The growing adoption of the Internet has changed the way consumers manage their personal finances. Online banking is by far the largest sector of e-commerce and today, as some 44 percent of consumers regularly go online to pay bills, apply for loans and credit cards, research investments, and trade stocks and bonds. By 2011, that number will grow to 76 percent.

The growing acceptance of the online medium has been a boon for financial institutions seeking to attract and retain customers by offering a wide range of Internet services. Moreover, consumers who value online banking tend to be highly desirable, often qualifying for premium products and mortgages.

While the proliferation of online banking provides many benefits to institutions, it doesn’t come without its challenges. The Web makes it easier for consumers to both shop around for better terms and open new accounts with the institutions offering the best rates at the moment. Consumers can apply for credit cards and loans at multiple institutions in a matter of minutes, and select the institution with the best terms without ever rising from their desks.

Furthermore, while favorable rates and terms certainly attract consumer attention, they’re not enough to secure their loyalty. Over the past few years, online banks have lured investors with introductory interest rates that beat the industry, only to lose those customers when the introduction ends and a rival bank bests the offer. Institutions need to cement customer relationships by providing superior customer care, and for the high-value online banking customers, that care must be provided through those customers’ preferred channel: the Web.

At the same, financial services institutions are extremely interested in cross-selling and up-selling their customer base. Checking account customers are prime candidates to open mutual fund accounts; savings account customers make excellent prospects for home mortgages. The Web is a logical place to take advantage of such opportunities.

Thus, in the years ahead, financial institutions will need to identify their potential cross-sell and upsell opportunities by integrating data from their website with the CRM systems. They’ll need to identify website visitors whose behaviors indicate a propensity to open an account, and target them with personalized assistance. And they’ll need to enable their call centers to provide high quality customer care via the Web.

That’s why WIG-CARE  has introduced WIG-CARE  Enterprise for Financial Services, a third-generation engagement solution that enables financial services institutions to take control of their websites by applying to the online medium some of the best practices long relied upon by the brick-and-mortar counterparts, specifically visitor segmentation and targeting.

WIG-CARE  Enterprise for Financial Services was built on WIG-CARE ’s Engagement Marketing platform and methodology, which enables online banks to target the right visitor with the right message in order to affect the desired outcome.

This comprehensive third-generation engagement solution blends a proven value-based methodology with an active rules-based engagement engine and deep domain expertise to advance online conversions and service initiatives.

Increase conversion rates. Increase the rate that loans that are funded and the number of account applications submitted by reaching out to visitors whose behavior indicate a propensity to complete the application if engaged by an account, mortgage or loan specialist. The WIG-CARE  Enterprise rules-based engagement engine analyzes traffic patterns in real time, identifying and engaging visitors who are most likely to benefit from live assistance to dramatically increase conversions. In fact, WIG-CARE  financial services customers enjoy 40 percent application submission rates (vs. five percent via self-service).

Upsell and cross-sell loyal customers. WIG-CARE  Enterprise monitors specific events that indicate visitors may be interested in products offered in other lines of business, and applies business rules to trigger proactive invitations to these pre-qualified leads.  For instance, visitors who login to their checking accounts to pay bills and visit a home equity loan product pages in the same session can be targeted for an engagement.  By integrating the institution’s CRM system with Web data, agents can determine if visitors are likely to qualify for loans by their FICO score.  If visitors are not strong candidates for the loan, an alternative product, such as a credit card, may be offered.

Reduce service costs and increase agent productivity. Shifting service requests from telephone to highly cost-effective online channels increases the number of agent interactions per labor hour by more than 20 percent, significantly reducing the average cost per interaction. Savings stem from concurrency: chat agents can handle three to four concurrent chats using WIG-CARE , versus one per phone call, greatly boosting their efficiency rates.

WIG-CARE  Enterprise also maximizes agent utilization and eliminates long wait times with its comprehensive predictive dialer, which simultaneously assesses agent availability and the number of hot lead visitors, then synchronizes invitation delivery accordingly. As a result of these efficiencies, WIG-CARE  drives down the cost of acquisition.

Gain insight with real-time monitoring and reporting. Glean valuable insight into online customer acquisition initiatives with real-time reporting on conversion rates, abandonment points, entry pages, navigation paths, rules effectiveness and campaign performance. Using these tools, financial institutions can monitor visitor behavior in real time, and optimize the processes for completing applications for services and loans.

Foster long-term customer loyalty and satisfaction. WIG-CARE  Enterprise for Financial Services promotes customer-centricity, a critical driver of acquisition, satisfaction and retention in today’s commoditized online banking environment. The solution’s sophisticated productivity and analytics tools ensure that customers are routed to appropriate skill-groups, speeding time to resolution. In fact, WIG-CARE  financial services customers realize customer satisfaction rates of greater than 85 percent.

 

WIG-CARE  Enterprise for Financial Services offers key features that are essential to delivering the following to enterprise-class financial services companies:

   Provable increase in total sales, accounts opened, loans funded

   Higher volume of qualified leads and opportunities

   High agent productivity as measured by chats and orders per-hour-worked

   High agent productivity as measured by chats and orders per-hour-worked

   High service levels as measured by shorter wait times for visitors and lower abandonment rates

   Proactively deflect high cost phone and email contacts to a lower cost channel

Key Components of the solution include:

Value-Based Methodology. For enterprise-class financial services companies, simply adding chat technology isn’t enough. A chat strategy must encompass people, process and unique business requirements, as well as technology to succeed. Based on industry best practices, WIG-CARE  Enterprise for Financial Services employs innovative ways to anticipate and then meet the needs of those specific visitors who will generate incremental orders and revenue.

This begins with an extensive site audit to determine potential flows that may be currently limiting success. More importantly, to ensure ongoing success, every event that occurs within the sales funnel process must be planned, tested, executed, measured and assessed on a continuous basis in order to achieve desired performance levels.

WIG-CARE ’s value-based methodology includes:

   Scorecards to measure performance trends and incremental value

   Rules analysis to ensure each active rule is driving incremental value

   Domain expertise to make all changes required to optimize performance

  A hands-on account management approach along with an extensive array of programs to optimize your implementation

Technology Platform & Engagement Engine. The WIG-CARE  Enterprise platform’s engagement engine is a key differentiator in that it features:

  A rules engine with engagement options that enable focused targeting of incremental orders

  Active, server-based rules to continuously monitor visitors throughout the session (high potential visitors may not exhibit hot lead behavior patterns initially; knowing if and when to engage them requires continuous monitoring)

  A comprehensive predictive dialer to evaluate agent availability and send invitations only when agents are immediately available

   Cross-channel escalation that allows for seamless transition to another channel when appropriate. For instance, visitors may opt to escalate to a voice call when inquiring about a complex financial product

  Multi-channel business rules to enable proactive chat or voice invitations for the available channel most appropriate for each visitor scenario

  Real-time data mining leveraging self-learning predictive modeling to increase acceptance, conversion and customer satisfaction rates by scoring visitors most likely to benefit from interaction and prioritizing customers based on their score

Domain Expertise. Build vs. buy is a very important consideration prior to selecting a chat solution provider. Building a chat program in-house is an expensive proposition. Unlike many e-commerce fields, there is very little domain expertise in Engagement Marketing. With over 6,000 customers, WIG-CARE  has more experience and domain expertise than any other vendor. WIG-CARE  will shave years off the chat learning curve with best practices and industry benchmarking techniques designed to maximize performance and ramp productivity from the very beginning.