No matter how slick bank apps get, as far as much of the public is concerned, tellers are still the face of the institution. Even if customers prefer to do most of their day-to-day banking remotely, many still want at least the option of walking into a bank and talking to a person.
But it’s widely known that branches are expensive to operate, and keeping tellers on staff simply to perform routine transactions is not an efficient use of resources. So how does a bank today strike the right compromise?
For the $125 billion-asset Regions Financial in Birmingham, Ala., the solution was to get rid of teller jobs entirely — but not necessarily the people in them.
“If you think about a branch having anywhere from six to 15 people, it’s really inefficient to support two different job classes,” said Scott Peters, a senior executive vice president and head of consumer services at Regions. “If your whole job was just as a teller doing transactions and you didn’t have a transaction standing in front of you, you really weren’t very productive and couldn’t provide a lot of value to our customers.”
For a while, Regions had both tellers and universal bankers staffing its branches. As of this year, however, the company did away with the teller role, collapsing it into one job family that it simply calls “bankers.” The change was less a rebranding exercise and more a wholesale shift in how the bank thinks about and trains its front-line staff, an issue that most banks are wrestling with today.
Declining foot traffic to branches has led many financial institutions to reconfigure their branch networks, often closing less profitable locations and opening smaller, advice-based branches in highly visible locations. In the process, banks are also reckoning with what that means for their branch staff, often rebranding them as universal bankers and sometimes putting their own spin on the new title.
Umpqua Bank in Portland, Ore., for example,
Regions’ has shrunk its branch network 20% since 2010 but has been opening new branches in select, high-growth markets like St. Louis, Houston and Atlanta. The new branches typically follow an updated format: They’re furnished with new tech and staffed by universal bankers, and they lack traditional teller lines.
Although Regions officially eliminated the teller title as of Jan. 1, the company has been moving in this direction for some time now, Peters said.
About four years ago, Regions established a training program called “Building Better Bankers,” which has formed some of the foundation for this change. As they progress through that program, branch staff learn to have conversations with customers about any of a number of different needs, from borrowing to retirement to everyday banking.
New hires have been enrolled into that program, and late in 2017 Regions classified its existing tellers into one of four job classes, depending on their training and experience. A banker 1, for instance, would handle a higher proportion of cash transactions, while a banker 2 can open a deposit account for a customer. Training happens both online and in a classroom setting, and bankers advance to the next level when they attain training and certification in a new skill set.
Broadly, this also means that Regions has changed its hiring profile for the role, Peters said. New hires, even those starting out on the very lowest rung, are coming into the organization now with the intent of eventually moving up the ladder as they attain more skills and certifications.
The program also includes training in the bank’s digital channels and how to coach customers in using those channels.
Digital savviness is an oft-overlooked quality in branch staff and one that is going to be increasingly helpful if, say, customers want their banker to walk them through the app or online bill pay, said Chris Gill, senior director of global advisory services at Diebold Nixdorf. Yet, many banks do not ask for that when they are seeking out candidates to fill these roles.
“Most job descriptions that we’ve seen from banks we work with don’t mention that knowledge of digital channels as a job requirement,” he said. Not only should banks include that in the job description, but Gill also believes banks would do well to ask job candidates about what their favorites apps are and why during the interview process.
Ironically, the more tech-driven the industry becomes, the more important those customer-facing roles are.
Many bankers have long acknowledged they cannot compete much on price — a checking account is a checking account, after all — and as technology becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, it is also becoming less of a differentiator.
When that happens, the banks with the best people and the best customer service will come out on top, said Dave Martin, a retail banking consultant.
“Why are people coming to branches? They’re coming for advice, they’re coming for help or maybe for more complex transactions they can’t handle on their own,” he said. “Total visits may be less than they were in the past, but the actual importance of each visit is higher. So the level of service and the impression you’re making on these customers is even more impactful than it was before.”
Consumer satisfaction, both with banks in general and with Regions specifically, has been improving steadily since the last recession despite widespread branch closures, said David Van Amburg, managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. (Regions also was one of a handful of banks whose score improved in
Some of that is a result of increasing customer satisfaction with digital channels, Van Amburg said, but customer satisfaction with tellers and other staff has also been on the rise.
“To be able to have that cross-training where in theory any personnel in that bank could help you with anything you need help with, that’s not digital — but it speaks to that approach that focuses on speed, efficiency and customers being able to accomplish what they want to get done in one step,” he said. “It’s not surprising to see Regions rank where it does and see that it’s improving.”
