2014

SUCCESS STORY

Extraco BanksExtraco Banks and Consulting Take SWARM Banking® Digital

© 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 2

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Extraco Banks and Consulting

Extraco Banks likes to think outside the box and to deliver a differentiated experience to its customers. With the creation of its SWARM Banking® methodology, Extraco Banks sought

to integrate its SWARM Banking experience into its digital channels. It found the right fit with digital

engagement powered by LivePerson. Initially deployed in 2011 as live chat, the LivePerson LiveEngage

solution has evolved into digital engagement and is delivering results such as a 30 percent annual growth

rate in live chat interactions equating to 1,000-plus per month, a 20 percent call deflection rate, and a 90

percent-plus customer satisfaction score. The addition of mobile live chat in early 2013 is getting rapid

adoption; more than 19 percent of live chat is coming from mobile devices.

Extraco Banks

• Headquarters: Waco, Texas

• Founded: 1902

• FDIC: Member

• Assets: $1B+

• Locations: 19

• Employees: 400+

extracobanks.com

Extraco Consulting

• Formed: 2011

• Subsidiary Corporation of

Extraco Banks

• Focus: People, Products,

Processes, and Technology

• Methodology:

SWARM Banking®

extracoconsulting.com

The Results Adoption-Growth

20% of customer

interactions handled via

live chat

30% annual growth in live

chat interactions

1,000+ monthly live

chat interactions

19% of live chat now from

mobile channels

Customer Satisfaction

90%+ customer

satisfaction rating for live chat

2o% referral rate for

live chat

In 2005, Extraco Banks began to think outside of the box on how to interact and transact business with

its customers. The bank studied other companies, including those outside of the financial services

segment, with a goal of finding best practices that would differentiate it from competitors. “We looked

at companies across various industry segments and determined that our business is much broader

than simply being order takers in a bank lobby,” recalls James Geeslin, the vice chairman and chief

consumer banking officer at Extraco Banks and president and CEO at Extraco Consulting.

The unique nature of its business was a key factor that drove Extraco Banks’ search for a new customer

engagement model. “About 40 percent of our income is non-interest income from non-traditional

banking products such as a mortgage division, insurance, financial services, and trust services,” Geeslin

notes. Extraco Banks is unique in other ways as well. “We’re probably the first bank in the nation to

have a small business technology company that manages its networks,” Geeslin proudly states.

© 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 3

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Extraco Banks and Consulting

SWARM: move to where the customer isOne of the outcomes of Extraco Banks’ assessment

was the development of a patent-pending retail

banking methodology called SWARM Banking®.

“The idea is for employees to ‘swarm’ to where

the traffic is,” notes Lindsay Green, the managing

director and senior vice president for Extraco

Consulting. “In addition, we want each employee to

have the ability to take each customer through the

entire banking experience without handing him

or her off to a colleague. The only exception would

be for products that require a license, and then the

customer is introduced to an employee who has

the required credentials.”

With this in purview, hiring is a critical undertaking

for Extraco Banks. “We hire people with the right

personality for our SWARM banking® culture,” Green

explains. “Many of the employees we hire do not

have a previous banking background. We actually

don’t look for banking experience but rather a

personality and propensity to engage and connect

with our customers.”

Customers experience SWARM banking® when

they are welcomed by a relationship banker.

Headsets facilitate the management of traffic flow

and movement of the relationship banker with the

customer throughout their entire store experience.

Green explains that this is from whence the

concept of SWARM banking came. “Relationship

bankers are able to swarm to the customer traffic,”

Green explains. “Technology solutions, such

as recyclers and teller capture, enable higher

customer satisfaction rates while cutting the

transaction time in half.” This turns into a win-win

scenario for both the bank and its customer.

Innovation think tank: “Ok, I do want to chat”To help facilitate ongoing innovation, Extraco Banks

maintains a think-tank group designated as the

Innovation Committee. In 2008, some members of

the committee recommended that the bank take a

look at implementing live chat. “I remember sitting

in that room and thinking, as a traditional banker,

‘Why would anyone be interested in live chat?,’”

Geeslin recalls. “I initially did not understand why we

would spend money on it. But as we looked into the

technology, including a demo, I began to understand

the value of digital engagement. It gave us the ability

to humanize the web experience for our customers

by providing an ‘in-person’ impression.”

The Customer Care Center was identified as the most

appropriate area to try out the live chat solution.

“These are really an extension of our lobbies,” Geeslin

relates. “You can do just about everything there as

you can in our bank lobby.” His team started with

two concurrent live chat agents using the LivePerson

platform. “The ability to click to call and click to chat

gave our customers the means to interact with us

based on their requirements,” he recalls. The initial

results were promising, and Extraco Banks knew it

was onto something.

