People need Banking – not Banks!! – Are we ready for this ?
Unleashing the “Power of Channels & Creating Superior Customer Experience”
Let us step back and go to the late 80s and the early 90s when a Bank in that era used to make its prime mark by making itself present in flesh and blood (often referred to as “Brick & Mortar” presence) as a Branch or Store in one’s neighbourhood. A customer of a Bank had no alternative but to necessarily make visit to the Bank Branch and engage with appropriate Bank staff for satisfactory fulfillment of the intended transactions. Planning to make a visit to a Bank was no different from a visit to any other place that carries with it logistics challenges in terms of time and distance, operating and / or business hours window,
For the multiple alternate channels that exist today in banking, it’s been a very important and significant journey commencing from being a mere mode of communication between a bank and customer to one of being “almost the Bank” itself today.
What are these alternate channels? Phone Banking / Call Center / Tele Banking, Internet, TV, Mobile, ATM, POS, Kiosks, Franchisees, agents/advisors are some of the common channels that are available today. By the very description of ‘alternate channels’, it tantamount to something that is only an alternate to the traditional channel of Branch or Stores channel – often referred to as “brick and mortar”.
More often than not, these are also referred as “Delivery Channels” implying that these channels (other than Branch / Stores) exist mainly as a convenient mode for delivering Banking products / services and not services / products per se. The early stages of emergence of alternate channels were seen more as one of ‘convenience enrichment’ with the ability of being efficient ‘outlets’ and / or ‘transporters’ of data and/or services. The original driver for most Banks to go in for alternate channels was also cost as transactions costs of a “Brick & Mortar” outlet were significantly higher than those done through alternate channels. This era was followed by a period of enhanced product delivery and services by the channels and today the challenge to banks is in providing not only enrichment of services but also a consistent customer experience across all the channels. Although, alternate channels initially enticed Banks with lower cost of operations, today one sees appearance of newer costs that banks are incurring predominantly in technology infrastructure in view of a different customer behavior that is characterized by increased banking interactions. This is clearly due to the easier availability of services at superior convenience at lower risk levels for the customer.
Gone are those days when one had to necessarily go to a Bank even to do a simple transaction like a cash withdrawal from his / her account with the bank. We first saw the emergence of “ATM” (defined as Automatic Teller Machine) that made an early mark in the society as basic cash dispenser. In fact the acronym “ATM” was even redefined as “Any Time Money” signifying its utility as a money dispenser without the limitations of Branch working hours. This is history as an ATM today, in addition to being a cash dispenser, delivers multiple services like cash deposit, cheque deposit, balance enquiry, statement of account, cheque book request, investment options, payments towards credit cards, utility payments (telephone / electricity / water bills, mobile top-ups, etc) and payments to third parties as well. These have naturally evolved over a period of time and sophisticated ATMs that have entered the market have also enriched the levels of security as well in the form of in-built cameras, biometric based security levels, audio confirmations in multiple languages etc.