Online banking and contact centre

An interesting article on Finextra today with statistics that one third of UK web users bank online. Apparently the most popular sites are Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland.

What is interesting for me is that in the UK at least, the web channel and the phone channel are still some way off converging. You might argue that this is natural, as the web (used at home for transactions with lots of detail) and the phone (used anywhere for real time interaction) are different both by function and nature.

I think this rather misses the point. Imagine that one of these web users sees a serious error or a suspicious transaction. Is it likely that they will e-mail and wait for the bank to respond? Or will they pick up the phone to get an instant response?

By contrast, some of the European banks have experimented with web and contact centre integration. Rabobank's youth banking website offers instant messaging (via MSN) or e-mail with 'Yvette' their chatbot. They also offer a skype button on most pages for a free click to call and a link for skype downloads. I've talked about this a little before (in posts like "Skype, contact Centre and Banking") but I do see this as one of the likely trends of the future.

I've yet to see anything equivalent from UK banks, but I suspect that customers pressure will start to force them to offer these services.