Headlines:
Web Video Brings in Bill-Pay Customers Intercept in $5.3M Settlement Pact A Friendly Mahalo from the Computer Brickstream Raises $9M of Funding
Web Video Brings in Bill-Pay Customers
Harris Bank says enrollment for online bill payment has surged since it put a how-to video on its Web site.
About 30% of the customers who view the three-and-a-half-minute video sign up for the service, "and the feedback is very positive," said Hilde Betts, the senior vice president of e-channel services at the $54 billion-asset Chicago arm of Bank of Montreal. The results are "absolutely fabulous - more than we ever expected."
Harris put the streaming video on its home page about a month ago, Ms. Betts said last week. The content was produced by MindBlazer Inc. of Charlotte, which calls itself an education-based marketing company.
Ms. Betts said she hired MindBlazer after hearing one of its co-founders, Bill Whitley, speak at a seminar. "I wasn't looking at technology," she said. "I was looking at how adults learn" and how the bank could meet customer needs.
The video is designed to demystify online bill payment, which is still an alien concept for many consumers, Ms. Betts said. "The TV-like medium is a very comfortable way of taking information in. There's nothing like seeing it; that visual tool is really very helpful."
Forty percent of Harris' checking account holders use its online banking service, and nearly 25% its online bill-payment service, Ms. Betts said.
MindBlazer is preparing other online videos for Harris, she said. The next one, "Four Ways to Simplify Your Financial Life," could be added to the site next month, she said. Future topics may include home-buying, retirement planning, and how to use using Harris' account-aggregation service, she said.
Intercept in $5.3M Settlement Pact
A federal court has approved Intercept Inc.'s proposed settlement of a class action.
The Atlanta payment processing company said last week that it will pay $5.3 million to its shareholders to settle the case without admitting any wrongdoing.
The suit, filed early last year in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, says Intercept misrepresented the status of its Internet Billing Co. Ltd. unit, which processed payments for pornographic Web sites.
Heavy chargebacks for such transactions prompted card issuers to charge the company higher rates, driving down its profits and share price. Penthouse International Inc. later bought Internet Billing Co.
Intercept recorded a fourth-quarter charge for the settlement.
A Friendly Mahalo from the Computer
American Savings Bank's voice-response system now has a distinctly Hawaiian accent.
It uses Hawaiian words like mahalo (thank you) and aloha and speaks in a Hawaiian accent, thanks to the Hawaiian woman whose voice was recorded for an upgrade. It is also tuned to understand Asian and Polynesian accents.
The Intervoice Inc. system was upgraded to respond to spoken requests - a first for Hawaii - in addition to numbers punched into a telephone key pad. The Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. subsidiary is the state's third-largest financial institution, with $6.5 billion of assets.
"Our customers are in Hawaii. We wanted a system that would make them feel like they're talking to a banker in Hawaii," said Renee Lum, an assistant vice president and who manages the Honolulu thrift's customer service center.
American Savings began working on the system in the spring of 2003 with Intervoice, of Dallas.
It went into service this May, though the fact was not announced until a few weeks ago.
"Testing and tuning are very important to us," Ms. Lum said. "We did have a few issues we had to work through - echoing on the line, that sort of thing."
Also, the system also had to be integrated with the back-end computers to provide access to account balances, loan information, and an interest rate hot line, she said.
Customers seem not to be put off by talking to a machine, Ms. Lum said, but "if it's not fun, if it's not convenient, if it's not easy to use they're not going to want to do it."
Brickstream Raises $9M of Funding
Brickstream Corp. announced Monday that it has raised $9 million of Series B funding, led by RBC Technology Ventures Inc., an early stage venture capital firm that is part of Royal Bank of Canada.
In conjunction with the funding, Paul Greb from RBC Technology Ventures joined Brickstream's board of directors.
The Atlanta technology vendor is a developer of video systems that analyze customer movement in a bank branch or other location. Its software can show, for instance, how long customers wait in line to see a teller, or how many leave rather than wait.
Brickstream's financial clients include Bank of America Corp., Lloyds TSB, RBC, Wells Fargo & Co., and SunTrust Inc.
