Wells Fargo & Co. has extended to retail customers a service allowing e-banking customers to navigate Web pages simultaneously with service representatives.
The feature, which Wells calls "cobrowsing" and had already been available to commercial clients, lets either the customer or the service rep input data and control the navigation. For instance, a representative can move a cursor on the customer's screen to the field he or she is seeking.
Retail customers can reach an agent by clicking on a help button on Wells Fargo's Personal Finance page. James P. Smith, the San Francisco company's senior vice president of consumer Internet products, said that those who have a separate phone line for their modem can enter their name and telephone number and wait for a call back, and those who use one line for both computer and telephone can communicate with an agent through a system akin to instant messaging.
Wells came up with the cobrowsing capability after getting complaints from consumers who said they became confused at a Web site and could get no help, Mr. Smith said. It has 3.7 million active online banking customers, and the new feature could help it sign up more, he said. "Setting up a bill-pay transaction for the first time can be tricky."
Among customers familiar with online banking and bill payment, there may be cross-selling opportunities that the service could help it pick up. For example, Mr. Smith said, a Web banking customer might decide to apply for an individual retirement account, which is "not something you do all the time. In the past, we might have lost a lot of those customers."
Mr. Smith said Wells, which announced the feature last week, is using technology from Hipbone Inc. of San Carlos, Calif. ABN Amro Holdings NV uses the same technology to offer this service to its commercial customers, going through one of Hipbone's partners, eGain Communications of Sunnyvale, Calif.
Anne McVey, Hipbone's vice president of marketing, said others will follow in Wells' footsteps. The banking industry can expect to see "several pilot deployments in early to midsummer" of the same cobrowsing feature offered by Wells, she said, declining to name any of the banks.
The cobrowsing technology is also used by the Vanguard Group of Valley Forge, Penn., Ms. McVey said. The nation's second largest mutual fund firm rolled out the technology in late 2000 to help customers fill out 401(k) forms online. Before implementing the technology, Vanguard found that one in five 401(k) forms filled out online had errors. The error rate now is negligible, Ms. McVey said.
A Wells spokeswoman said it is the first U.S. bank "to do a broad consumer launch" of the technology. The feature "helps avoid unnecessary follow-up calls and even trips to the bank," she added.
Wells has 500 representatives available for the cobrowsing sessions between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Pacific standard time. Mr. Smith said it might extend the hours, depending on consumer demand.
James Van Dyke, the founder and principal of Javelin Strategy and Research, praised the technology, saying it should prove especially helpful as online bill payment moves to a more mainstream audience.
"It is no longer just tech-loving individuals," he said. "In customer service departments, they take calls from people confused about the most basic things."
Cobrowsing technology has raised a "whole host of privacy issues" since it involves technology that seems in a sense to take over a user's computer, Mr. Van Dyke said. But in reality, Wells is merely "roaming around their own server," he said.
