Customer Engagement 2.0

On the Internet Evolution weblog Rob Geier presents some interesting findings from an Informationweek survey about Rich Internet Applications. According to the survey, the most important reason to use RIAs is improving the Customer Experience. Although management dashboards and customer support are also popular, many companies are already building RIAs for self-service and e-commerce.

Rob’s main RIA example is Home & Abroad, a personalized travel site. If you have a couple of minutes, use the ‘Quick Planner’ to see how they suggest a trip itinerary based on your preferences: pretty cool.

However, when I started editing my itinerary I wasn’t very impressed with the user experience. Until I realized why I wasn’t impressed:

► All travel planning sites need great faceted search!

And that’s what Home & Abroad is missing. I scoured the internet for some other examples. I found some good sites via the excellent Web 2.0 Travel blog and Travel+Leisure’s Top 25 Travel Sites. But let’s first define what we mean with Faceted Search.

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Today Netbanker wrote a post about the rapid growth of the financial planning website Mint.com. According to Compete, Mint had 13% more visitors in July than in the month before. That makes a total of 460,000 visitors per month. That made me wonder how popular another personal finance website is: Wesabe. That site differentiates itself from Mint by fostering a lively community.

Compete: Mint vs Wesabe

On Compete it’s easy to compare the popularity of multiple websites. Compete monitors the online behavior of over 2 million Americans (with their permission), which form the basis for these statistics. From the graph it’s clear that Mint has a lot more visitors than Wesabe.

However, it’s always a little unclear how reliable these data are. Therefore I’ve done the same search with several other traffic measurement websites, using AttentionMeter. You can see the results after the break.

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When at the Forrester Financial Marketing event in New York, I had the pleasure to meet with Alyson Clarke, a principal Analyst at Forrester.  We sat together to discuss and share some ideas about Online Advice Tools. We talked about collaborative tools, simple tools like financial calculators, product selectors, and advice tools. She brought her analyst perspective and I shared my perspective as a technology vendor building richer interface solutions to many of the financial institutions.

Alyson’s take is that people are desperate for financial advice and that their needs are not met today. “Firms should focus on delivering a better customer experience starting by giving clients access to financial advice”, she told me. “The need for advice is amplified by new and complex taxes, pension reforms, turbulent markets, and complicated financial products. Most people can’t afford expert advice so most of them are shifting to the Internet in search for advice.” But advice delivery has not caught up.  Sure you can view your accounts, access general information, apply for a credit card or for a mortgage, and do some transactions, but where is the advice - the personal touch that people need – the collaboration?

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Last week I read an interesting article written by Nicoline van Elten, usability tester at Junglerating (a Dutch online marketing and  communication consultancy firm). Nicoline writes about the pros and cons of Rich Internet Applications, when to use them and especially when you shouldn’t.

She states that the advantages of RIAs are:

• Speed of the website
• Opening up information: simplify complex information
• Convenience (autofill)
• Multimedia perception (rich user experience)

In her article she also gives 6 important tips and tricks how to use RIAs in a valuable way, visualized by some great examples like the sliders used in the ABN AMRO applications. She concludes that RIAs do offer a lot of advantages, but that RIAs should only be used in functional applications.

I gave it some thought and I have to say that I agree with her. Think well about the usage of RIA, don’t use it because ‘you want to use the latest innovative technology’, but make sure it benefits your site, but most of all: if it benefits your target audience. Hip youngsters might like a very animated, personalized and customizable site, but older people might prefer a site that looks like the site they were used too, optimized with some nice rich internet applications which enable a friendly user interface.

Click here for the full article.

In the July 14th issue of DMNews, Dana Kevish, Interactive Marketing Manager for acehardware.com, chats about her most recent collaboration with GSI Commerce—the “choose your location” component using geo-location technology. In layman terms, the “choose your location” component is an Ajax-based Rich Internet Application (RIA) feature that gives visitors the option to search for local Ace stores depending on address or location. By using geo-location technology, the Ace website identifies your approximate location so you don’t have to enter an address. Because the store locator is a mashup, Ace store locations are automatically displayed on Google Maps. There are two benefits for doing this: first, Ace didn’t have to develop their own mapping component; and second, users are greeted with a familiar user experience.

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Steve Furman found out that an elaborate multi-channel campaign does not necessarily work. Mellon Investment asked him to confirm his tax payer identification number (TIN), by either phone or internet. However, he eventually had to print a PDF document, fill it out by hand, and use USPS to get it back to Mellon.

What went wrong?

On the Internet, the regular login worked, but he was locked out of his account when he was asked to repeat the credentials when confirming his TIN.

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The Financial Brand writes about Goldwater Bank’s new website, which is a reflection of Goldwater’s upscale image. Their branch offices look more like posh hotel lobbies than the usual slightly run-down brownish interiors of many other banks. The article mentions Goldwater’s luxury offline amenities like concierge and couriers. So let’s take a closer look at their new website, and see whether it provides the same luxury experience.

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Because most mortgage shoppers get information online nowadays, traditional mortgage lenders need to improve the online customer experience. Therefore I set out to compare the websites of six large traditional lenders: Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, Countrywide, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo. To give it some focus, I decided to focus on payment calculators, as Forrester thinks those are the most important. For an international comparison, we’ll be looking at the Moneyou calculator, a subsidiary of ABN AMRO.

The Test Scenario

A couple in California is looking to buy their first home in the next year, so they want to find out how much they can afford. They each make about $7000 a month and they have approximately $60k available for a down payment. They estimate they can pay approximately $4000 a month for their home.

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A colleague recently introduced me to a book about engagement and wedding rings.  You can probably guess that I’m shopping for an engagement ring, and speaking from a guy’s point of view, this is a very daunting task.  I will be the first to admit that I know little about rings and it wasn’t until recently that I could identify the 4 Cs of diamonds. Online stores often offer the best deal, but – until recently – it wasn’t as comforting to buy online as it was to buy in a store. However, the latest Rich Internet Applications greatly improve the online engagement ring shopping experience.

Prior to researching online options, I visited a well-known jewelry store to speak with a “sales professional.”  After all, he professionally attempted to lure me into buying one of their expensive diamond rings.  Granted, the ring looked spectacular but given the price tag, it was way out of my budget!  I wondered if I could find a better deal online for a comparable ring, and while I was certain I could, I wondered if an online retailer could match the in-store experience of a brick-and-mortar.

It didn’t take long before I stumbled upon the bluenile.com website.  The first thing I noticed right away was how easy it was to search for a diamond.  With the use of Ajax, they employ what we call “faceted search”, a rich internet application (RIA) feature that uses criteria sliders to narrow your search results.  This is an intuitive functionality that makes it easier for the user to find a specific diamond they are looking for.

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This year’s Forrester Financial Services Forum for Marketing and Strategy Professionals was focused on how to deliver great customer experience.  It covered best practices, cross channel strategies but also many sessions were covering online experience especially through the use of software tools.  One such session I found pretty interesting was from National City.  I liked it because National City clearly made the effort to measure the return on investment of the Online Chat tool they implemented.  Their goal was to increase customer engagement which ultimately would increase revenue.

First, some interesting data from Forrester: 54% of the people who abandon an online application i.e. for brokerage accounts, home equity loans, mortgage accounts, and personal loans intended to complete the process. If you’re able to engage them before, then you might prevent them from abandoning the application. And according to Forrester research, human intervention has proven to help prevent abandonment by “intenders.“

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