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 service. Fifteen years from now, telephone and branch service support will be distant memories. The vast majority of users will fire off an email, instant message, or Web inquiry without even considering any other option. There is absolutely no question that electronic channels will eventually dominate, providing many advantages for both consumers and financial institutions.

 

 

Web-inquiry Form

The design of the form used for customer inquiries can impact the timeliness, effectiveness, and cost of your online support. Make sure you’re not missing an opportunity to make future solicitations to online customers with an opt-in question. You should also consider tagging customers with cookies so you can better track future Web activity. Table 21, below, provides more details on form design.

 

Email Deflection

Not only can you deflect phone calls from your call center and branches by the way of a Web-based inquiry form. You can use the same form to actually deflect email messages as well. The key is having the ability to parse likely search terms out of free-form text inquiries. In the example below, Cloudmark, a provider of consumer spam filters, applies search algorithms to the free-form question, “Is there a way to make Cloudmark catch more spam?” (screen 1, below). Rather than sending the query directly to customer service, the company first provides possible answers to the question (screen 2, below). Users who still want to ask the company the question can complete the longer Request for Help form  According iPhrase, which supplied the search solution, Cloudmark has been able to reduce email volume dramatically.  

Responding to emails or Web inquiries should follow a three-step process as outlined in Table 22 below:

Table 22

Making Email Responses More User-Friendly

Phase 1: Immediate Autoresponse

•          Include bank name in subject field and from field
•          Thank customer for using e-service and explain the process and typical response time
•          Provide response-time estimates based on averages for that time of day and/or day of the week/month;
  extra credit: provide custom response-time estimates based on current email queue
•          Include links to appropriate FAQ sections
•          Reference telephone numbers for immediate support

Phase 2: Actual Answer

•          Use good formatting:
  – indent
  – physically separate ideas
  – white space
  – bullet points, lists, tables
•          Keep paragraphs and sentences short
•          Include “time received” and “time answered” date stamps
•          Include service rep name/email address for more personal feeling and to encourage customer to engage in a conversation until their question has been answered to their satisfaction
•          Include bank name in subject field and from field
•          Provide tracking number for the customer inquiries
•          If responses go to a secure mailbox within the online banking program, send an additional email to the user’s Internet mailbox(es) telling them that an answer is waiting (with a link to it)
•          Archive customer questions and your answers so users can refer to them later
•          Include intuitive URL and/or email address for customer comments and feedback, such as <comments.yourbank.com>, or comments@yourbank.com
•          Don’t forget to say, “Thanks for using our e-service.”
•          Add a telephone number for additional discussion

Phase 3: Follow-up

•          Follow-up with the customer at least once to ascertain their satisfaction with the answer and whether they have additional questions
•          Include a two- or three-question customer-satisfaction survey to quantify the work done by your e-service department as a whole, and each e-service rep as individuals
•          The simplest approach is to have the followup message originate from the service rep who handled the original message; an alternative approach is to have the followup come from a supervisor or “quality assurance rep;” you may want to test both approaches to see which works best
•          Encourage comments and feedback, either by responding to this message or entering comments anonymously at <comments.yourbank.com>
•          Telephone number for additional discussion or to make comments

Source: Online Banking Report, 3/04

 

The Importance of Response Times

Even though most online transaction times are measured in seconds, users will still become frustrated if your system is slower than what they are accustomed to. Search engines, the most widely used Web application, set the expectations early on. Even as early as 1995 and 1996, search engines were able to cull through millions of pages of data and deliver results in less than 20 seconds. With the faster connections used today, search times have shrunk even more. Banking information, secured behind various log-in schemes, can take three to four times longer to access, but unless you forget your password, retrieval times are still under a minute, an acceptable information-retrieval wait period for most Web users.

