Ark. Bank Eases Access with Instant Messaging.(Pine Bluff National Bank)

If you have financial questions, PBNB has the answers live.

Pine Bluff National Bank in Arkansas used that slogan in newspaper ads and targeted marketing material last spring to let customers know they can now chat with bank representatives via instant messaging.

This technology, Medianet Secure Communicator, is part of a larger communications initiative that the bank adopted to meet the challenge of providing more immediate, convenient services to a wide range of customers from computer-savvy youths to the hearing impaired.

PBNB, which has $307 million of assets and eight branches, was the first and, it believes, still the only bank in southeastern Arkansas to offer instant Web-based communications, putting it on a par with some of the largest financial services companies.

More than six months since its inception in April, the initiatives results are positive. The customers I have chatted with online seem to really like the product, said Carol Ann Rogers, PBNBs vice president of operations.

Instant messaging and other means of Web communications give customers an additional way to communicate with the small but growing number of banks that offer it in addition to call centers and more traditional means.

It should not be used as a wholesale replacement for other communications vehicles like the call center. It should be an additional avenue, said Edward Woods, a senior analyst at Celent LLC, a Boston research firm.

That is exactly how PBNB uses the communications service.

We decided it would be an extra, added feature to the communications means we already have, said Allison Brown, a PBNB operations officer.

The bank was not in the market for a Web-based communicator when it got an offer last year from its Internet provider, FundsXpress, to buy Medianet Secure Communicator. (Neither company would disclose the price; PBNB said there was a one-time installation fee and that it pays monthly use charges.)

The Arkansas bank decided to try it, in part, to differentiate its services. We wanted to be the first bank in our area to offer it because it is going to be something that is going to be demanded by more and more customers, said Vickey Warriner, PBNBs vice president of marketing.

Though the bank still takes most questions over the phone, the communicator gives it more ways to interact with customers.

In addition to no-download instant messaging, the service includes call routing; co-browsing; and document, application, and desktop sharing, as well as internal conference call capabilities.

A lot of our customers have only one phone line, so if they are banking online using a dial-up service, they arent able to call the bank with questions. With the communicator, they can look at their account history and send a message with questions, Ms. Rogers said.

The service has also helped streamline the process of providing targeted answers.

There are certain parts of the bank Web site where they can click on and it will take them directly to the department that can answer their question, Ms. Rogers said. That eliminates them calling the switchboard and being transferred several times to reach the correct person.

The most interactive features of the communicator are co-browsing and desktop sharing. For instance, with the permission of a customer who is having difficulty filling out an application or finding a document on the bank Web site, a bank employee can take control of the cursor on that persons computer to browse the Web site and documents and help find what he or she was looking for or help complete the task.

If a customer is on our Web site and cant, for example, find a loan application, I can send them a message and ask them to accept me to share their desktop. Then I can take over the cursor and show them where to go, said Ms. Brown, the operations officer. We can look at what they are looking at at the same time.

Once the application is found, the bank can continue to help the customer fill it out online by immediately answering questions that can trip up potential customers, such as: Does annual income include bonuses?

It addresses needs faster than over the phone and doesnt allow concerns to fester and frustrate customers, said Mr. Woods, the Celent analyst.

Web communicators have interactive options PBNB does not offer, though some financial services companies do.

Banks can use it in thoughtful ways to sell products and be proactive in supporting customers, he remarked. It can help customers complete processes that they may have just walked away from before.

During account-opening at some banks, for example, if the new customer is on a Web site page for a long period, a dialogue box pops up to ask, Can I help you find something?

Its a way for banks to be more proactive in approaching their customers, said Christine Barry, a research director at Aite Group.

Many communicators let banks be proactive if a customer is having difficulty logging on to his account. Instead of automatically blocking access after a customer fails three times to log on, Web communicators can be programmed to launch a chat dialogue box after two failed attempts, offering to give help.

The number of banks that use instant messaging as a customer communications channel is small but growing, according to analysts who track bank technology.

Online chat has been around for quite a few years, but it hasnt been widely embraced by financial services companies, said Penny Gillespie, the president of the Centreville, Va., consulting firm Gillespie International.

Ms. Barry said that fewer than 10% of banks chat online with customers. Its still a small percentage that use it, but there are a lot more banks thinking about doing so, she said. Ive been starting to see it, though, more and more over the last year.

Mr. Woods predicted that customers will begin to demand instant messaging. There will be a growing expectation by certain consumer demographics to want it to be there, he said.

It is not just young customers that use PBNBs Web communicator, but a range of users, from those who have difficulty hearing to parents with young children screaming in the background.

If you cant hear, you can type, said Joey Gieringer, PBNBs information technology officer.

The bank started implementation on Jan. 15 and went live on April 25. Its first step was creating an index page on the bank Web site, listing the departments that could receive instant messages. Then PBNB downloaded software forwarded by FundsXpress and loaded it onto computers designated for instant messaging.

The bank has 10 people in 10 areas who respond to customer messages. The departments include ATM, personal and business banking, lending, wealth management, online banking insurance, and bookkeeping.

PBNBs communicator, made by Medianet Innovations in Greensboro, N.C., is hosted and monitored by FundsXpress. Installation and implementation went fine. That was the surprise, Mr. Gieringer said. With new technology, there are usually more problems with installation, getting certain things to work and training people to use it. He said the system is intuitive, so only minimal training was needed.

Mr. Woods said that, though instant messaging technology is simple to implement, it can be difficult for banks to train employees to use it effectively. Its one thing to take a phone call. Its another to be able to write well and write quickly.

However, Ms. Brown, the operations officer, said this has not been a problem at PBNB. I agree that there is more room for error when typing, (but) the staff that use the product were carefully chosen and have a strong, knowledgeable background about the department they work for.

A more general limitation with online chat, analysts say, is miscommunication particularly when a question is complicated.

You have to ask the question correctly in order to get the right answer, which sometimes is a challenge. Sometimes it takes oral dialogue to get to that, Ms. Gillespie said. Instant messaging is certainly very viable for easily answered questions, she said, but as things get more complicated, I think people might be more comfortable with dialogue over the phone.

Shortly after PBNB launched the system and marketing campaign, it had up to 50 online calls a week. Ms. Brown said. Now we dont get as many as we once did, which is why we need to advertise it again, she said.

Still, the system has reduced phone calls to PBNB by about 10%, and the bank expected call volume to be down 30% by yearend as customers became more familiar with the service.

It also lets bank employees multitask. A good customer service representative can have multiple conversations going on at the same time online, but you cant have multiple phone conversations going on at the same time, Ms. Gillespie said.

PBNB does not see the communicator as a way to trim its spending, however.

It does streamline the calls, but its not cost-effective or ineffective. Its more of a convenience, Ms. Brown said. This is crucial to overall staff productivity because PBNB does not have dedicated call-center employees; its workers take questions as part of their range of duties.

And customers can direct instant messages to a chosen bank employee.

We try to focus more on relationship banking, so we dont feel we want to have a designated person to answer questions all across the board. Our customers generally feel more comfortable with someone they deal with on a regular basis, Ms. Warriner said.

The Medianet Secure Communicator that PBNB uses is designed to meet the stringent requirements of financial services companies. Ms. Brown said the bank did not have any security concerns when it decided to introduce the product and is very satisfied thus far on this count.

The architecture is designed to have many layers a communication has to go through, said Julie Nance, managing director for the United States at Medianet Innovations, which designed the communicator four years ago.

Ms. Heller, an American Banker reporter from 2000 through 2005, is a freelance writer in Washington.

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