We are a conservative bank, and the security standards built into the LiveEngage platform are very

important to us.– Lindsay Green, Managing Director and SVP, Extraco Consulting

The Challenges • Mirror customer experience

in bank lobbies online

• Ease of implementation

and ongoing management

• Protect customer

interactions and data

• Integrate with Jack Henry

Banking Online and Mobile

solutions platform

The Solution Engagement Model

Proactive live chat on

desktops and mobile

engagement channels

Under the Hood

LiveEngage platform for live

chat integrated with Jack

Henry Banking Online and

Mobile banking solution

Customer Success

Implementation, training,

and ongoing support,

including scorecard analysis

and consulting

4© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.

Selecting and implementing a digital engagement platformLivePerson rose to the forefront of live chat providers when Extraco

Banks looked at different solution options. Customer experience

was the overriding priority for the bank. “Each digital interaction

with a customer should enhance the value of the relationship,”

Geeslin says. Secondary requirements for the solution included ease

of implementation and ongoing management as well as security.

“Training time for our staff was also important in our evaluation of

different solution options,” Geeslin adds.

Deploying the LivePerson LiveEngage platform was just one piece to

the larger project for Extraco Banks. “Simply buying the technology

isn’t enough,” Geeslin says. “You need the people, products, and

processes to go with the technology.”

As a result, Extraco Banks rolled out a training program that included

identification of employees who would excel at live chat. “Not every

employee has the right personality to be a live chat representative,”

he explains. “By putting the right people in those roles, we are able to

help our customers answer their questions, solve their problems, and

cross-sell and upsell additional services.”

Based on the results of the initial live chat deployment, Extraco

Banks decided to extend the solution, adding three more concurrent

agents in 2012 and another in early 2013 for a total of six. Directly

out of the gate, Geeslin’s team elected to offer both static and

proactive live chat. “We wanted it to mirror the experience in our

lobbies,” Geeslin points out. “Just as we proactively greet customers

when they come into our lobbies, we want to proactively engage

with customers when they are on our website.”

Integration of live chat into its existing Jack Henry Banking Online

and Mobile banking solution was also an important consideration for

Extraco Banks. “We have a significant investment in our Jack Henry

Banking platform and integration points with it was most certainly a

core requirement,” Green states. The integration between LivePerson

and the Jack Henry Banking platform enables Extraco Banks’ agents

to have more information at their fingertips while delivering a more

seamless experience for their customers.

Engaging from mobile to socialAs more and more of its customers began to use mobile devices,

the bank also began to integrate mobile live chat using LivePerson’s

LiveEngage platform in early 2013. The latter is proving quite successful:

19 percent of all live chat interactions now occur via mobile live chat.

For its mobile live chat deployment, Extraco Banks added a mobile

component to the digital-engagement training track for its employees.

“How customers chat via mobile is different than how they chat from

their desktops,” Green says. “We have our associates refresh their training

periodically, and thus they all were able to gain insights into

the different nuances of chatting with customers who were using their

mobile devices.”

Security was a critical requirement for Extraco Banks when it came to the

rollout of mobile live chat. “We are a conservative bank, and the security

standards built into the LiveEngage platform are very important to us,”

Green says. These security requirements factor into Extraco Banks’ social

media engagement model as well. “We plan to pull the interactions

we have with our customers in the social channel into live chat,” Green

explains. “It will provide us a secure engagement channel.”

The ability to click to call and click to chat gave our customers the means to interact with us based on their requirements.

– James Geeslin, Vice Chairman and CCBO, Extraco Banks, and Chairman and CEO, Extraco Consulting

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Extraco Banks and Consulting

5© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.

Onboarding connects to digital engagementThe onboarding and training of employees at Extraco Banks is much more intensive than at most other banks. “We run them through a 12-week

training program focused on back-office systems and front-office functions,” Geeslin explains. The program contains a dedicated digital engagement

track for which the LivePerson Customer Success organization worked with the Extraco Banks team to develop.

The overall focus of training programs for Extraco Banks is to coach associates on strategies to facilitate quality conversations. “We want our

associates to be trusted advisors,” Geeslin asserts. “The training we provide to our employees corresponds with how educated our customers are

regarding the different technology solutions we offer—and this includes live chat.”

Seeking to ensure that its associates are comfortable engaging with customers via multiple channels, including digital, Extraco Banks provides

training for employees outside of its three Customer Care Centers. “We train relationship bankers who are based in our Customer Care Center so that

they can float between the two engagement channels, depending on fluctuations in business and special campaigns,” Green explains. “This provides

us with great ‘bench strength’ and gives our employees a development opportunity at the same time.”

