Of course eStara have a self serving interest here, but the logic in their argument remains valid.
“This means giving consumers the choice of either talking to the business via their PC or over a regular landline or mobile phone without requiring that the merchant or the buyer download additional software. Forcing buyers and sellers down a single path creates an unnecessary barrier that could interfere with the sale.”
Talking into a mike plugged into the PC is still for ultimate geeks. That’s not even close to decent adoption, let alone mainstream. But everyone has a phone.
Relevance to Bankwatch:
Push to Talk/ click to call is all the rage right now. In the future some shared capability will exist to implement the current eStara type solution, and the skype solution without duplicative costs, but for now Banks need eStara or LivePerson solutions.
tags: push+to+talk, click+to+call
Bankwatch 
It’s all about offering customers a form of contact that they’re comfortable with. Some customers will be completely comfortable talking to a representative through their PC or via text chat, but most (especially when it comes to complex financial transactions) prefer speaking over the phone. Click to call provides those options and preserves a continuity of experience for the customer as they transition from the Web to an offline conversation.
You want to make sure to offer the right solution at the right time based on the customer’s needs. Banks must establish a set of rules to make sure they’re sending customers down the right channel. Not every question can be answered with a canned response, but you also don’t want to send routine questions to your call center when an FAQ or knowledgebase will do the trick.
Thanks Dan. Whatever type of voice call, I remain curious whether that’s a transitional strategy until the Gen X & Gen Y mature or whether this will be a core element of our contact centre strategy, going forward.