Live chat: re-engaging remote customers: quick answers are important and online customers prefer the convenience of clicking on to a 'live chat' function rather than reaching for a telephone.

• Author: Albro, Walt

WHY SHOULD A BANK OFFER LIVE CHAT? Live chat improves customer satisfaction, says Sam Heiney of Netop, a Denmark-based provider of secure remote engagement tools.

The efficiency that the financial services industry gained by introducing online banking came at the cost of diminished customer engagement, he notes. Live chat is a way to reconnect with that insulated online customer.

"People want to chat with a bank," Heiney observes. Surveys done among customers of retail stores indicate that 70 percent of customers list live chat as their preferred method of communicating with the store. Whenever live chat is introduced, customer satisfaction scores go up, Heiney says. When customers have to fill out forms or applications, the documents are more likely to filled out completely if the applicant has access to live chat--in order to ask questions.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"Speed is important," he notes. "If people who are online have a question, they want to be able to get an answer to that question right there, within the same media. It's a lot faster for them to click a bulton and connect with live chat than it is for them to look for a telephone, make a call--and then end up getting bounced around."

Live chat adds richness to a bank's relationship with online customer--thus helping to retain these customers. "It reduces the anonymity factor," he adds.

Netop estimates that about one in five U.S. banks currently offer live chat. ABA Bank Marketing magazine spoke with marketers at two banks that currently offer live chat--one bank has been using it for many years; the other, added it only in recent months.

Live Chat Is Nothing New Here

David M. Kreiman

Executive Vice President

Glenview State Bank

Glenview, III.

Asset size: $1.1 billion

Although Glenvievv State considers itself to be technologically progressive, the bank is well ahead of the curve when it comes to live chat: It has offered the service for about a decade.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"It's another way to allow customers to communicate with the hank," says Kreiman. The perception is that when customers are online and have a question, they find it more convenient to use live chat rather than to pick up the telephone. "You can't go wrong if you give them more methods of communication."

The bank introduced live chat at the same time it revamped its telephone system and created an in-house call center. The bank takes pride in the fact that when customers call into...