Table 23

Acceptable Wait Times for eService

acceptable wait time in hours for an online retailer’s customer service department to respond to an email or website inquiry; survey conducted during holiday shopping season, n = 1019

Use	% of Total	% of Those with Answer	Top 10 Bank Results
4 hours or less	45%	53%	4
1 hour	24%	28%	2
2 hours	12%	14%	2
3 hours	6%	7%	--
4 hours	3%	4%	--
5 to 24 hours	38%	45%	2
5 to 10 hours	4%	5%	1
11 to 23 hours	5%	6%	--
24 hours	29%	34%	1
More than 24 hours	n/a	--	1
Don’t know (no answer)	15%	--	3

Sources: Harris Interactive, 11/03 (as cited by eMarketer); research commission by RightNow Technologies; telephone survey fielded Oct. 2003, respondents included 1019 U.S. adults age 18+ (511 men and 508 women)

Top-10 Banks: Online Banking Report tests 4/04

Acceptable wait times for human help online are quite different. Web users have been relatively tolerant of slow responses to email queries, likely because they use Web-based inquiries for less urgent questions. However, users are beginning to become more demanding. A recent Harris Interactive survey (see Table 23, right) found that more than one-third (36%) of Web users expected a response from customer service within two hours. If you remove the 15% who said “didn’t know,” the number is close to half (42%).  

In our April 2004 test of the top-10 banks, only two returned an answer within three hours. Washington Mutual, head and shoulders above the rest, answered the question within four minutes, Fleet was second at 41 minutes. We received some response from all ten banks, although only seven answered the question. The three non-answers: Wells Fargo referred us to their call center; Citibank, apparently playing Jeopardy provided an answer and made us guess what the question was, because it clearly wasn’t the one we asked; and Wachovia sent an autoresponse confirming receipt of the question, but we never got an answer. Most surprisingly, not a single bank has followed up to see if we needed additional assistance or perhaps wanted to apply for the account we inquired about.

Overall, the banks have made great strides in the 4.5 years since our last test. In 1999, the fastest response time was US Bank at 11 hours (3.4 hours in 2004); this year the fastest response was Washington Mutual at 4 minutes, quite an improvement over its 19 days in 1999, where its response was a snail-mailed packet.

In our most recent test, five (50%) returned an answer within 8 hours, none did in 1999. This year, six (60%) beat the 24-hour threshold, only two (20%) did so in 1999. Also, the quality of response was much better on average. In 1999, only two banks emailed us an answer (three if you count BankBoston), the rest either referred us to other departments or sent a brochure in the mail. This year, six responded with answers, and only one (Wells Fargo) tried to pawn us off on the phone center.

One area that needs improvement, identifying the bank name in the message from and subject lines. Only five of the ten banks identified themselves in the message header, the remainder used generic subject and from lines making the messages look suspiciously spam-like.                                                                                          8

 

Table 24

Large Bank Email Response Times

Source: Online Banking Report, 3/04 (questions submitted April 9, Good Friday and Easter weekend)
and 10/99 (questions submitted Oct. 8-11, Columbus Day holiday weekend)

The question asked of each bank varied in the two tests:
In 2004: “Do you have a checking account that includes unlimited no-fee transfers from an overdraft line of credit?“
In 1999: “I am relocating to [your city] soon and would like checking information including pricing.”
*Time shown is elapsed time until an actual response was received, not including autoresponses;
in both years, 3 of the 10 banks sent an autoresponse

**after 10 days

Table 25

Top-10 Banks: 2004 vs. 1999 Performance

Source: Online Banking Report, 3/04 and 11/99

Notes: (1) BankBoston answered the question in 22.5 hours; (2) Did not answer question, referred to other sources of info

(3) No response from First Union

Source: Online Banking Report test conducted between 11 am and 1 pm Pacific Daylight Time, on Friday April 9 (Good Friday);

Question: “Do you have a checking account that includes unlimited no-fee transfers from an overdraft line of credit?

Columns: Home Location = location of Contact Us link; Clicks Away = number of clicks to the inquiry form, starting from the homepage; Complete Time = time to find and complete the inquiry form, starting from the homepage; Popup = is the inquiry form displayed in a popup window; Verify Email = is the user required to enter their email address twice; Confirm = is user given a final look at their info and question before submitting; Opt-in = is the user given the option to opt in or out of future email marketing/service messages; Required Fields = the fields that must be completed in order to submit a question; Auto time = how long after we pressed submit did it take to receive an autoresponse from the financial institution (blank means no autoresponse received); Time to Answer = how long after pressing submit before receiving an answer to the question; Quality of Answer = our subjective evaluation of the answer including tone, content, layout, and next steps

Legend: E = Email, N = Name, A = mailing address, T = Type of question, Su = Subject of question, St = state of residence,
Z = zip code, A = complete mailing address; Customer = Customer or non-customer, How = How did you find us?

