MILWAUKEE, Wis. -
"Of course you have to look at ROI and track for it branch separately. You have to look at wallet share and a profitability assessment and then determine, 'can we do this better and make more money by not moving,'" suggested Ralph La Macchia of La Macchia Group, here. "We had one client that had a legacy branch-and calling it a "legacy" is being kind, it was more of an "antiquity"-and they knew it wasn't a good situation, but it had a gigantic deposit base, so it seemed like the members really didn't care."
But looking at the branch without looking at what's going on around it-particularly what the competition is up to-is a mistake, La Macchia advised.
"This was an area that was ripe for other financial institutions to come in, so we felt strongly it needed to be remodeled."
The challenge: how to ensure that the time spent remodeling didn't become an opportunity for those would-be competitors to come in and lure members away from the credit union.
"What you don't want is to shut down your branch to remodel, and then as soon as the competition sees that, they quickly open up a temporary shop across the street and pull your members away," La Macchia related.
In this particular case, the answer was to find a way to continue operations at the branch as much as possible while engaged in the renovations.
"We essentially built a new branch right on top of the old one. The entire branch was shut down for only one day. The drive-through was closed for about a week," La Macchia explained. "Otherwise, we just closed certain areas down so that the branch could stay up and running almost the entire time."
Seeing a branch through the eyes of the member is absolutely necessary-but understanding what the competition sees is also valuable.
"We may not always want to hear it, but we need to know what would the competition say about us," he observed. "It's not always pleasant, but you can learn a lot from it."
Often, the bigger issue, however, is being able to afford to remodel a branch in the first place.
"If you can't afford to do a complete remodel, then spend your money in areas that directly impact the member relationship," La Macchia advised. "Nothing beats a new entrance. Nothing beats a new teller line or a new lobby. It may not be the difference between a member joining or not, but it does impact your employees. When you fix up a branch, employees suddenly dress differently, they decide to turn it up a couple of notches. It's not just cosmetic. It's also about service and the whole experience."
CUJ Asks The Experts
Other tips from Ralph La Macchia:
* Landscap-ing is another great way to revitalize a branch for a whole lot less than a full remodeling job.
* Avoid trendy décor in the first place. "Dusty rose, which is really a mauve, screams 1986. In 1993, everyone was putting this sort of half daisy above their entrances," he observed. "If the last time you looked at a branch was 1995, it's time to change it. If it was 2000, you're probably all right."
* Privacy is important. "If you have interview stations that are out in the open or anything that takes away from the privacy of the member experience, you need to fix that."
FOR MORE RESOURCES
For info on this story:
* www.lamacchiagrouop.com
* www.kdaholdingsinc.com
* www.hbecorp.com
* www.pwcampbell.com
