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S1 Customer Feedback: Denise Burris Talks about First Northern Bank of Dixon's Experience with S1's Self-Service Banking Solutions
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Q: How did you approach your upgrade to the self-service banking solutions?
A: We started the due diligence process two years ago and took a hard look at moving to our core as we thought that was the direction we needed to go. We even bought and tested the solution in-house for a period of time. However, after testing it, we found that the solution was not as user friendly, particularly on the business side. |
We decided to stay with S1 because it was in our customers' best interest and moving to the self-service banking (SSB) solutions would have minimal impact on them with the ease of use that was being maintained in the new solution. We knew that the greater impact would be on us, from a core integration standpoint, but a win for our customers as they really like the S1 solutions.
Once the decision was made, we decided to convert everyone from S1 IBS Retail and IBS Business Internet Banking to the new S1 Consumer Online Banking and S1 Business Online Banking solutions at the same time. We felt it would be much more difficult to do a staged approach and operate two separate systems for our retail and business solutions versus making the switch all at once. By moving everyone over at the same time, we were also able to reduce communication issues with customers on pending changes.
Q: Was this approach successful for your bank?
A: It worked really well for us. Anytime you go through a conversion, there will be difficulties, but there were no major surprises with this move. One of the things we were really pleased with is how easily our business customers made the transition. You can't realistically test for every possible scenario or know exactly what the system will do until normal transaction volume is running. However, because of the way the S1 Business Online Banking solution is structured and because S1 maintained the ease of use that was available with IBS Business Internet Banking, we incurred minimal hand-holding with our business customers and definitely not to the level we expected. Our customers were really able to just use it and go.
Q: How many customers did you convert to the new platform?
A: We converted all 10,000 of our retail customers and all 1,000 of our business customers.
Q: What are some of the features of the new platform that have had the greatest impact on your institution?
A: Some of the highlights for us are the new back-office features of the S1 Banking Portal and how much more you can do now. For example, the assist feature is great. We are now able to provide our customers with better technical support; we can see exactly what they are looking at, which greatly improves our ability to quickly answer their questions.
There is also so much more information at the customer level. We can see all transactions in one place. And there are many more audit trails provided. The solution is so robust and has so many layers of information.
Overall we are in a much better position, particularly with clearance. The clearance is much nicer in the new solution and we have more control of ACHs coming through. This also helps us in combating fraud. Because of the interim ACH report, we're able to look at a transaction more quickly and balance that against what our customers say they are doing. This has enabled us to catch things we may not have been able to in the past. The S1 Banking Portal definitely enables us to use our time more effectively.
Q: What feedback have you received from your customers on the new solution?
A: Our customers really like the branding—we celebrated our hundred-year anniversary last year and were able to easily and consistently brand that message across the new solution. We are also better able to communicate, on a per screen basis, with more targeted messaging and service offers. Plus, our business customers are now able to do a lot more in cash management, particularly with user rights and the resetting of passwords, MFA, cookies, and so on.
Q: You are a member of the S1 User Group. Are you seeing the feedback you've provided as part of that group demonstrated in the new product?
A: You can honestly tell that a lot of what was put into the new product was based on direct feedback from our organization and other S1 customers. I have confidence that when I provide feedback on future enhancements those will be addressed. We are seeing a much quicker turnaround with the product than we did with IBS. There appears to be much more flexibility with this product.
With this conversion, we also decided to move to the real-time solution. We realize we were a bit behind the times with that, but our customers really like having up-to-date information now, particularly on the weekends.
Q: Do you have plans for deploying any new self-service banking solutions in 2011?
A: We plan to roll out S1 Mobile in the second quarter of this year. We are in the process of testing it now.
Q: Any final comments you'd like to share?
A: Yes, one final comment, S1 customers need to understand that this is a conversion process and that they should be prepared to commit the time to making it work for them. Everyone on the S1 side that we worked with was very committed to making this work, and it was all well worth the effort to move to the new solution! |
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