Many of the ideas in this issue require executive approval, capital budgeting, I/S negotiations, and so on. If you are looking for ways to boost traffic in 2000, within your existing budgets, here are some low-cost ideas we’ve dubbed “50/50 projects,” ones that can be completed within 50 days for less than $50,000 and usually without any extensive internal systems work.

Source: Online Banking Report, 6/00

www.icreditreport.com

QSpace offers credit report info in three flavors.

Status Report: Since we last reported on QSpace (Oakland, CA) (OBR 8/97 ), the company has rebranded its services as iCreditReport.com and entered into an agreement to be the exclusive credit report provider at Yahoo!

The Product: QSpace has expanded its product line from a single online Experian report to the four products listed below:

Source: Company, 11/98

New Developments: QSpace launched an affiliates program that will pay referring Web sites 10% of sales generated. Not a bad way to pick up a few dollars.

QSpace added a free service to its line-up.

QSpace’s new free service is the best credit self-analysis we’ve seen. Users select multiple choice answers to 13 questions (below) and receive a 1- to 5-star credit ranking and a few words of encouragement mixed with a sales pitch to buy a credit report. It’s very well done. 8

QSpace’s Free Credit Analysis

1. Have you ever filed for bankruptcy?

2. Do you own a home?

3. What is your current income?

4. How long have you been at your current job?

5. How long have you been at your current address?

6. How long ago did you get your first credit card or loan?

7. What is your net worth?

8. How long ago did you open your most recent account?

9. When did you last miss a loan or credit card payment?

10. How many loans or credit cards have you applied for in the past 6 months?

11. Number of credit cards with a balance?

12. How much do you owe on your credit cards?

13. How much credit do you have available on your credit cards?

Source: Company, 11/98

Contact: I.O.A. Eze is Co-founder & President, ike@qspace.com , (510) 893-1085, www.qspace.com

ConsumerInfo.com

www.consumerinfo.com

Privately held ConsumerInfo.com joins QSpace in delivering Experian credit reports on the Web. While QSpace is offering instant access, ConsumerInfo.com requires users to wait for an access code delivered via snail mail. Pricing is also quite different with ConsumerInfo.com pitching a $49.95 per year subscription with unlimited credit report access with subsequent years automatically billed to your credit card until you say stop. QSpace is charging $5-8 per transaction but is working on a similar subscription option. ConsumerInfo.com also sells First American CREDCO’s “3-agency”

ConsumerInfo.com pitches free credit reports and 30 days of free credit monitoring on its own Web.

The Quicken-branded screen at ConsumerInfo.com takes a slightly different approach with two options: subscripton service or a one-time mergerd credit report.

(a.k.a. “merged”) credit reports for $34.95 each www.firstam.com/credco

ConsumerInfo.com also hosts Quicken’s free credit report program on a private-branded basis. Users entering ConsumerInfo.com through its Quicken arrangement see co-branded screens (above) and a slightly lower price (see table). ConsumerInfo.com, a privately held firm located in Orange, CA, was formed two years ago by former TRW executives. On April 27, MemberWorks Inc. (NASDAQ:MBRS) announced a strategic investment in ConsumerInfo.com which includes an option to acquire the company.

Contacts: ConsumerInfo.com, (888) 888-8553; Mary Siegrist is SVP/GM at Credco, (619) 637-3770; Eric Dunn is SVP at Intuit, (415) 944-6000.

Source: company reports

With 2,700 banking and credit union Webs in the United States alone, you may be wondering what you can do to stand out from the crowd. It’s really not that hard. You can make the top 10% if your Web is up-to-date, speedy, and easy-to-navigate. After you’ve done that, then consider adding new content elements every 6-12 months to keep things interesting and provide a boost to your online sales efforts. But don’t take on too much at once. It’s better to be small and focused than big and confusing.

One

Supports: branding, cross sales

Every community bank should consider an offering in this category, the virtual equivalent to the time/temperature sign hoisted in front of the branch. But on the Internet you can do it much cheaper and make it more useful. All of the items in this category can be put on autopilot. Once you make the proper links and/or licensing deals, the information is delivered by other servers, freeing you from any maintenance whatsoever. You don’t even have to change your virtual clock when daylight savings time arrives.

