Glitches don't slow online banking
Good service will help institutions keep customers
By Deidre Pike / Reno Gazette-Journal
When half a million consumers couldn't use online bill payment services because of a computer glitch in late April, it gave fodder to those who question the reliability of online banking.
Many wondered who would foot the bill for late fees on a credit card or utility payments.
When his credit card payment was late because of a computer failure, Paul McAdam, manager of retail financial services at the Bank Administration Institute, said his bank went out of its way to call the credit card company and ask that the late fee be dropped.
"That kind of surprised me and it was a nice surprise," he said, adding that it's to a bank's advantage to maintain high levels of customer service, even for online customers.
"If you're going to encourage people to do these things and technical problems come up, the clear thing to do is become the customer's advocate," McAdam said.
But during a large-scale computer failure, the personal touch would be far more challenging. "That's a tough one," he said.
Despite the low overhead of computer-aided transactions, the cost of doing transactions on the Web isn't saving banks any money, according to McAdam.
But banks continue to compete for the online customer to provide the extra service and to get out ahead in the race for e-commerce.
So banks are adding features and functionality. Some offer better interest rates for online customers, he said. But the "big thing coming down the road" is electronic bill presentment, where consumers can pay bills at a company's website or even have the bills e-mailed to them.
Last week, Wells Fargo announced an agreement with Chase to create a utility standard called "The Exchange" that they hope will be latched onto by the banking industry, according to McAdam.
"One thing that's driving this is that some of the Internet portals, like Yahoo! and America Online have indicated that they may desire to be an aggregator for this billing information," he said.
"This kind of scares banks. Clearly they'd rather have people coming to their banks than going to Yahoo! to pay bills."
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If I remember they all blamed it on CheckFree...and they ought to be scared. |