Accruing digital engagement resultsWhile Extraco Banks is still in the process of rolling out a customer satisfaction measurement program based on the Net Promoter Score (NPS), its

preliminary survey data on customer satisfaction is very positive. “Based on live chat exit surveys, we’re getting in excess of 90 percent positive

customer feedback for our live chat solution on LivePerson,” Geeslin reports. When everything is added up at the end, the foremost KPI for

Extraco Banks is qualified referrals. “Ultimately, if you take care of your customers, you win,” Geeslin says.

“I like to talk about having quality conversations with our customers,” Geeslin says. “If customers get the information they need, then

corresponding results around conversation rates and customer satisfaction scores will follow.”

Interestingly, while the number of lobby visitors has decreased substantially over the past couple years for the bank, the number of interactions

it has with customers has gone up even faster. “Live chat gives our customers the ability to interact with us more frequently,” Green says. “They

can choose whichever avenue is most appropriate at that time.”

Adoption rates for digital engagement continue to increase. “Since early 2012, we’ve seen the number of live chat conversations grow 30 percent

annually,” Geeslin notes. “We now receive more than 1,000 digital interactions each month.”

Consulting is bornExtraco Banks didn’t plan for the launch of its consulting business; it simply happened. Geeslin recounts: “Different banks were visiting our

headquarters to gain insight into our banking operations. We found that more and more were coming to visit, and we were spending increasing

amounts of time hosting them. We determined that we should create a new revenue stream and formed Extraco Consulting in January of 2011.”

Geeslin argues that Extraco Consulting has a unique advantage. “Because we’re also bankers, we very likely have seen and tackled nearly every

challenge facing our customers,” he says.

Live chat gives our customers the ability to interact with us more frequently.

– Lindsay Green, Managing Director and SVP, Extraco Consulting

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Extraco Banks and Consulting

6© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.

Extraco Consulting bakes digital engagement directly into its service offerings. “We provide services around 42 different areas that are based on

different use cases and banking pain points, and digital engagement is part of the broader set of services we provide,” Green relates. It may begin

with an assessment but then evolves into an actual implementation and training.

“Helping the client understand the value of digital engagement and get LiveEngage configured to deliver optimal results is a critical starting point,” Green

says. “Then, to encourage adoption, we offer a ‘train the trainer’ approach where we work with the client to certify their employees to do training.”

The response of Extraco Consulting clients has been very positive. “Our clients typically see high digital adoption rates after deployment,” Green

reports. “And as growing numbers of customers use digital engagement, this drives website traffic.”

As part of the consulting engagement, Extraco Consulting works with its clients to construct a scorecard that is used to hone their metrics around

live chat deployment and all other touch points the client provides for interactions with their customers. “This enables them to showcase how the

increase in interactions translates into more tangible results such as improved conversion rates, enhanced customer satisfaction, and even higher

referral rates,” Green explains.

Recognizing the value it was seeing around mobile live chat into those engagements, Extraco Consulting added this component to its consulting

offerings in early 2013. “It makes sense to include both,” Green notes. “We advise our clients on everything from the design of their websites, to what

marketing strategies they should implement, to technology options.”

SWARM to the futureExtraco Banks is constantly evolving its business and the technologies it uses to help it to maintain its competitive differentiation. This feeds the services portfolio for

Extraco Consulting at the same time. For 2014, Geeslin and Green see big data—specifically the conversation analysis for live chat—as critically important.

Green elaborates: “The conversations we have with our customers via live chat is something that we can learn from. The data will enable us to analyze our live

chat sessions and how we can more effectively engage with our customers.”

The SWARM is gathering on the horizon, and the future is bright. It is dynamic and transformative, and full of value for Extraco Banks and Extraco Consulting.

Supervisors and managers need to be able to do more than tell; they must be able to coach as well.

– James Geeslin, Vice Chairman and CCBO, Extraco Banks, and Chairman and CEO, Extraco Consulting

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #LiveEngage

About LivePersonLivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) offers a cloud-based platform that enables businesses to proactively connect in real-time with their customers via chat, voice, and content delivery at the right time, through the right channel, including websites, social media, and mobile devices. This “intelligent engagement” is driven by real-time behavioral analytics, producing connections based on a true understanding of business objectives and customer needs. LivePerson is headquartered in New York City with offices in San Francisco, Atlanta, Tel Aviv, London, Amsterdam, and Melbourne.

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New York, NY 10018 www.liveperson.com

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Extraco Banks and Consulting