Evergreen Bank’s icon directing users to four pedestrian, but useful content areas www.evbank.com .

For a time, Evergreen Bank (Seattle, WA; $138 million) had an attractive “Time, Temp, Traffic, T-bills” function on its home page, but they’ve since buried it within their site. Here are some of the features to consider:

•  time of day (also include other time zones, especially international)
•  weather (for a list of service providers, see www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Weather
•  traffic (if available from department of transportation or other sources in your market); for an example see www.wsdot.wa.gov/regions/northwest/NWFLOW/

The (Seattle) four-day outlook from Intellicast, www.intellicast.com , perhaps one of the easiest and most compelling content additions for your Web.

Two

Supports: cross sales, fee income, card sales, retention

Credit card registration services became commonplace during the card “enhancement wars” of the late ‘80s. It’s a moderately valuable touchtone-based service often given away free to the entire card base, or sold ala carte for up to $15/year.

But the value could be significantly improved with Internet-based services. How?

•  Trusted financial institution holds the data rather a third party.

•  Easier to update and keep current.

•  Provides a ready reference when completing a loan application or evaluating credit options.

•  Card information stored in an encrypted format readable only by the authorized user holding the key.

•  The database could hold more than just card number and issuer name; users could input rates, fees, customer service contact info, teaser period, comments, etc.

•  Email alerts could be programmed by the user to send an email at the end of the teaser period, or when the annual fee is due, etc.

To assuage privacy concerns, a clear (e.g. in laymen’s terms) and absolute privacy policy must be prominently posted explaining precisely how the data will be kept confidential.

Web-based credit card registration would be a useful home banking enhancement (i.e. FREE) or it could be sold for an annual subscription fee, or both (basic listing is free, enhanced listing costs $10-15/year). A card registration service could also be combined with a credit bureau monitoring program and sold under one subscription (see #8).

Three

Personal Finance Book Reviews

Supports: investments, savings plans

Liberty Publishing licenses book reviews at www.libertyink.com/bookrev/index.shtml .

Search Amazon.com under the subject “personal finance” and you’ll find some 1,900 current titles (not including the out-of-print ones). This is an overwhelming amount of choice for most users. You could help by providing reviews of top-rated personal finance and/or small business management titles.

To write the actual reviews, contract with a free-lance writer specializing in personal finance or use a specialized content provider such as Liberty Publishing Company www.libertyink.com/online2 /content.htm>, which licenses book reviews and other articles for financial institution Webs. Liberty’s prices start at $250 per article, which typically provides the buyer with exclusive rights to use the content for one year on their Web site and in outbound email newsletters. A benefit of working with Liberty is that they know how to write material that will be fully compliant with banking and security regulations.

Liberty got their start writing articles for insurance companies and currently authors print newsletters for four of the top 10 U.S. insurance companies. They also provide online content for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, New England Financial, and The Institute of Financial Planners. The company will be delivering content for two of the largest 15 banks within the next few months; one a tax-information section, the other a small-business site.

Liberty Licenses Content in Six Areas

•  charts and graphs

•  online newsletters

•  articles

•  short takes

•  book reviews

•  financial glossaries

Contact: Len Conway is Online Marketing Consultant at Liberty, (800) 722-7270 x142, lconway@libertyink.com

Northwestern Mutual Life features articles written by Liberty on its first page www.northwesternmutual.com .

You could also become one of 30,000 Amazon.com associates and provide a direct link to the order-entry area of the online bookseller’s Web site to purchase the reviewed books. Your 5-15% share of the sales could be donated to local literacy programs. This would generate positive PR and temper any criticism leveled your way for competing with local bookstores www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/associates .

A link to Amazon.com from AltaVista.

There are two simpler approaches that allow you to help users find good personal finance books without actually posting book reviews:

• Create a simple link into Amazon.com’s Web site so users can find their own titles, read reviews, and make purchases. You can preload the link with the search criteria so visitors immediately see a listing of all titles on bond investing for example.