Notes: (1) Wells Fargo’s contact page was very slow to download, increasing the time by 30 seconds

(2) An extra click on one of the screens required to scroll down to the desired area (only 3 screens to go through)

(3) Washington Mutual does not have a Contact Us link on its home page; however if you click Search, you’ll see a Contact Us button in the upper right hand corner

(4) Fleet does not have a Contact Us link on its home page; however if you click Personal Financial Services, there is a Customer Service tab on the far right, but still no Contact Us link

(5) Did not specify which fields were required

(6) Subjective evaluation of answer: A = accurate response and what to do next; B = reasonably accurate response;
C = vague or incomplete answer; D = misleading answer; F = no answer or wrong answer

(7) Wells Fargo made no attempt to answer the question, just referred user to someone in the call center

(8) Citibank’s response 7 days later made almost no sense, having nothing to do with my question; at first I thought it was a bad
phishing attempt; either it was automation gone awry, a service rep having a very bad day, or I got an answer meant for someone else

 

Table 27

Example Service Standards

Source: Online Banking Report, 3/04

 

Example #1: Generic Normal Autoresponse

To:          Customer

From:     Yourbank Ebanking <service@yourbank.com>

Re:          Your question to Yourbank

Thanks for using our online service department.

This is an automatic message to tell you that we received your message at 10:12 AM Sept. 29 and have forwarded it to the proper department for a priority response.

Most questions are answered within a few hours, but it could take up to 24 hours in certain instances.

Regards,

Ebanking Customer Support

(800) 123-4567

http:/www.yourbank.com/support

 

 

Example #2: Personalized VIP Autoresponse

To:          Customer

From:     Pat P. Smythe <pat_smythe@vipservice.yourbank.com>

Re:          Your question to Yourbank

Thanks for using online VIP service.

This is an automatic message to tell you that I received your message at 10:12 AM and we are currently working on a response. Within an hour you will receive a either a complete answer or a preliminary response (depending on the complexity of the request).

Please email or call if you have further questions. Regards,

Pat Smythe, VP - VIP Service

Phone Direct: (415) 555-1234          Toll-free (888) 555-9876

http:/www.yourbank.com/vip_service/pat_smythe

P.S. If for any reason you are not satisfied with my response, please feel free to contact
Kim Bradford, VP & Manager VIP Service, (415) 555-6789, or kim.bradford@yourbank.com.

 

 

 

Example #3: Referral to Web-based form

To: Yourcustomer <yourcustomer@isp.com>

From: E-Service <eservice@yourbank.com>

Re: Your Question to Yourbank

Dear Customer:

Thanks for your email question received a few minutes ago. This is an automatic response to let you know that we appreciate your interest in yourbank.com. However, due to the volume of junk mail and spam coming to our public mailboxes, we can only respond in a timely manner to questions submitted via our Web-based form. Click here to go directly to that form (if you can’t click on it, then type this address into your browser):

http://www.yourbank.com/askus/

Or if you prefer, customer service specialists are currently awaiting your call at 1-800-yourbank. Generally, wait times are less than two minutes except during the peak hours of 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM.

Thanks again for your interest in yourbank.com. Based on current volume, we should be able to respond to your question within 24 hours. Thanks for your patience.

Yourbank.com E-Service

(800) 123-4567

 

 

Putting a Face on E-Service

We are not enamored with the idea of video conferencing for customer service. Even with ubiquitous broadband, we’re not sure users really want to look at the customer service rep as he or she works through a problem (and we are certain users don’t want anyone looking at them). There may be some big-ticket sales situations, such as mortgage applications or other large-dollar investments, where user confidence is increased by seeing the salesperson.

However, we do think there is a place for static personal information such as name*, direct email address, and individual Web area where e-reps can put a human touch on e-service and build rapport with his or her client base.

________________________________________________________

*For privacy reasons, reps may want to use pseudonyms, an acceptable practice online.