Since 1995, e-service has been an important component of online banking satisfaction. However, many financial institutions chose to defer major investment in service capabilities on the theory that users were not demanding it.

While that may have been true three or four years ago, it’s not the current reality. Today, mediocre service puts you at risk of losing sales, cost saving opportunities, and ultimately customers. Luckily, expectations are still relatively low, so you have an excellent opportunity to impress your customers

Table 2
Online Self-Service Evolution

Source: Online Banking Report, 3/04                                                      

Table 3
E-Service Benefits

Improved customer support

•          Faster and more convenient for experienced online users
•          Able to interact with the bank in quick bursts when questions arise; before the issue festers
•          Creates a written record of questions and answers to make followup more efficient
•          Potential for higher quality answers with links to more detailed information, attached documents, and so on
•          Potential for customer to interact with the same rep for follow-up questions
•          Customer can save or print answers for future reference
•          No more looking up account and phone numbers, then navigating tedious phone menus
•          Efficient and detailed incident tracking to ensure satisfactory problem resolution
•          User satisfaction of finding their own answers
•          Serendipity: finding useful related information you might never have inquired about (e.g., discovering Roth IRAs when looking for year-end tax info)

Better market data

•          Easier to categorize and track customer concerns
•          Provides a steady flow of user feedback that can be captured and tracked over time
•          Easier to route individual questions/comments so others (e.g., marketing dept.) can “hear” what customers are saying, unfiltered and in real time

Potential* cost savings

•          Deflect branch, call center, and email queries
•          Ability to handle some questions during off-peak times
•          Ability to route questions to lower-cost centers where language fluency is less of an issue (compared to telephone support)
•          Ability to outsource certain question types, such as tech support
•          Ability to automate answers to routine questions

Source: Online Banking Report, 3/04

*Since most financial institutions are early in the learning curve, cost savings are mostly unproven. However, long term the impact is expected to be dramatic.

No matter how much time you spend analyzing service quality, in the end it all boils down to this: Satisfied customers receive products and services that meet or exceed their expectations. Table 4 below outlines nine components of online service quality.

Table 5

Customer Service Expectations Retail Banking

*relative ease of exceeding customer expectations using online service

Source: Online Banking Report estimates, 3/04

Because customer expectations are relatively low, there are numerous opportunities to impress even your most jaded customers and even pick up share from less-enlightened competitors.