• Post a link of the best sellers in each category at Amazon.com. For an example, look at the bottom of the first page at <www.quicken.com>.

Four

Personal Reminder Services (aka Personal Secretary or Personal Banker)

Supports : home banking, branding, cross sales, retention, small business

What could be better than having your customers start their Web work on your site each day? Instead of talking to your customer 12 times each year with a statement stuffer, you now have 100, 200 or more opportunities to interact with them to improve service and increase cross-sales.

But why would anyone choose their bank’s Web as the default start page (see definition below)? The competition for user attention is fierce and a financial institution would have to spend a bundle to create compelling news or entertainment content to attract users to its Web.

Definition: Default Start Page

Default start page is the Web site your browser automatically connects to when launched. To change your default start page, go to the desired Web page, then (in Navigator 4) select Edit/ Preferences and click on “use this page,” the process is similar in IE 4.)

But there is a potentially low-cost way to improve your chances of becoming a Web starting point. Establish a Personal Reminder Service on your Web that users can log in to each time they use the Web. To get an idea of how this works, look at the free (advertiser supported) service provided by AllNotes www.allnotes.com .

AllNotes users create their own Virtual Appointment Book by inputting recurring (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) or one-time messages that are then displayed on the Web after logging in. You can input your daily
to-do list, set-up meeting reminders, or program a heads-up 10 days before your spouse’s birthday. Though AllNotes doesn’t support the feature, users should have the option of receiving emailed reminders.

AllNotes makes it easy to set-up Web-based
reminders at www.allnotes.com .

Integrated with Bill Payment

The service could also be integrated with bill payment. The simplest integration would be for users to enter due dates of recurring bills into the program. From then on, an email would be sent when the bill was due.

Even more useful would be integrating notification options into your bill pay form (see mock-up above).
By simply checking a box, users could automatically establish recurring due-date reminders. Microsoft’s Money and Intuit’s Quicken have incorporated this feature for years.

Integrated with Web Content

Your reminder “engine” could also be integrated into other financial product areas as well. In your automobile/car loan area, add an auto maintenance service that spits out reminders to change the oil/filter, flush the coolant, etc. at the approximate correct time based on user input of annual mileage. In your homeowner area, build a service that reminds homeowners to service their furnace each year, clean the fireplace every three years, or empty the gutters every six months, etc.

We think reminder services could be a terrific enhancement to your Web offerings in 1998. Why? First, they increase the “logged in” traffic on your Web boosting cross-sales opportunities. Second, as potentially the first financial institution to launch such a service, you’re likely to get positive media coverage.

Eventually, a significant number of users will use a reminder utility, it may as well be on your Web. By integrating it with bill payment, it’s a logical ancillary service to offer. And once users go to the trouble of setting up their personal reminder database on your Web, it’s one more reason to remain a customer, even if relocating across the country. Potential service providers can be found at www.yahoo.com/Business_ and_Economy/Companies/Gifts/Reminder_Services/ .

American Greetings provides a free email reminder service to entice you to buy more personalized cards and gifts at its Web site www.greetingcard.com .

Using AllNotes Reminder Service

The free reminder service from Allnotes www.allnotes.com is simple to set-up and is relatively useful, though to it lacks two important features. The first missing element is an option to have reminders emailed. The second shortcoming is an option to have your password stored in a cookie on your harddrive so you don’t have enter a password each visit.

Allnotes allows you to choose daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or one-time reminders. The Web site walks you through the procedure to set Allnotes as your default start page. A useful programming trick that automatically passes you on to your usual start page if there are no new messages on the Allnotes server. This feature would be more useful if you didn’t have to enter a password before it checks for messages.

After logging in, users see a list of their new messages. Clicking on the second column brings up the full text of the message. Note the Link Exchange banners running on the top.

Five

Electronic Postcards & Greeting Cards

Supports: branding, new business generation, home banking

For something totally off the wall, allow users to send email “postcards” from you Web site. Post a few templates that users can personalize with their own words, colors, graphic inserts, etc. To email the greeting, users simply type in their email address and the recipient’s. Program it yourself or partner with one of the greeting
card providers on the Web www.yahoo.com/Business _and_Economy/Companies/Gifts/Greeting_Cards/ .
Your partner could also offer fax and postal mailing options for a fee.

