As part of a revamp of its Web site, Broadway National Bank of San Antonio plans to use embedded video clips to boost customer retention.
“The online customer experience has to be easy, convenient, intuitive, or else you lose the customer,” said Tom Llewellyn, Broadway National’s executive vice president and chief information officer.
Video is “more intuitive” than the static images on a standard bank site, he said. Some ideas his company is considering include video tutorials for opening accounts online and a chat window for customer service inquiries.
“Banks traditionally have prided themselves on doing a good job of providing personalized, personal customer service through the physical channels,” Mr. Llewellyn said. Enabling video access to bankers through its Web sites should help maintain a personal touch for customers who bank online, he said.
Broadway National plans to use the video software for both its Broadway Bank site and for its Eisenhower Bank site for military customers, Mr. Llewellyn said.
The bank has to be particularly attentive to the online experience for Eisenhower customers, he said, because they use the Web heavily; 88% of Eisenhower customers bank online, compared with 43% of Broadway Bank’s.
Broadway National has agreed to use video content software from BroadRamp Inc. of San Antonio. The vendor’s site includes a demonstration of the bank’s Web page that features excerpts from a TV advertisement and a video welcome message.
Mr. Llewellyn said that Broadway National is revamping its site to accommodate the new technology, and that the changes will affect both consumer and business customers. The revamp should be completed this year.
One new element will be a chat window that connects to the bank. It could connect to an automated system that plays prerecorded video clips, or it could enable people to reach a bank representative through instant messaging.
Sean Darwish, BroadRamp’s chief technology officer, said the feature also could support two-way video chat, though Broadway National has no current plans to offer this feature.
The technology is meant to be used with a broadband Internet connection but has been used with dial-up connections as well. Mr. Darwish said that on a dial-up connection, the delay is only 15 to 20 seconds, because BroadRamp’s technology is able to compress the video.
Other companies are also trying similar features on their Web sites. SunTrust Banks Inc. is one of several banking companies that use special software for online chat sessions. Others, such as Leader Bank in Arlington, Mass., use the more common AOL Instant Messenger to communicate with customers.
Bank of Montreal’s Harris Bank of Chicago lets customers talk to bank representatives through a computer microphone or request that a customer service representative phone them by clicking a link.
“It’s definitely time to humanize banks’ Web presence a little bit. Right now it’s fairly static,” said George Tubin, a senior analyst at TowerGroup Inc., a Needham, Mass., independent research firm owned by MasterCard Inc.
Though online banking has taken off, “the one thing we lose when we go to the Web is the humanness of the bank,” he said. That loss of personal contact can actually cause banks to lose business in situations such as when customers need help opening an account online. “There’s a lot of abandonment of online applications.”
While it is unclear how useful video capabilities will be on banks’ Web sites, “we have to start somewhere,” Mr. Tubin said.
Gwenn Bezard, a research director at Aite Group LLC of Boston, said that while video offers promise, even diehard fans of online video may not be eager to see it at a bank site.
“Certainly video is all the rage right now.” Nevertheless, “people use video for their enjoyment,” he said. “They watch video for entertainment.”
Watching videos for education or customer service may be less popular, Mr. Bezard said. “Customers expect different experiences” at the branch and online. “If you go to the Web, it may be because you don’t want to talk to someone.”
Dan Schatt, a senior analyst for the Boston market research firm Celent LLC, said video may not have been necessary for the current generation of online banking users, but it could be useful to reach new customers.
Just 40% of households bank online today, he said. Another 10% don’t bank at all, but that still leaves 50% who bank but do not do so online.
“The next set of people who go online are going to need a lot more hand-holding,” Mr. Schatt said. “There’s some people that just prefer face-to-face contact.”
