Umpqua Bank is officially rolling out its Go-To app, a customer service offering that could be compared to Tinder for bankers.
The app lets customers choose a banker based on a profile that includes a photo, personal details and hobbies, and allows the consumer to ask for additional information.
"I look at Go-To as private banking for everybody," said Cort O'Haver, the Portland, Ore., bank's CEO.
The app is now a cornerstone of Umpqua Bank.
"This is a key part of our human-digital movement," O'Haver said. "It epitomizes what we are trying to do: use technology to better customers' lives and make banking more convenient and do all the things they need to do with a human."
Umpqua, the banking unit of the $26.5 billion-asset Umpqua Holdings, began piloting the app last year;
The name BFF was ditched because research showed the demographic the bank was after was 35-to-55-year-olds with jobs, homes, aging parents and other responsibilities. BFF just didn't resonate with them, though younger people liked the name.
In addition to the name change and added Android capability (the pilot only worked on iPhones), several upgrades have been made to the program and many more will follow, most notably the ability for small-business owners to use the app, which will be added with the help of the fintech provider Seed.
In July, Umpqua asked all employees to download the Go-To app and start using it. On Monday, the app will be launched and marketed it to Umpqua customers.
Go-To is now enterprise software that other banks can rent if they want to from Pivotus, Umpqua's Silicon Valley software subsidiary.
O'Haver is not keen on the concept of having customers interact with completely automated chatbots.
"The idea of technology for technology's sake because for companies it's a cheap way to provide customer service is not working so well," he said. "People don't really want a robot, they want a person."
He is, however, open to the idea that AI and machine learning could be injected into the Go-To app to handle things like balance requests and password resets.
The guts of Go-To
At its heart, Go-To is a secure texting environment with a dashboard bankers can use to manage their customer conversations.
The hard part, O'Haver said, is training people to be Go-To bankers.
"If you were to use this at a call center in India, I don't think it would work," he said. "We did this so customers can feel like they have a real connection with somebody in the company."
Go-To bankers are trained to know enough about most of the bank's products to answer basic questions, and to pull a specialist, like a mortgage banker or small-business banker, to handle tougher requests.
The bank is still testing one aspect of the original premise of BFF: that bankers in branches with slow foot traffic could handle this virtual banking work during their down times.
"I don't want to take away from the store experience," O'Haver said. "I don't want anyone to ever walk into an Umpqua store and see someone texting as opposed to welcoming them."
So for now, most of the bank's Go-To bankers work in a fulfillment center, though they can meet with customers at branches upon request.
The Go-To bankers can't be available 24/7 because of the one-to-one relationship. But Umpqua has found they don't have to be. When customers pick a banker and know that person works 9:00 to 6:00, they respect that, O'Haver said.
"Someday we may have pods of three" to accommodate off-hours requests, O'Haver said. "But we've found that people are willing to wait until the next day."
Eve Callahan, executive vice president at the bank, said customer relationships have grown 15% over the course of the pilot.
Bringing in small business
Small-business owners have a greater need for something like Go-To, O'Haver noted.
"They're working long, tough hours and they know banks don't usually dedicate people to their relationship," he said.
Seed will soon provide small-business account onboarding within the Go-To app. Eventually there may be a whole suite of small-business banking tools in Go-To.
"I'll call it Treasury management-lite. It's a pretty powerful small-business tool, and we can do it anywhere in the country," O'Haver said.
In addition to laying the groundwork to support small businesses, the bank helped the Go-To bankers develop their profiles to include the right amount of personal and professional detail.
"We found that was a way to help people connect based on a shared interest or experience," Callahan said.
Eventually, there might be a place for Go-To at much larger commercial clients.
"How can technology make the CFO of a company more efficient, provide better information to the CEO and board, and provide a better solution?" O'Haver mused. "We have ideas about how to use it for commercial clients."
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