Integrate with Bill Payment

A potentially more lucrative, and more complicated approach is to integrate electronic postcards with bill payment. A pop-up window in your bill pay module would allow users to send an e-card scheduled to arrive at the same time as the cash. The greetings could accompany money sent to individuals as gifts or to repay debts. For businesses, it could be used to send thank-you notes with payroll, bonuses, or commissions. See below for more ideas in Web-based messaging.

A free postcard from American Greetings www.egreet.com/postcards (as viewed in Netscape email).

Six

Common Email Templates

Supports: home banking, retention, small business

Across all industries, companies are increasingly using the Web for customer service. The most progressive have developed highly structured customer service inquiry templates that query the user for all pertinent details on their question.

A bank could expand this concept to cover both queries to the bank and to third parties outside the bank. For example, provide email templates pre-loaded with questions that should be asked of potential health

How it Works

American Greeting allows you to create and send online “postcards” from its Web www.egreet.com/postcards . Several free designs are offered including the thank-you card shown above and left; or select from premium holiday and special occasion styles priced at $5.95 per five, payable by credit card online.

After selecting a style, users customize their card in a four-step process:

1. Type the desired message (see #1 in above)

2. Select font type, size, and color (#2 above)

3. Preview results (#3 above)

4. Send

The postcard is sent as a GIF file attached to an email. The free cards include a relatively unobtrusive reference to American Greetings. To view the image in most email programs, you simply click on the attachment and the image pops up in the browser window. (America Online 3.0 users must work harder by opening another application such as Word, finding the file in the download directory of AOL, and opening the file.)

insurance providers, tax preparers, financial planners, remodeling contractors, etc. Users should be able to modify the canned questions and add their own.

The templates could be integrated with a database of email addresses that you have compiled or that are accessed via major Web-based directories. Users could then compose their email, look up the email address, and send it, all within your Web site. You could also offer an option to print the email in standard letter format to sign znd send in the regular postal mail.

For a bank, one of the most useful templates would support bill payment. Expand the bill pay form to include optional text messages that go directly to the payee via email (see mock-up on p. 6). This would be especially useful to businesses (in a survey of one business owner, I concluded that I would pay $10/month for that feature alone), but would also be desirable for individuals especially when sending money as a gift (see also #5).

Seven

Home Inventory

Supports: home banking, insurance, retention

Home inventory features has been available in Quicken (or Quicken Companion) for years. The software includes a template that makes it simple to input typical household items into a database and assign cost and replacement values to each item. The results can be stored on a diskette and/or printout and deposited in a safe deposit box for safekeeping.

On the Web you could build “home inventory” into a useful service that would enhance your home banking program and/or help sell insurance. Users would input their household inventory at your Web, storing the results on your server. This would eliminate the weak link of current programs: the need for off-site storage of the document. You could send an email reminder every six months encouraging users to update their inventory.

Eight

Credit Report Access & Monitoring

supports: CRA, loans, PR

Even before the Internet, concerns about financial privacy were widespread. The Internet has introduced an even more frightening scenario: your personal records are available not only to big brother and talented criminals, but also to your neighbor and their adolescent prankster offspring. As a financial institution, you should take a leadership role in providing tools for users to protect their privacy and monitor public databases to make sure what’s out there is accurate.

Credit report monitoring is one of the true win-win programs available on or off-line. Your customers win by catching credit bureau inaccuracies before they become an impediment to a home purchase or mortgage refi. You win by providing valuable information not readily available elsewhere, and by booking incremental fee income and loan outstandings.

QSpace has the online credit report market to itself.

Currently there is only one source for receiving credit report information online. QSpace www.qspace.com has been delivering Experian credit reports online since July. Its service has been relatively low profile, but several licensing deals in the works should boost their visibility considerably during the next few months (see page 11). The company is also using banner ads like the one below displayed on Wired’s HotBot (Feb. 21) when searching on credit.

QSpace’s www.qspace.com banner on HotBot.

