Automated teller machine makers are using customer relationship management software to link the ATM more closely to banks’ branches, online banking sites, and call centers.
Traditionally, ATMs have functioned in a separate silo, with little direct communication with other channels. But banks want to send customers a consistent message through every channel, and ATM vendors say their latest products will finally help banks reach the long-sought goal of one-to-one advertising.
NCR Corp.’s Customer Power Manager, for instance, lets banks share customer data between ATMs and other channels.
For example, an ATM might ask customers if they are interested in a certain credit card, and then relay the answer to other channels, said Sharon Dickie, the marketing director for software and security with NCR’s Dundee, Scotland, manufacturing plant. Other bank channels can avoid being an annoyance to customers who declined by offering them the product again, she said. But if customers say they are interested, Ms. Dickie said, “then it could be fulfilled in a different way. For example, an e-mail could be sent” through the online banking channel.
NCR, of Dayton, Ohio, introduced Customer Power Manager in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia in May (OCBC Bank in Singapore is using it) and has just started rolling it out in North America. The tool is part of NCR’s Aptra Relate customer relationship marketing software.
The U.S. subsidiary of Germany’s Wincor Nixdorf began offering a similar product, ProSales, last year and has signed up 10 ProSales customers around the world, including Susquehanna Bancshares Inc. of Lititz, Pa.
John Pillmann, the solutions sales director for Wincor Nixdorf’s U.S. banking division, said ProSales can manage marketing campaigns on ATMs and for video displays in bank branches. It can identify individual customers and tailor advertisements to them at the ATM, he said. Until now, such one-to-one marketing was unrealistic because neither the ATMs nor the CRM software could support it, and the networks connecting the ATMs were not fast enough to download a custom ad.
Diebold Inc.’s Campaign Office software, released in May, gives banks the ability to distinguish and market to other banks’ customers who use their ATMs. The software enables ATMs to identify non-customers by their cards’ Bank identification Numbers, and gives the banks an opportunity to acquire them.
However, Tim Sloane, the director for debit advisory services at Mercator Advisory Group Inc. in Waltham, Mass., said one-to-one advertising is still a ways off. Banks are more focused on integrating such channels as the teller and online banking.
“If someone applied for a loan with the online banking system, being able to communicate that to the branch is difficult,” he said, “and if you can’t communicate it to the branch, then you probably can’t communicate it to the ATM.”
