There’s a lot of talk about mobile growth and Facebook Messenger lately. The service has something north of 800 million active users, and some counts put it at 900 million. Part of this talk is the nature of the mobile Goliath we’re collectively viewing in the wake of fintech acceleration, as is evidenced by rumors about Iran opening up to American payments services.
Back in the west, despite widespread news of Bank of America integration of bot-based customer service into Facebook Messenger, the first bank to take the plunge was TD Bank Group, which introduced it in December of 2015. TD did things a bit differently than Bank of America.
Chances are TD Bank account holders already have the access they need to use the new service. All they need is the updated TD Bank app and the Facebook Messenger app, and voila; TD Bank customers in both the U.S. and Canada have full access to a dozen social media customer service professionals answering inquiries between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m., eastern time.
North of the border, TD partnered with Moven to provide a PFM service in mobile. There is not word if or when this might be extended to U.S. customers, but could be complicated by Moven’s presence among American consumers.
Robert Ghazal, Head of TD Bank’s US Phone Channel, explained the service simply; “You can scroll down there or access through our mobile app on our contact page. You click on that and it will connect you with our folks over here.” In line with the TD Bank brand, Ghazal stressed that the service would not make use of bots, but would maintain an exclusively human staff for customer service support .
Ghazal explained no transactions of any kind would take place over Messenger out of concern for the sharing sensitive of financial and identifying information online, nor would there be any solicitation for sensitive information, as mentioned above.
At end of day it enables customers to interact with us in a different manner, really puts more options at their fingers to be able to interact with their bank without logging in to a website. People spend hours and hours on their phone every day, so this is a way to make their bank available in the same place they spend a good chunk of their lives.