MyCreditFile.com sells the forms used to order credit reports from the three major bureaus for $9.95 at www.mycreditfile.com .

There are a number of ways to deliver privacy and credit information services online, ranging from simple generic info, to online ordering with postal delivery, or even online delivery. Some ideas:

• Guided links (see #10) to sources of privacy/security information. For example, see the resources compiled by CreditComm Services www.creditcomm.com/reference/bprivacy.html

•  Credit bureau monitoring services (see chart of service providers right).

•  Digital certificates from VeriSign  www.verisign.com , GTE CyberTrust www.gte.com , or others.

•  Advice on how to monitor what is available about you online, and how to correct or delete information (for reference books, search on “online privacy” at amazon.com).

•  Zero-liability guarantees for online shopping and online banking; can be tied to a credit card such as that offered by First USA/Yahoo! (screenshot below).

•  Email alertservices that send a notice whenever an account has been accessed online, whenever a bill payment has been initiated online, whenever an address change has been received, account withdrawals made, etc.

First USA’s banner on Yahoo’s 411 Directory, www.four11.com touts a “Safe Shopping Guarantee” (see p. 16 for more on the card offering).

American Express is the latest to jump on the credit monitoring bandwagon with the upcoming launch of CreditAware, the first that monitors all three major credit bureaus. Service provider is CreditComm Services which also markets their own brand on the Web www.creditcomm.com/faqs/faq10.htm .

Credit Report Monitoring

Credit monitoring is a subscription-based service costing $30 to $70/year. Total enrollment in the U.S. is about 4.5 million (see chart below). The services generally include:

•  Free credit bureau reports.

•  Notification by mail whenever a new credit bureau inquiry is posted.

•  Periodic (monthly/quarterly) monitoring for any new negative info on the file.

Nine

Community Calendar (Database)

supports : branding, community service (CRA), PR

Does your community lack an up-to-date and easy-to-use Web-based source of events, meetings, and activities? With a minimum of programming and oversight, you could fill the void with a community calendar and database on your Web. This would help a financial institution:

•  generate goodwill in the community

•  build positive brand/image

•  satisfy existing Web users

•  attract new bank customers (consumer, business, and non-profit)

• he calendar could be used to post a wide variety of events:

•  local government meetings and hearings

•  school events and meetings

•  school lunch menus

•  school closing reports

•  garage/rummage sales

•  entertainment events

•  sporting events (from college football to t-ball)

•  charity fund-raisers

•  reunions

The key to making it work is an update process that minimizes your involvement. Many (most?) community calendars we’ve seen on the Web suffer from a host of maladies including link rot (outdated links), out-of-date-itis (events have already occurred), or terminal lack-of-attention syndrome (not enough events listed to make it useful).

Speaking from experience, it’s easy to see why calendars fail. They take a lot of time to keep current and are generally lower in priority than revenue-generating activities, resolving customer service emergencies, and keeping product material current.

Predictably, Web-based calendars go through a cycle of initial enthusiasm, followed by a period of decreasing upkeep until it finally dies.

Leveraging Volunteers to Create Your Content

You can beat this cycle by enlisting the community to keep the calendar up-to-date themselves. Create an event-input form on your Web that can be used by anyone to add an item to the calendar. A flag on the database will give you editorial control over which entries are displayed. (The flag could be set through a special password-protected backdoor to your Web.)

Minimizing Oversight

After a user has entered all the information into the form, an authorization email is triggered to the designated bank employee or contractor. A confirmation email is also sent to the submitter and their organization to guard against fraud and error.

The email to the bank contains a link to a password-protected control area of your Web. The bank officer clicks on the hyperlink, enters a password, reviews the new entry, and if appropriate, sets the database flag to “display” and hits enter. The entry is now displayed on the Web, and an automatic email is sent to the person who submitted the entry and their organization. If the event is not appropriate or is incomplete, an email can be triggered asking for the submitter to post additional information.

Advanced Functions

• If you end up posting a large number of events, you may want to add advanced functions to make the calendar easier to navigate and even more useful:

•  Filtering entries by subject, keyword, date, organization, etc. and/or searching by keyword. This is relatively simple to accomplish with basic Web programming. Talk to your Web developer.

