David Pope, SVP, Wachovia Corp. states “One of the important issues in branch operation is: What happens during the quiet part of the day when nobody is coming in? As an industry, what processes and tools are we adopting that allow branch employees to productively fill the times when customer traffic is low?”

According to Alexander Berry III, EVP, Crestar Corp., banks say “if we get rid of that [branch] overhead, then we can have better earnings.” He comments that “Instead we should be thinking about enlarging the already-tremendous value derived through the branch.”

David Mooney, SVP, Chase Manhattan Corp. sums up the industry’s dilemma when he says, “The issue isn’t so much expense per se. The issue is productivity and how much revenue you can generate in support of any given level of expense. A lot of it gets down to how you use all your resources – the employees, the physical space, and your customer base. Some of our studies show that branch personnel spend more than half their time on activities that aren’t directly related to revenue generation and maintenance.”
Quotes from Banking Strategies magazine.

• Banks cannot afford to have licensed product experts sitting in every branch.
• Bankers in the branch do not control when customers visit…this creates banker “downtime”.
• The ZIBEX Solution eliminates downtime. Bankers “log on” to serve remote customers.
• Internet communications enables bankers to serve customers…
• in any other branch,
• customers at work or
• customers at home using voice over IP or two-way videoconferencing over the Internet.
• Internet communications also connects these same customers to networked mortgage, insurance or investment representatives.

The retail branch banking “broken, mission critical process” impacts the top 100 banks in the US…

• serving over 141,000,000 bank customers
• 14 million Internet banking customers (10% of customers).

The top 100 banks must deal with isolated delivery channels:

• Call center channel:
  2,300 bank call centers currently offer self-service (about 80% of the calls are processed by a voice recognition unit [VRU]) or live help from a customer service representative.
• Internet banking channel:
  Bank web sites offer ONLY self-service over the Internet. Immediate, live help for an estimated 14 million Internet users is currently not available.
• Retail branch channel:
  54,000 branches, with over 100,000 bankers, serve primarily walk-in traffic. The inability to control traffic volume results in these bankers spending less than 50% of their day with customers, and selling on average, fewer than 2 products (new accounts, loans, credit cards, etc.) per day.

Segregated delivery channels lead banks to overlook the importance of connecting branch and call center bankers to the Internet. This confines sales fulfillment in the branch to branch visitors. Lacking the full range of product experts, the branch fails to capture many sales opportunities. The “self-service only” nature of current bank web sites means customers seeking live help must “abandon their shopping carts” since live support is not an option. Consequently, banks miss the opportunity to leverage available staff time to produce additional sales from existing customers, not to mention acquiring new customers.