Customers at a few banks in the U.S. and U.K. are now being watched in ways they may have never imagined. Video cameras track their every move, from front door to information kiosk to teller desk, noting where they turn and look around, where they stop in confusion and how long they wait in line.
New high-tech security tools? No. It's a new system designed to improve customers' in-branch experiences. In one recent implementation, queuing time was reduced by 25%, from an average of 1 minute, 52 seconds to 1 minute, 28 seconds. And, the 24-second difference was found to have made a difference.
Using the cameras and related sensors and software, branch managers can track exactly how individual customers are using their branches - both historically and in real time. Onscreen alerts let managers know when current customers' waiting times are approaching maximum limits, so new teller lines can be opened and congested queues relieved.
The technology was developed by Atlanta-based Brickstream, which counts Bank of America, Wells Fargo and SunTrust among its customers. A recent TowerGroup report documents how it was used at several Lloyds TSB branches in the United Kingdom.
The cameras feed information to a "dashboard" on managers' desktop PCs, which indicate current wait times, with 2 minutes set as the ideal and 5 minutes as the maximum. Two levels of alerts, yellow and red, indicate climbing wait times, when 10% to 20% of waiting customers are standing in line longer than the ideal limit.
This approach gives branch managers quantitative information to supplement what were previously "gut" impressions of peak times and required staffing.
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"Gut instinct is all well and good, but it does not give you facts," says Chris Skinner, a TowerGroup associate director and co-author of the Lloyds case study. "Branch managers previously could only guess how long a customer waited. Now they know. And that is relevant to every bank that has branches."
Skinner says that relevance has played out in higher customer satisfaction scores, as measured by independent market researchers hired by Lloyds. Scores jumped 19% at one branch - from 63 points to 75 points -- following system implementation.
Skinner, who is also founder of a financial-technology network called Balatro, Ltd., spends much of his time looking at how technology will shape the future of banking. He says the next advances may include radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips in a bank's ATM cards, which could enable banks to seamlessly track customer interactions across all channels in real time.
How is customer privacy protected in this kind of customer data-gathering application? Tom Chmielewski, Brickstream's marketing vice president, says the system maintains no video record of identifiable customers and is no more intrusive than a security camera.
More advanced tracking using RFID and wireless technologies may raise questions, Skinner acknowledges. "If you start advertising great loan rates because you have just spotted me leaving a casino, then I may love you for it or hate you," Skinner says. "If I gave you permission to make those offers to me, then go for it. If I did not, then leave me alone."
Skinner will be presenting a "Winning Tomorrow's Customers-Strategies to Identify and Leverage Customer Needs, New Technology and Channel Preferences for the Next Five Years" preconference workshop Nov. 14 as part of BAI's Retail Delivery Conference & Expo.
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