•  Email delivery of new events matching user interests.

•  Free Web space for community organizations to post additional info about themselves and/or the event. Again, create password-protected forms that allow the organizations to do their own data entry and maintenance.

•  To serve organizations and users lacking convenient Web access, consider fax-on-demand access.

Final Analysis

A community calendar may not be the easiest project to implement, but the benefits could be more far-reaching than other content additions you may be contemplating. Does the Web really need another place extolling the virtues of student loans?

Useful and free Web content can build quite a following over time, as other sites link to yours and the search engines assign your site higher rankings for relevance.

Plus, you’ve got the very real possibility of continual free publicity in other media. Conceivably, the newspaper would reference your site when announcing an event, “for more info go to <www.yourbank.com/ calendar/>”. You might get even better coverage, and more credibility, by housing the calendar in its own domain such as <www.yourtowncalendar.com>. You can still adorn the site with your bank logo and navigational icons.

Eventually, you may even be able to recoup your investment by licensing or selling the community calendar site to a private company who could sell ad space. A site getting 25,000 unique visitors each month might fetch $50,000 or more depending on the market. And you can negotiate a long-term exclusive financial institution sponsorship as part of the deal.

Ten

Guided Web Links

Supports : branding, retention

Remember your delight the first time you used the Web and “hyperlinked” to another site simply by clicking the mouse? That powerful concept is what gave the Web its name and helped ensure its commercial success. But today, simply providing a list of links in a resource section is as outdated as posting a picture of the bank president on your first page.

We call “plain vanilla,” or links with no accompanying descriptions, “lazy links.” Lazy linking shows a lack of concern for your users’ time. The concept you need to embrace for your Web is “guided links.” Guided links help users maximize their productivity by providing concise descriptions of what lays ahead should they click on the link.

Guided links include a short description of the Web site; how up-to-date it is; costs if any; brief navigational hints; even concise commentary on its content. After all, you are recommending that users spend the next five minutes of their life at the linked site, you better spend a few minutes yourself documenting the choice.

Tenets of Guided Links

•  Provide descriptions of the content, including which areas are best.

•  Explain why it’s a good place to go.

•  Identify the sponsor/owner of the linked site.

•  Keep links up-to-date.

•  Provide business, education, info, or shopping links; avoid entertainment, their value is too subjective.

•  Understand the ramifications of the link (will the user be hit with Java, competitive advertising, etc.).

Diagram of the QSpace online credit report system.
Financial institutions can offer the service on a private or co-branded basis.

QSpace has been delivering credit reports online since July 1997, for $5-8 each. The company continues to maintain its unique position as the only place on the Net where you can order and view your report online (data is from Experian). Originally, a VeriSign digital certificate was required to access your report, but the company has since dropped that requirement, though you still can save $3 off the $8 price if you have a VeriSign Class 2 certificate <www.verisign.com>.

We recently tested the QSpace system and found the procedure relatively simple and straightforward. The report was easy to read online and printed out nicely. And at a cost of $5 ($8 without a VeriSign certificate) the report is a good value. It took about five minutes to enter all the necessary data and receive the report. It would take a bit longer to answer a few additional questions if you don’t have a VeriSign certificate.

We were surprised to hear from QSpace President, Ike Eze, that he hasn’t had much interest from banks wanting to distribute QSpace/Experian credit reports online. Though we haven’t done due diligence on QSpace’s security procedures and service quality, Experian seems satisfied with the company’s user authentication and delivery methods. The first financial institution that offers credit reports online will create quite a buzz in the marketplace.

QSpace will share revenues with financial institution partners. The service could be offered co-branded or completely private branded. The company is especially interested in strategic partners that could help build the QSpace brand and/or deliver significant volume. This could be a good time to cut a favorable deal.

The current $5/$8 price may not generate an abundance of fees to share. But the company has a subscription product in development that is expected to be priced in the $50 range, competitive with Cendent’s PrivacyGuard (see table on p. 10), marketed at $59.99 per year after the three-month $1-trial period.

