May/June 2001

BY KEVIN COYNE

Online banking is one of the most highly complex and extremely personal transactions that occurs over the Web. If you've ever tried to fill out a loan application, pay bills, or contribute to your IRA over the Internet and have gotten confused, you're in good company.

Last winter, a NetSmart America survey concluded that 65 percent of active Internet users were confused by a bank's Web site layout and 56 percent had gotten lost on a banking Web site. And things haven't gotten much better since. A recent CyberDialogue report suggests poor customer service, site complexity, and time-over-investment as the top reasons online customers quit Internet banking sessions. The fundamental challenge: How to provide highly personal, human customer service in an environment that is anything but personal or human.

Against this backdrop, Allfirst Bank, a Baltimore-based regional financial services company known for its "human approach to banking," has had some impressive success. It initiated retail online banking services in January 2000. Over the last twelve months, 50,000 (10 percent) of the bank's retail customer households have started using the Internet for home banking. The demand for Allfirst's online banking services is growing faster than the firm's own projections.

The Search For A Customer Contact Solution
As its online customer base grew, Allfirst realized it needed to add a faster and a more human means of communicating with its online prospects and customers to its mix of FAQs, e-mail, and 1-800 numbers. The bank's e-commerce team evaluated various options -- text chat, call-me-back, and Web voice -- against four requirements: Immediacy, ease of use, ease of implementation, and cost.

Text Chat Review:
Text chat allows a call center agent to engage in multiple, live instant messaging sessions with online customers. "When we got past the first look, text chat just didn't appeal to us. It was going to involve a lot of retraining on our side. Our call center agents were trained to talk and answer questions about Allfirst's Internet home banking product. If you use [text] chat, you're asking for a different kind of call center agent," said Bill Murray, Allfirst's senior vice president of e-commerce.

Call-me-back Review:
Call-me-back offers the option to have a call center agent call back the online customer. "Call-me-back options created concerns regarding access and immediacy. Over 60 percent of Internet users have only one phone line in their home, and these online customers would have to log off the Internet to use the call-me-back solution," said Megan Lembach, Allfirst's assistant vice president and Web content manager.

"We were looking for a technology that encompassed the way we wanted to do business. If you want information about an Allfirst banking product, you want it now. Immediacy is an issue for online customers," added Murray.

Live Web Voice Review:
Web voice gives online customers the ability to speak through their PCs to a live call center agent. After hearing an eStara demo, Allfirst decided to take a closer look at its service. "The quality of the call was very, very good and it was easy to use," Lembach said. "The fact that it ties into our PBX and we could use resources that were already set up was a major positive. And since the people in the call center are trained to answer calls, we didn't have to do anything differently," she added.

Estara Implementation
eStara's pricing is based on a "click-through" model. Aside from a nominal setup fee, there are no upfront licensing or per-call center seat charges. Only when an online caller successfully contacts an Allfirst call center agent does Allfirst pay for eStara's service. As an ASP-model service, eStara promised no ramp up charges or implementation lag time. "There was little downside with eStara," said Murray. eStara met Allfirst's criteria of immediacy, ease of use and ease of implementation, and flexible pricing based on usage.

eStara delivers Web voice calls from the Internet directly to the call center using normal phone lines. And, because eStara funnels calls over normal phone lines, eStara's solution works with existing customer relationship management (CRM) features like just-in-time phone call queuing, IVR, text chat, and e-mail. So there's no need for additional hardware or software or special training for call center agents.

eStara's customer services team met with Allfirst's team to discuss strategic placement of the icons and agree on a roll-out schedule. eStara setup can be accomplished in hours depending on the customer's schedule and timeframe. The actual HTML changes to the Web pages take minutes. Most of the time is spent deciding where to best place the icons that initiate the calls. As part of the normal setup and initial training, the customer works with eStara Web consultants who share their expertise in optimizing icon placement throughout the Web site.

Link Customization
Allfirst wanted to initially place eStara OneClick Contact icons in two different areas on their Web site and have the calls from these areas directed to specific call center agents: Its brokerage and direct bank call center. Because each icon on the Allfirst site can "point" to a different phone number, the bank was able to route brokerage calls to brokerage employees and banking questions to call center sales representatives trained to handle brokerage questions and Internet home banking related questions, respectively. Allfirst only needed to provide eStara with information about the call center and eStara icon parameters such as IVR-enabled, hours of operation, and destination phone numbers for the eStara icons.

Once the basic options for each icon were chosen, eStara automatically generated and e-mailed a file and HTML code for each of the icons to be deployed on the Allfirst site. Allfirst then initially tested the deployment of the eStara buttons on a non-public portion of their Web site.

An Allfirst customer services team spent less than a day and a half learning how to best use the Web voice service. With eStara, Allfirst call center agents can take advantage of extra Web call functionality including the ability to push Web pages to customers using their standard telephone keypad. Call center agents also can raise the volume of the inbound caller's PC microphone for the duration of the call through their handset -- without the need for Web access on the call center end.

Going Live
Allfirst went live with eStara OneClick Contact in September, 2000. "We put it out there with little fanfare in case there were problems so we wouldn't be deluged with calls. There weren't any problems," Lembach said. Through January 25, 2001, Allfirst Web site visitors had clicked on eStara icons to talk to a live customer service representative 120 times a week on average. Following its rollout, Allfirst is currently working with eStara to determine the best pages to use for the deployment of additional icons.

Web voice technology has given Allfirst's team the power to talk to their customers over the Internet the way they talk to customers in their branches. "Even if they're banking online, Allfirst still believes its customers want to be able to talk to their bankers," Allfirst's Murray said.

Kevin Coyne is senior VP, software development, for eStara, Inc. eStara OneClick Contact Web voice connects Web site visitors with eBusiness call center agents live via a crisp, clear voice call over the Web from any PC with microphone and speakers. eStara technology is completely compatible with existing customer contact solutions and call center systems and requires no new hardware or software investment. Kevin encourages you to experience eStara's unrivaled Web voice quality yourself at www.estara.com.

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