Barclays in the U.K. is often cited as the bank that kicked off the touch screen trend in late 2008 when it incorporated Microsoft's Surface technology into its new, Piccadilly branch. The Surface technology is a screen built into a table top that customers can touch or swipe with their hands. Since 2008, several big financial institutions have introduced the technology into flagship branches, including Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Umpqua Bank and, most recently, Royal Bank of Canada. "In every branch design I've seen lately I see a touch screen," says Jeffrey Pilcher, a consultant and publisher of The Financial Brand.com. "It's really in vogue."
RBC, which debuted the technology in January and is the first bank to commit to upgrade to Surface 2.0 later this year, has made Surface the focal point of the Discovery Zone in its Toronto and Halifax branches. "When someone walks into a branch, they have something on their mind. We want to make customers feel more comfortable to learn, explore, research and then get the conversation going," says Alan Depencier, vp of marketing services and transformation for RBC. The Surface technology is not meant to replace human interaction, he emphasizes, but to facilitate a conversation.
Seibert says RBC is taking the right approach by letting customers interact on their own terms with the aim to have a face-to-face conversation. It goes to the heart of why we still need branches, he says. "Customers are not coming to a branch to see the latest, coolest technology, they're coming because they want a physical relationship. ...The point of the technology should be to accelerate the relationship with the staff."
Depencier describes several Surface applications designed to get conversations going. (Infusion, a third-party developer based in New York, helped RBC design the applications for Surface.) The Big Picture lets customers research products and services. Near the Surface table are physical cards that each briefly describe a financial topic. If the customer wants more information, he or she places a card on the Surface screen, which reads a tag and launches an interactive video.
There's also a Drop-a-Coin application. A customer or bank employee can wave any coin across the screen. Surface recognizes the coin and launches a program about the value of regular investing and the power of compound interest. "A lot of customers don't understand the value of consistent contributions, or the value of tax-free savings growth over time," Depencier says. "It's a great conversation starter."
But the Surface application that most caught the attention of Pilcher and Seibert is the Instant Win application, which ties old-style marketing to 21st century technology. In its debut earlier this year, RBC mailed thousands of pieces of direct mail to customers. To learn if they had won a prize, customers needed to bring their letter into the branch and place it on the Surface screen, which before revealing the results asked questions about financial goals. The prizes were Visa gift cards and every participant received a $5 Tim Hortons gift certificate. The response rate was 10%, Depencier says, compared to 1-3% for the typical direct mail campaign. "If you can get someone to get off the couch and come into the branch, you have a good chance at having a conversation," he says.
Pilcher says: "I like the winning ticket idea because that uses the technology to drive incremental branch traffic." With that kind of creative thinking, he says, RBC is avoiding the trap of using a new technology simply because it's cutting edge. He describes some Surface applications at banks as "silly," such as those that let customers check stock quotes and read news. "I don't need to go to my bank to read news. Surface is a cool new tool and people are in a rush to deploy it, but many haven't found the problem they're looking to solve." Banks need to ask: "What are we really trying to do here?"