A hypothetical bank/CU with 50,000 unique Web visitors might bag 2,000 subscribers over a 12-month period. Assuming 20% revenue sharing from QSpace and a $50 annual subscription price, that amounts to only $20,000 in the first year. But subscription-based businesses are all about building a base over time. Assuming a 75% renewal rate and continued growth of 2,000 new subscribers each year, by the end of year five the service would be generating $60,000 in annual profits. Plus it will help drive new business to your Web (at least while it is a novelty), increase customer retention and boost loan cross sales.

After 12 months of hard work your Web site finally passes muster with the EVPs of Marketing, IS/IT, Legal, and Branch Administration, but can users find out how much a new order of checks cost? Here are some ways to boost your Web site’s usefulness.

For most companies the most important function of a Web site is helping existing customers find answers to product and service questions, reorder products, and build brand loyalty.

You still have some time to get it right. The early adopters using the Web today are accustomed to plodding through confusing user interfaces in search of an elusive kernel of information. Tomorrow’s user looking up an account balance on their WebTV during a commercial on The Tonight Show won’t be so tolerant, which makes 1998 the year to fine-tune your online presence before mistakes start costing real money.

There are three areas of Internet-based customer service that could stand improvement at most financial institutions:

• Facilitating self-service
• Responsiveness (speed/quality)
• Personalization

Self-Service

High-tech companies such as Sun, Microsoft, etc. report millions of dollars of savings each month delivering technical support over the Web. For a financial institution, the savings won’t be as dramatic, but they may have similar effects on the bottom line. Depending on how clever you are in migrating customers to self-service (without alienating your profitable customers in the process), you may be able to get at least some of the more mundane questions solved on the Web instead of your call center (e.g., What is the rate on _____?).

Furthermore, e-mail lends additional flexibility in staffing customer service centers. E-mail queries can be answered during lulls in call volume, or if the call center becomes overloaded, e-mails could be forwarded to back-up staff elsewhere in the company (or at their homes).

Here are some ideas to consider for 1998:

1. Upgrade your online help/FAQs (frequently asked questions). The problem with most online FAQs is that they are not updated frequently enough, nor are they organized in a logical fashion. Part of the problem is that making changes is often a tedious process, taking days, or even weeks to wind their way through the appropriate departments for approval. Why not empower certain customer service leads to log into your Web and make additions/clarifications to your FAQ as needed? Marketing/legal could review changes in “real-time” as part of the posting process, not as a separate step slowing up the process.

2. Build a customized search engine with integrated table of contents. When you look for something in a book you may use the table of contents to find the general area of information, or the index to find citations for specific terms. Your Web should work the same way. The table of contents (or site map) should point users in the general direction of interest (e.g., financial planning for retirement) while your index (search engine) delivers them to the exact right spot (e.g., home equity rates). And make sure you put the search engine through rigorous testing. Many financial institution search engines are laughable. More than once I have found no citations for “online banking” on a bank’s Web that just launched a huge online banking initiative.

3. Develop a full set of interactive customer service forms. Many financial institutions are finding that the biggest cost of a Web presence is customer service. The first line of defense against spiraling customer service costs is helping customers help themselves. But that won’t solve all customer problems. When they do come to your for additional information, use detailed forms with built-in diagnostics that elicit all the pertinent facts right away so that you don’t have to waste time going back for more information. To get an idea of how this works, check out the Member Services area of America Online (screenshot on facing page). Users are taken through a series of yes/no questions to narrow down their problem before requesting assistance.

America Online puts users through a series of diagnostic steps before hitting the free-from
“e-mail us” screen. Keyword <Member Services>.

4. Develop multi-level FAQs that can be browsed or searched. In a multi-level FAQ, only the most common questions are shown for a given subject. Users drill down from the top-level if they want additional information. Check out the QSpace FAQs on credit reports for a good example of how to nest questions, www.qspace.com.

You may also need a search engine that hits only your FAQs. That way someone with a question on balancing a checkbook won’t be taken to the check reorder form. For an example, see the Quicken Support area of Intuit’s Web www.intuit.com.

Intuit’s searchable FAQs begin with the user entering a product name to further refine the search. A similar approach would make sense for financial institutions.

