Bank Monitor readers may recall that back in a December update, we mentioned that Chase had launched a Chase Panel sign-up form for customers. As members of the panel, users will participate in online surveys and studies that aid in adjusting the firm’s products and services to customers’ needs and desires.

Recently, we were invited to participate in a survey. Since it was our first one and we think it is an interesting way to bring customers into the product/service design mix, we thought we’d share it with you:

While the banking community in general seem to be supporting and marketing their mobile capabilities, the question few seem willing to ask is are users really interested in the service? If you have been paying attention to the media and trade publications, mobile services are inevitable and you better get on board and get used to it. This smacks of the “prevailing wisdom” of Global Warming – the “experts” say it’s so, so it must be true.

With this in mind we took an impromptu poll of the twentysomething employees in our office to see how they are using these wireless features banks are offering now. Even though the sample size is small (14 people), the results are startling – especially given this is a generation of “kids” that grew up with AOL Instant Messenger and made AAPL a winning stock pick again by buying every iteration of iPod released. Clearly they have a proclivity for technology.

Out of the fourteen people polled, eleven had relationships with banks that offered mobile services. Out of that eleven just one used a firm’s wireless features. Just one. What contributes to this being so surprising is that 91% of the people that banked at a firm offering mobile services knew it was available to them. The one person that did not know about the features was summarily executed.

While one can’t make any sweeping comments about our little poll, one does have to wonder if these are the people (Gen X/Y cuspers) that are supposed to be flocking to these features, is the prevailing wisdom on target? In addition to answering the poll a few submitted comments and one that sticks out is this, “I don’t need to pay my bills on the bus, I am in front of a computer most of the day and if I wasn’t I would just wait until I got home.”

An AP post appeared today that mentioned Hershey sent an 87-year old Maine woman a large shipment of chocolate with a personal note. The occasion? A Hershey executive saw a New York Times article that featured this woman in which she admitted her "greatest vice is Hershey bars."

In our work we have conducted countless mystery shops and have maintained relationships with brokerage firms and financial advisors for more than 10 years. If there is a collective weakness in the industry, it’s the lack of personal touch. We hardly receive Holiday cards anymore. Birthdays go acknowledged. Anniversaries? Fuggetaboutit! Perhaps you can blame technology. More likely it’s people’s reliance on technology to solve all problems. Unfortunately, the reality is that it doesn’t. Technology enables problems to be solved efficiently but people still matter.

Which brings us back to the Hershey people.  Financial firms should take a page from this marketing effort. Many economists think we are on the precipice of a recession. A reassuring personal touch can go a long way to solidifying client relationships.

Fidelity has always been at the forefront of mobile services among brokerage firms and their recent iPhone web app continues this. With this new tool, Fidelity becomes the first online brokerage firm we track to offer an iPhone-specific tool; Bank of America offers an iPhone web app to their banking customers.

We first noticed the link to the Market Monitor for iPhone when it was added to the firm’s public site cookied homepage (this is what users who have been to the fidelity.com site before see). While they have had it on the Fidelity Labs site, this was the first time we saw it promoted on the fidelity.com site. The linked page offers other preexisting products for “on the go” clients including widgets, an investor center locator and podcasts.

The iPhone web app, while a little slow-loading on AT&T’s Edge system (fortunately the firm displays a progress bar while the page loads), resembles the phone’s built in Yahoo! Quote tool to some extent but touching a single quote from Fidelity’s list brings up a detailed quote (in full screen) and provides separate buttons to full page Charts and News. Users can select the information icon on the lower right-hand side of the app and edit the watch list. The firm also provides a symbol lookup tool within the app – a nice touch.

   

Users do not need to be Fidelity clients and can reach their list by bookmarking it within the iPhone’s Safari browser – no login or registration required. All information is 20-minute delayed and lists are remembered phone-to-phone. Interestingly, the firm has not added the Web app to Apple’s iPhone Web apps directory yet.

The iPhone is still a very unique device using an interface that stands alone among its peers and it will be interesting to see if other firms launch device-specific tools for it; after all, there are around 3 million users in the U.S. at this point and that is nothing to sneeze at.