Wells Fargo Leads Customer Service as First to Market, Offering Real-Time Web Collaboration to Online Commerical Customers

Business Wire, Oct 1, 2002

Business Editors

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 1, 2002

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) today announced it has successfully deployed a Web collaboration customer service tool for commercial customers, allowing mid-market and large corporate businesses and the bank to share online banking sessions in real-time. Wells Fargo is the first financial institution to make this tool available to its customers. Wholesale products and technologies are more complex than consumer technologies. Transferring this servicing tool to the wholesale arena allows Wells Fargo to provide greater multi-channel servicing to its customers, delivering the next stage of anytime, anywhere customer service.

Wells Fargo's Web collaboration significantly streamlines the servicing process and assures customers immediate, real-time assistance in performing a transaction or troubleshooting an issue. For example, in the event a customer needs help in sending a wire, the agent can see exactly what's impeding the customer from sending that wire and guide the customer through the wire initiation, verification, approval and submittal process. With this tool, servicing is seamless, fast and easy anytime and anywhere in the world.

"Wells Fargo believes that multi-channel servicing must stand behind every Internet product offering," said senior vice president Danny Peltz of Wholesale Internet Solutions. "Web collaboration gives Wells Fargo the ability to service our business customers both at the overall relationship level and the individual user level. Our Web collaboration service is reliable, easy to use and provides immediate access to customer service support." Wells Fargo now offers Web collaboration at no cost to all customers of the Commercial Electronic Office.

"At Wells Fargo customer service is of utmost importance in every aspect of the business. At Wells Fargo, the first phase of online financial services focused on getting services onto the Internet and building a consumer base. Web collaboration is the next stage, focusing on seamless integration of online and offline services for an even broader customer base including small businesses and large corporations," said Robert Spector, expert on customer service and author of the best-selling book Anytime, Anywhere.

To date, more than 15,000 Commercial Electronic Office customers are saving time on routine bank operations while helping their businesses reach new levels of productivity. CEO is Wells Fargo's online portal that provides a single point of entry for all wholesale services and offers customers an easy way to address all of their banking needs. CEO also provides Wells Fargo's middle-market customers with one of the most comprehensive suites of financial services, with benefits including: credit and loan services, procurement online, international services, trust and investment services, and cash management and treasury services.

Customers using Wells Fargo's Web collaboration overcome problems such as:

-- Save Time: Before web collaboration, customers had to rely on the agent's ability to visualize the online session/issues they were experiencing. Conversely, the agent was faced with the challenge of conveying an action to the customer without the ability to illustrate that action directly. That is, agents had to verbalize what to do -- or what not to do -- in the future to prevent a problem.

-- Access the Latest Information Immediately: With the shared screen session, customers can see directly what they need to do or what they were doing wrong and as important, Wells Fargo learns first-hand how users navigate through the product application. This knowledge helps us continually enhance the product application to better meet the customer's needs in the future.

-- View Everything At-A-Glance: Customers and bank employees both get a quick, comprehensive display of account balances in real-time.

Wells Fargo encourages companies to conduct business electronically among their customers, domestic and foreign trading partners, and financial institutions. Ranked as the world's leading corporate Internet site in terms of design and overall integration by Global Finance, Wells Fargo has the resources, experience and technology necessary to help businesses succeed, both online and off. Wells Fargo currently conducts business with 30 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, and is the second largest originator of automated clearing house (ACH) transactions in the United States.

About Wells Fargo & Company

Wells Fargo's Commercial Electronic Office experienced 100 percent growth in 2002. Wells Fargo is a $315 billion diversified financial services company providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance services through 5,400 stores, its Internet site and other distribution channels across North America as well as internationally.