Bank of America’s Contact Area

When you click on Contact from anywhere on BofA’s Web www.bankamerica.com you are delivered to a page that prescreens your questions. For example, the Technical Questions area asks for basic information such as browser type/version, computer platform, service provider, problem description, error messages, etc.

Bank of America does a good job directing users to the proper area to get help. Internally, this is an enormous help to BofA in providing timely responses. We especially like how they provide mini-FAQs before presenting the e-form to ask a question.

BofA’s HomeBanking help area.

When clicking on HomeBanking users get a 24-question FAQ list that answers the most common questions such as “How much does HomeBanking cost? or “Does HomeBanking work with Quicken?” Following the 24-question overview is a simple e-form to request help. www.bankamerica.com/contact/homebanking.html.

Responsiveness

Expectations of a timely response vary with the medium. When you write a letter, a response within a few weeks is deemed adequate. When you send an e-mail, a response is expected within a few hours. Few firms are delivering that kind of turnaround, providing you the opportunity to become known as the Nordstrom of cyberspace (i.e., provider of tremendous service).

5. Offer instant credit approval even if it’s conditional on employment verification, home appraisal, etc. The big consumer lenders will eventually all adopt some type of instant approval/prequalification. If you intend to compete with the aggressive lenders, you’ll need to consider instant online credit approval. Not only does this position you as a highly responsive lender, done right it could be quite profitable as well.

Only three lenders in North America have gone real-time: Beneficial National Bank, Bank of Montreal, and BayShore Trust, so you still have time to position yourself as a pioneer in this area. We know that online credit applications, especially with instant approval, give your underwriting department a major headache. But you don’t have to sacrifice credit quality to give applicants quick feedback on the likelihood of their loan application being funded.

6. Offer real-time customer service via online “chat” mode. Online chat allows users to type questions and receive real-time typed replies. Chat can be public, visible to anyone in the “room,” or private, visible only to the customer and the customer service rep. Private chat has the most applications for financial institutions, though you could experiment with public chat. There are a number of tools available that allow you to moderate, or censor, chat in real-time so that offensive or inappropriate material is squelched. Though you would most likely want a human moderator involved at all times.

Thanks to new “chat servers” available from several vendors such as iChat or eShare, you can experiment with chat services with little up-front investment. These vendors will host private-branded chat on their servers using their software. You provide the artwork, layout, context and moderator. Start with just a few experimental hours each day where you offer “beta testers” a chance to interact with service reps real-time.

Another advantage of chat is that edited transcripts of pertinent conversations could be posted to add some interesting ever-changing content to your Web.

7. Automatically confirm all e-mails submitted. Every e-mail submitted to your bank should get an immediate response confirming receipt and providing an estimate of when the user will receive an answer. This can easily be done entirely with automation.

8. Provide fast e-mail problem resolution. E-mail customer service has been getting a bad name in cyberspace. Many large companies have done a poor job in staffing this area, and response times (if you even get a response) are often measured in days or weeks instead of minutes or hours as expected from serious Internet users. In our experience, we rarely get a response in the same day, and it is not unusual to wait a week or longer. Differentiate yourself by promising 60-minute turn time on most e-mail queries. Even if you can’t solve the problem entirely, you can get back to the customer within an hour to explain what research is being conducted and an estimated time to expect resolution.

Personalization

We recently spent two months covering personalizing and customizing ideas and tactics so we won’t reiterate those here. Keep in mind that customization schemes will flourish next year as Web publishers take advantage of the latest browser features. You would be well-advised to begin at least experimenting in this area.

9. Store online form inputs on your server. Once a user has submitted an online application or info request, the data would be saved on your server for immediate recall for a future application. Users should be given the opportunity to opt out though, since many recoil at the thought of their personal profile being accessible through the Net.

10. Provide personal e-bankers. E-bankers are real people providing sales and service to their own book of Web users. E-bankers should be armed with complete account history, user profiles, historical records of electronic interactions, and preference data for their customers. Using Web-based messaging and e-mail, personal e-bankers could manage a portfolio of 1,000 or more users.