Realizing that people who are interested enough in a banking product to submit a query through a Web site are strong sales prospects, banks are working to reply more quickly to those questions.
A year ago, for example, Bank of America Corp. was promising customers a response within 24 hours, but even that was not good enough, according to Gayle Wellborn, its online services executive. Since then the Charlotte company has shortened the average response time to four to eight hours.
Customers "were looking for a same-day resolution" and did not want to be kept waiting overnight, she said.
John McGuire, the senior vice president and managing director of online operations at SunTrust Banks Inc., says its average response time for e-mail inquiries is 14 to 16 hours. "We have a dedicated group of people that handles all e-mail inquiries, and they've got a turnaround standard" of responding to inquiries within 24 hours.
And 95% of the inquiries are answered within 24 hours, he said; the rest take longer because they are problem-specific.
To make browsing online even easier, both SunTrust and Bank of America use "co-browsing" chat services, in which a pop-up window that appears on the consumer's screen allows a customer service representative to guide the consumer through the Web site in real time.
Banks can generally tell if an electronic inquiry originates from a customer or a new prospect, and Mr. McGuire said SunTrust prefers to use the chat tool to try to win over noncustomers or to cross-sell current customers that are interested in a product they do not currently own.
"We use chat principally for selling and to support selling," Mr. McGuire said. "We don't use chat for account servicing. Chat is a lot more expensive than a telephone inquiry or an e-mail inquiry."
Conversely, he said, SunTrust's larger e-mail team is a service-focused group. It has 50 members who can respond to any service-related question; the chat team has 12 members who can talk to up to three customers at once.
David Stone, the director of customer advocacy for e-commerce for Wachovia Corp., said online customers are no more willing to wait than people who visit a branch or call a call center. "Customers expect the same type of timeliness and response" online that they get from other channels.
But instead of focusing on responding to any possible inquiry, Wachovia has focused on making the information available online, so people do not have to ask any questions, he said.
"Online customers, when they come to do business with us, want to stay online with us," Mr. Stone said. They often do not want to interact with a real person, and they typically expect to be able to find answers within just one or two clicks. "The big difference with online is they expect to be able to service themselves."
EverBank Financial Corp.'s branchless National Banking Group tries to respond to e-mails within 24 hours, though in most cases the responses go out in two to four hours. For phone inquiries, the average hold time is 30 seconds.
Rob Foregger, the chief operating officer of the branchless division, said its customer service representatives are grouped by area of expertise, rather than by method of answering inquiries; the insurance experts, for example, answer both phone calls and e-mails about those products.
"We're always focused on having human interaction where human interaction was desired by the customer," Mr. Foregger said. "We look at ourselves as a branchless bank, as opposed to an online bank, which means that we are multichannel, though we don't have branches."
Roger Fairchild, the president of the Bellevue, Wash., research firm Customer Respect Group Inc., said potential bank customers who are motivated enough to ask questions about a specific product represent a strong sales opportunity. Banks ignore these queries at their peril, because these consumers will quickly move on, and may end up buying a similar product from the competition, he said.
However, a significant number of banks are ignoring inquiries they receive through their Web sites, according to a Customer Respect Group study last month.
The research firm sent two e-mail inquiries to 71 financial companies, all of which are on the Fortune 1,000 list, including 40 commercial banks. Thirteen percent of the companies did not respond to either inquiry, while 15% responded to only one. The remaining 72% answered both queries, but many took several days to do so.
Still, the figures showed an improvement over Customer Respect Group's January study, when 20% of the companies did not respond to either inquiry, and 17% answered just one.
Mr. Fairchild said financial services companies have taken a step forward, but not a big one. "It's probably what we can expect, but I would say that it's too slow."
In the July study, Customer Respect Group also ranked the companies by looking at things such as the accessibility of their Web sites and the clarity and structure of their privacy policies. Bank of America and Wachovia took the top two spots; SunTrust ranked eighth, and EverBank was not included in the study.
Though all the banks post these policies on their Web sites, Mr. Fairchild said, people might still be concerned about how banks are using their data.
Sixty-four percent of the banks studied share customer information with business partners, and 18% share it with subsidiaries.
The study also found that 59% of the companies are sharing this data without explicitly asking for permission. "When customers do business with a company online, or interact with them through their site, they do not expect their data to be shared freely with affiliates, subsidiaries, or business partners," the study concluded. "Doing so displays a very negative attitude towards customers and ignores valid customer concerns about their online privacy."
Mr. Fairchild said that while banks are not much worse than any other industry in this regard, they are also no shining example.
"We haven't found dramatic differences in these categories" of how information is shared from industry to industry, he said.
Wachovia was one the companies that share information with business partners and affiliates, but it still scored high in the Customer Respect study because of how its disclosures are presented.
Near the top of the Charlotte company's privacy Web page, three ways are listed for customers to opt out of receiving marketing materials. A separate section explains exactly what customer information Wachovia shares with other banking companies through joint marketing agreements.
Mr. Stone said Wachovia is "very up-front" with its privacy policy, and a link on its home page leads users directly to its extensive privacy guidelines. "It's simple, it's easy for the customer to get to, and it's available wherever they are."
