First American Bank of Elk Grove, Ill. is testing a system from Fiserv Inc. that links the bank's Internet services with its call center.
The two-month-old pilot involves routing customer E-mail messages from the bank's site on the World Wide Web to operators who can respond by telephone.
"Our strong suit has always been our personalized, individual attention to accounts," said Kim Kohon, vice president of operations at $1 billion- asset First American Bank.
"We recognized the need to have a Web site, but we didn't want to lose sight of our ability to respond to customers regardless of where they're coming from. By integrating our Web site with our call center, we can track customers and not lose our quality service."
In addition to helping the bank provide customer service, the system also helps it sell products.
Before responding to E-mail, call center employees can examine possible sales opportunities and use their calls to pitch products.
The bank tries to turn every question received through the Internet into either a sales opportunity or an occasion to collect demographic information, such as the customer's age, income, and employer.
A customer using the bank's Web site would fill out a form and transmit it to a personal computer in the bank's phone center. In some cases, such as requests for basic information, the PC can generate a response that requires no human intervention.
For messages that require a more extensive reply, the PC routes a response request containing information about the customer's preferred channel (fax, E-mail, telephone) to a call center employee.
In a test of the system, American Banker received a response to an E- mail within an hour.
Not all responses come that quickly. "Our response time is dependent on the time of day that an E-mail inquiry is sent," said Ms. Kohon.
"If it is sent during normal business hours, our response time is typically only a few hours. Inquiries sent during nonbusiness hours are typically replied to the next business day."
The call center operates from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. six days a week, staffed by 12 customer service representatives. It receives about 600 calls a day.
The bank receives only about five E-mails per day, Ms. Kohon said, but "we have now opened up our customer base to anyone on the Net."
