Many banks' mobile strategies have hinged on getting smartphone applications to market as fast as possible, but now the early adopters are moving on to the next step — making sure those apps live up to consumers' expectations.
Bank of America Corp., for one, acknowledges room for improvement in its current round of apps for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and devices running on Google Inc.'s Android operating system.
Over the next few weeks B of A plans to roll out revised versions of these apps, with more of a focus on under-the-hood improvements than on flashy new features. It also plans new apps for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone 7 operating system and Apple's iPad.
"Overall these new apps will be much faster for our customers," said Marc Warshawsky, the senior vice president of mobile channel planning and design at Bank of America. "They're built a little bit differently than our existing applications, such that the interaction between the customer and the bank should be much quicker. We've also got a new look and feel that we think customers will find more intuitive and easier to use."
In the industry's first go-round, many banks were in such a rush that they developed separate apps for separate functions, such as mobile check deposit, favoring speed to market over providing a unified experience.
B of A managed to avoid that particular temptation, but still recognizes the need to be in the vanguard of Mobile Banking 2.0. Its approach highlights a point that technology analysts and channel experts have been stressing to banks for the past two years: Launching a mobile banking service is just a first step. Banks also need to evaluate the performance of their services — whether they are app-, mobile browser- or text-based — to identify technical deficiencies and opportunities to enhance functionality to meet a growing customer base's taxing demands.
"While channel managers may be forgiven for yielding to an all-too-common refrain from senior management, 'We need an iPhone app,' customers have often been underwhelmed with the results," Emmett Higdon, an analyst for Forrester Research Inc., wrote in a January report. "Poor integration with common native features and navigation as well as customer satisfaction that trails even automated phone systems have left millions of mobile banking users wondering what all the fuss is about."
By 2015, more than 50 million U.S. adults could be using mobile banking services, the report said. It estimated there are a little more than 10 million doing so currently.
James Van Dyke, the president of Javelin Strategy and Research in Pleasanton, Calif., said B of A is among a small number of banks that are good at "channel optimization" using mobile services. With the rollout of mobile services, they have succeeded at getting customers to move away from using higher-cost channels, such as branches and customer call centers.
In a survey of 5,500 U.S. consumers Javelin conducted in November, 29% of respondents said they call their bank and 30% log into online banking when they receive an alert about their financial status from their bank. Only 4% said they log into mobile banking. By comparison, of the survey respondents that were customers of B of A, 25% said they call their bank and 38% log into online banking. Another 7% said they log into mobile banking.
Van Dyke said the results show that B of A has done better than the average bank at migrating customer service issues to lower-cost channels. "If they don't make the service good, then people will just try to go there once and they won't return again," Van Dyke said.
