before it’s submitted to a human. Cloudmark,
an email filter provider, uses email deflection powered by iPhrase
Financial institutions should use this approach, especially in the
tech support area. But take it slowly, walking before you try to run.
Most customers still prefer the telephone for service problems, so they
may resent your attempts to at call deflection. Most have spent
…
Self-Service Support Techniques
Techniques: search, FAQs, help centers, tutorials, wizards, forums,
product selectors
The importance of Web self-service is growing
rapidly as financial institutions deploy ever more user-friendly and helpful
tools. In the last six months alone, online users interviewed by
Vividence have shown an almost 50% increase in their preference for
self-service options. Self-service now is the most popular choice among
financial website users, edging out telephone, live chat, and email/online
forms (see Table 13, below). Web self-service at financial
institutions still trails that deployed by online retailers and tech
companies, but those companies have fewer support options. However, we are
beginning to see impressive programs at banking sites, for example,
SunTrust, an early innovator in search tapping Ask Jeeves
for natural-language search years ago. The bank also implemented
SafeHarbor’s graphical-FAQ approach in early.
Table 15
Site Search Usage for Banking Product
Research
% of using site search feature
Age…The Many Faces of E-Service – More than Just Email
Description
Examples
Preemptive
Bank solves or identifies potential
problems BEFORE user raises the issue or is even aware of the
problem
Alerts, instant messages, text
messaging, voice messaging, pushed account information, satisfaction
surveys
Self-service
Users solve their own problems online
FAQs, tutorials, calculators,
troubleshooting modules, imbedded help, search, image & statement
archives
Responsive
Bank responds to questions online
Email, Web inquiry, chat, instant
messaging, call back, co-browsing
Source: Online Banking Report 4/04; partially adapted from a Mar. 31,
2004 presentation by Forrester’s, Catherine Graeber
Most people think of email when discussing electronic service. But email
is just one part, albeit an important one, when designing a comprehensive
e-service program. Electronic service consists of three distinct classes of
support:
warnings before problems arise. In the branch environment, it used to be the
courtesy call when an overdraft situation was first…
The Forecast: for Financial E-service Households in 2004 to 2013
For 2004, we project growth of 5 million new U.S. financial e-service
households, about 15% fewer newcomers compared to the 6 million added in
2003. Also, the rate of growth will slow to 18% from 2003’s 27%. Because 10
million households use electronic customer service but don’t bank online,
it’s important to capture the email addresses of these users so you can
communicate with them electronically. Only one top-10 U.S. bank currently
allows users to opt-in for email communications even when the user is
already providing their email address in the course of making a web-based
inquiry