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:

•   Preemptive or proactive support: Services that provide warnings before problems arise. In the branch environment, it used to be the courtesy call when an overdraft situation was first detected. Online it’s the triggered account alert telling users their balance has fallen below a preset limit or an email confirmation when a deposit is made. These services are fantastic for customer satisfaction, although they could have a short-term negative impact on fee income.
•   Self-service or self-guided support: Self-service options are growing in acceptance as users begin to understand that high-quality Web-based support can deliver accurate answers in a fraction of the time it takes to walk through the problem on the telephone with one or more customer service reps. While financial institutions can deploy self-service options relatively inexpensively, resist the temptation to cut development costs to the bone. Bad self-service support can do more harm than good; driving users to the phone already in an agitated state after wasting time trying to find the answer online.
•   Responsive or reactive support: This category is most like traditional phone support. In theory, questions received electronically (email, Web form, or text-based chat) can be handled more economically with tools that provide preformatted answer templates for common queries. In practice, there is a substantial learning curve before cost savings materialize. However, many banks are beginning to see measurable call deflection among their online user base. A major credit card issuer told us that their online cardholders were making 30% fewer telephone calls, a dramatic cost savings. However, users may not be satisfied with e-service efforts which will slow adoption. For example, only 25% of users are satisfied using email for problem resolution compared to 69% satisfaction for the phone and 76% for face-to-face branch interactions