Chase Centralized Messaging Center Increases Security

In order to increase the security and efficiency of communication with customers, JPMorgan Chase recently launched an online message center that enables customers to address issues related to all their banking accounts.

Now, when they submit questions online, customers of the New York-based bank, with assets of $803 billion, are able to receive answers to their inquiries the next time they log on to the Chase.com site. Previously, clients were required to access different sites for each of their Chase accounts. The new messaging center forwards all messages to the appropriate department, says Sridhar Chityala, e-business executive, JPMorgan Chase ."We offer a holistic interaction across all our lines of business for all customers," Chityala says. The message "gets routed to the appropriate department and the response is acknowledged. "

The bank launched the center to improve security regarding the traditional e-mails that were exchanged between Chase clients and customer service representatives. There were too many technical restrictions on these communications with customers, Chityala says. And because of security concerns, many customers ultimately telephoned the bank because they did not want to send personal account informationby e-mail.

"In the absence of secure messaging, we would have to do it (messaging) with traditional e-mails and that was really restricted in terms of scope and communication," says Chityala. "You would have to send an e-mail and say you have a problem and then you would actually want to call us because you do not want to put your account details in an e-mail."

The added security actually improves the efficiency with which the bank interacts with customers, according to Chityala.

"You can click on the message center, choose your account, and you can reference either the check number or the transaction number...and immediately send an inquiry. All that happens in your online session," he says. "So there's a whole category of account transaction-specific inquiry which was not possible in a traditional e-mail environment but its possible now under this scenario."

In the future, Chase plans to deliver messages via mobile devices, such as cell phones, to inform customers of messages waiting in their in-box. These types of services are all part of the bank's plan to integrate different tools to get the customer and bank to communicate with each other as efficiently as possible, Chityala reports.