Wells Fargo, meanwhile, intends to partner with mobile phone makers and wireless service providers to enhance the service. It's critical to have the staff up to speed before the service rolls out because, Smith says, "If you ask a customer to try something and it doesn't work the first time or the service is not helpful, [the customer] won't come back." So Wells Fargo rolls out new services slowly, first to a small group of internal users on the IT team, just to be sure what they've built is operational.
The next step is to expand to a larger group of internal users (Wells Fargo has nearly 160,000 employees), then to a group of friends and family, which is where the program is now. So far, there have been some pleasant surprises. For example, the company originally thought customers over 25 wouldn't take well to the text messaging option. But those who did use it found it valuable when they were traveling or shopping. The company plans to expand the service to its entire customer base later this year.
All along the way, Wells Fargo has been collecting surveys and feeding the data back into the Voice of the Customer program for incorporation into the broader introduction of the service. The iterative approach gives the customer support people a chance to familiarize themselves with the kinds of questions customers are likely to ask.
The other big hurdle Wells Fargo has in common with its mobile banking competitors is security. If mobile banking does indeed follow the same trajectory as online banking, the scam artists and thieves are sure to follow close behind. "Mobile devices have not yet been subject to the same [number] of attacks as online banking has," says Gartner's Newton. "So there are clearly security concerns, because when they are attacked, you can expect trouble."
Wells Fargo believes that its security philosophy is different from that of most banks. Ease of use is paramount, and to that end, the company puts the onus of security on itself. "Our approach is to do all the necessary security behind the scenes and take responsibility ourselves for that," says Clyde Ostler, group executive vice president Wells Fargo's Internet Services Group. To that end, the company is working hard to strike the right balance between protecting the customer and making the service easy to use.
"You don't want to have the strongest authentication of every transaction possible," Smith says. "Some transactions have less risk, so we try to model the customer experience to protect the customer where the risk is. We don't want them to go through so much work that it becomes unusable." That means for most transactions there will be two- or three-factor authentication (identifying the device, username and password). For larger transactions, a phone call could be placed to the device to verify further.
If the mobile device ever morphs into a truly essential tool for personal or business finance, the nirvana for all banks would be the phone transformed into a contactless payment system. "We are very interested to see whether that form factor would move from a plastic card to a chip embedded in a cell phone," Smith says.
Perhaps ultimately cell phones will serve as de facto banks, beaming money from person to business, or even from person to person. Better master the basics first, however. And conquer the skepticism.
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