Today's Speaking Engagement

I'm in Kansas this morning, to address the KBA's Young Bankers Conference. We are going to get serious about the challenges of supporting customers in an era where much of our technology is customer-facing. "This Stuff Doesn't Work" is both a funny and serious look at customer expectations and the work banks have to do in order to be successful. Very excited to talk to this group of rising stars!

Telephone Banking - The Forgotten Technology?

By far one of the most popular customer facing technologies banks have introduced is Interactive Voice Response (IVR). Customers flocked to this technology, calling over and over to hear a balance or see if a payment has cleared, many calling multiple times per day even if account balances and other information was not in real-time. The advent of Internet Banking may have slowed the usage, but it did not go away. Convenience might be an issue: a customer checking an account balance may find the touch tone phone faster than logging into your web site. These systems are simple and easy to use.

Internet Banking is well into its second decade, however, and many of you are already investing in the next generation: Mobile Banking. The question is, what to do with our IVR systems? Especially if you are running IVR “in-house,” it is likely that your system is aging, and support may be lacking. If you've priced a new system, you may be taken aback by the cost. If you can keep that old clunker running a bit longer, here's my step by step process for getting a handle on this technology before it causes you a real problem.

1. Do an operational and contractual assessment of your current system. Get the vendor involved (if they are still around) and make sure you have ready access, in the short term, to replacement parts and support in the event of a failure. Get your core vendor involved (if they are not the IVR vendor) and ask them to help you plot a backup strategy, if your IVR vendor is not around. Or call an expert (that would be your humble author) Your goal here is to put together a strategy to keep the technology working for another year or two, while you move these users to other solutions.
   
   
2. Take a hard look at the number of calls you are receiving, and who these folks are. Generally, you will find a significant group of “repeat offenders.” Hopefully, your system produces reports, but if not, go to the phone logs to see what you can learn.
   
   
3. If you have outsourced your IVR, think about aligning the efforts listed below with that contract's expiration date, so that you can retire the technology at that time. A benefit of outsourcing is that you are relieved from worry over the state of your system. A downside, however, are the costs associated with the technology and the calls.
   
   
4. Taking into account (based on available reporting) the frequency and type of activity you see, design an aggressive marketing campaign to move those folks to Internet Banking.
   
   
5. If you currently have mobile banking, even better. Promote that directly to your IVR users, with particular attention to the SMS “text” capability, as it offers the path of least resistance to their using the product.

My hope is that, over time, with some concentrated effort, you can eliminate your IVR system in favor of newer technology that offers customers even more functionality.

Mobile Banking Webinar

There is still time to sign up for my webinar on mobile banking this Monday afternoon.  Use the link below, and click on your state to sign up.  If your state isn't listed, just adopt a state for the day!  Looking forward to a rousing discussion of current issues in mobile banking.

http://www.bankersed.com/tba/intro.asp

New Password Security Threats

Please take time to read the attached article, and be sure that your IT and Operations staff sees it as well.  It points out the flaws in many of today's common password and authentication methods.  It also clearly points out the need for multi-factor authentication in almost every situation.  While few banks are currently storing data in "the cloud" such methods are, for both technological and economical reasons, trending, and will be something that must be dealt with.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/

BANK OPERATIONS UPDATE: Supporting Internal Customers

Supporting multiple locations, whether branches or discrete banks, brings a variety of challenges. From an operations and technology perspective, however, the key is to provide a consistent customer
experience across all locations. This means the ability of the teller, loan, and deposit platform systems to serve customers from any location. It further means that line speeds and server horsepower, two key components of the speed with which applications load and run on your employee's computers, must be up to par across all locations. In addition to purchasing systems and data communications capacity that are properly sized, the walking around test is necessary. That is, get out into the remote locations and watch your employees as they use their systems . . are screens slow to load and change, making it hard for employees to serve customers in a timely fashion? If so, it's time to begin addressing why, by looking at communications lines, network capabilities, and other components of adequate access times.

Contingency Planning

Contingency planning is a rare item these days: a regulatory requirement that is also a prudent business practice. You have to be sure, through analysis and testing, that you have plans and methods in place for business continuation. All contingency planning has a three pronged focus:

1. Prevention – taking steps to greatly reduce the possibility of an occurrence. This is easier for things you control (installing redundant power supplies and hard drives in your network servers) than things you don't control (weather).
   
   
2. Minimization – planning and testing will contribute to a lessening of the impact of any occurrence
   
   
3. Restoration – again, the planning and testing you've done will enhance your ability to respond and begin to restore operations.

In the context of technology planning, be sure that contingency and DR are integrated into all of your efforts.

Vendor Contracts

I continue to do a lot of work in this area, as banks often have contracts with terms and conditions that they don't fully understand, in part because they haven't carefully read what they are signing. The contracts that you have in place now are important, because they dictate what you can and can't do in terms of buying new products from third parties, or discontinuing the use of certain products, and they commit you to fees and penalties for changes and early termination that can be significant. Make sure you know exactly what you've committed to, especially with your larger contracts, such as core accounting and item processing, so that your decisions are in line with those contractual relationships. Finally, don't forget that when new contracts are considered (whether for an add-on product, or a complete renewal or new relationship) that you must carefully review those, and consider the terms and conditions so that you improve your position relative to your older contracts.