After my presentation to a senior manager meeting recently, the president of the bank engaged me in a brief conversation. He joked that he appreciated my comments to his team about not getting their feelings hurt by customers' changing banking preferences.
I had suggested that the "branch experience" most banks provide now is better than it's ever been. There's a greater focus on service, lines are shorter and faster, and the branch environments are more inviting.
And yet the foot traffic in our branches has fallen and will continue to fall. This is not because we're doing a poor job in our branches. It's simply because the products and services we deliver, and subsequently support, increasingly do not require branch visits. That's our new reality.
I totally understand that if your job is running a branch or supervising a branch network, you may not like feeling that the future viability of your business model is being questioned.
But I'm also quick to point out to bankers that I don't believe branches are going away anytime soon. The presence of branches continues to weigh heavily on customers' preferences in a bank. This is true even with customers who seldom or never actually darken the doorstep of a branch.
Not that the point needs much illustrating these days, but to make the point, I often ask bankers to consider their own banking habits. Heck, even bankers who work every day in a branch often tell me that they themselves seldom have need to use their own branch for their personal banking.
I've found that this fact is something that branch teams can benefit from being reminded of a little more often. The need for everything from our branch designs, to our individual daily routines, to evolve is not an indictment on how we've previously done our jobs. Industries evolve. It's up to us whether we move ahead or fall behind as they do.
I predict that the often-maligned, in-store banking channel will be receiving more attention and respect from bankers in years to come. Smaller, less expensive branches staffed by cross-trained teams in locations with built in foot traffic … well, just make sense. Similar arguments can be made for "in-line" and "on-site" branches.
However, an important point I make to folks is that these branches are not immune to the fact that customers are moving away from branches. Their strength is not simply in being a more convenient branch. (Remember, customers increasingly define convenience as not having to use a branch at all.)
It's about having access and the ability to have bankers interacting face to face with existing and potential customers on a frequent basis. In an industry whose products are being increasingly commoditized by technology, the human element is one of the last true differentiators.
Trying to be a little provocative to make a point, I've suggested to several banker groups that the best way to keep their branches viable is to focus more of their efforts outside of their branches. When saying that, I'm not suggesting that the branch experience doesn't matter. It most certainly does.
But increasingly, people are not walking into branches to shop for banking products. They are doing their shopping, researching and due diligence on laptops and smartphones at their kitchen tables. If we are not engaging potential customers where they live, work, shop and play, we're likely to lose out to competitors who are out there outhustling us.
On the positive side, the same technologies that may make branches less relevant to customers also allow us to expand the potential territories of the bankers who call those same branches their base.
Regardless of what the branches of the future look like, the "banker of the future" will almost assuredly be the human interface of an online operation. And the most successful of them will operate with the understanding that their bank's value proposition to a customer is not simply a collection of buildings with vaults in them.
Increasingly, your bank's "footprint" is anywhere your bankers are.
Dave Martin is an executive vice president and chief training consultant at NCBS, a SunTrust Banks Inc. subsidiary that offers consulting, training, design and construction services for retail banking programs. He can be reached at
