4 June 2007

With the general shift towards multi-channel banking, one could be forgiven for thinking that the branch teller is becoming redundant. However, this has never been further from the truth. As more and more customers use online and telephone banking channels, those few visits that they do make inside the branch become central to the banking relationship - what the customer experiences at a branch, much like their perception of any retail outing, is vital to deepening their loyalty and increasing the amount of business they conduct with the bank.

Banks are relentless in their pursuit of increased productivity and efficiency, putting more and more pressure on the teller. Further pressure comes from the customer, who, in today's technology-led society, comes to a branch armed with information from the Web, expecting the teller to be able to answer every question about every product or service. Yet some banks can have up to 600 products; no teller can be an expert in all these products. Therefore banks are faced with a challenge: to enable tellers to access information quickly and effectively, or face the consequences.

"One of the key challenges faced by banks in many countries is the high rate of turnover of employees at the teller position," says Jean-Paul Adans, senior vice president of portfolio and alliances at Getronics. "One of the key factors to tellers leaving their bank is the need for more training due to the complexity of the banking systems. An alternative to increased training is to simplify the process for the teller employee as much as possible. Providing current technology applications, such as Microsoft Windows, gives employees a sense of familiarity. An organised multi-view application that serves as a portal tool for transaction applications, customer information and contact history, business process rules, and other aspects of the teller's responsibility reduces the disparity between the different host applications and lowers the teller learning curve."

"Banks are increasingly challenged to make transactions in the teller line as efficient as possible, while also using it to effectively build relationships with customers," says Andrew Steadman, spokesperson for product strategy, platform solutions at Fiserv. "As the use of unmanned channels, such as ATMs and the Internet increases, it is often in the teller line that banks have the majority of interpersonal contact with their clients. Of course, the bank's client wishes to execute his or her transaction as fast as possible while the bank wishes to nurture the relationship. Often, the tellers are hampered from doing so as many teller systems do not present the total customer relationship."

No longer a reactive transaction processor, the teller now has the proactive juggling act of a customer services representative, sales person and administrator. But to manage this multitude of roles, the teller needs effective technology; a converged system that will allow him or her to access vital, up to the minute information quickly and effectively.

"A JD Powers study in 2006 showed that transactions have the greatest impact on the customer's overall satisfaction with the bank," says John Bryant, director of field marketing at Unisys. "Customers want the convenience of online banking, where the average transaction time is 2.8 minutes, with the personalisation of interacting with a human, where the average transaction time is 7.7 minutes. Delivering real-time, actionable information to tellers is critical so that less time is spent on the transaction and more time on the interaction."

But it's not easy for technology companies. "There are vast cultural differences in the way banks need to move forward in order to keep customers happy," says Michael Rasch, industry manager for banking at Microsoft. "We have different trends depending on the region. In the Middle East and Africa, queuing is considered a way of life; you simply enter the branch, take a number and wait your turn – people are happy with that. In Finland and Norway they have actively reduced the number of branches to divert customers to other channels. Instead they have specialised branches for more complex things. In Spain things are different again; visiting the branch is a social event where you meet weekly for a cup of coffee. Because of this huge difference across regions, it is increasingly difficult for technology companies, there is no out-of-the-box solution. The technology needs to adapt to suit the needs of the individual banks."

So how has technology evolved to meet the varying needs of the teller? One example lies in Getronics' branch automation solution, Globalfs, which provides a single view of the integrated core applications that tellers use to complete their jobs. The Globalfs system is derived from Microsoft .NET architecture, leveraging Web services throughout. It is designed to provide business tier services from a central location allowing for the cost of server hardware and maintenance to be eliminated from the branch. This system allows the branch to continue to process transactions even if a network connection is not available, and post those transactions to the system once the network is restored. This capability also allows banks to offer one- on-one remote banking to provide that extra level of service to high value customers.

"Integrating the various system applications into a single view of transaction, customer and bank information elevates a teller into a better environment for serving customers," says Adans of Getronics. "New teller employees have the added benefit of Teller Assist which provides context- specific help as they enter transactions. Rarely used transactions are also Teller Assist enabled to help guide employees through often forgotten complex business processes. Risk management is enforced through cash limits and a remote override feature of Globalfs allows a teller to request an override from authorised people when their own supervisor is engaged elsewhere."

Fiserv also offers a .NET based solution, CBS Teller. Its customer interaction system, Fiserv Aperio, integrates with CBS Teller and enables a bank to move tellers from being transaction-focused employees to those who are empowered to nurture a relationship with a customer. For those banks that don't want to undergo complete core system replacement, Fiserv Aperio can deliver its capabilities into an existing system by presenting a composite application to users. Banks can maintain familiarity with what they know from their existing system while gaining additional knowledge from Fiserv Aperio that is presented during their customer interaction.

"Fiserv Aperio is a customer interaction management solution that enables an organisation to execute business processes across all channels in an integrated manner while delivering relevant information to bank staff at the point of interaction," says Fiserv's Steadman. "The delivery of campaign prompts, knowledge of outstanding complaints as well as the ability to deliver work to other parts of the organisation and initiate sales leads during a financial transaction is key to empowering the teller so that the interaction, however short, can be as productive and positive as possible. Knowing that the customer previously enquired about a product on another channel allows a teller to be proactive and ask if he or she can assist in pursuing the opportunity. CBS Teller and Fiserv Aperio enable tellers to become empowered workers with intelligence from all channels at their fingertips. Instead of a one-way financial transaction, the interaction becomes valuable yet still efficient for both the customer and the bank."

Unisys' teller-enabler is its Transaction Manager, which unifies operations, data, and processes by delivering a scalable, Web-enabled solution for interacting with and improving service to customers. Unisys enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, incorporating key integrated document management, imaging, workflow and business process management tools, help banks meet increasingly demanding service challenges and make the move to near paperless branches and operations.

"Our solution eliminates mundane data entry and cash counting movements. For instance 65 per cent of teller transactions require cash counting," says Bryant of Unisys. "A cash recycler eliminates the teller's requirement to count cash and frees them up to spend time with more personalised service. Business intelligence provides a total view of the customer, enabling tellers to better service their anticipated needs. Transactions and administration functions are integrated and linked into branch business processes wherever possible, rather than seen as discrete items requiring specialist training and dedicated employees. The system guides the teller rather than the teller having to know what specific steps or series of transactions they have to perform next."

Microsoft technology underpins each of these solutions. "Microsoft-based solutions support improved customer service at the teller level, as well as more effective identification and hand-off of up-sell and cross-sell opportunities from the teller to the branch seller such as a financial advisor, loan specialist, or mortgage specialist - turning the branch into a strategic sales asset. Tellers can therefore not only support transactions more efficiently and effectively – to dramatically improve the customer experience - but also become more effective agents for identifying and passing opportunities first recognised at the point of transaction. This improves branch profitability, share of wallet, and the quality of the customer's overall banking relationship."

So it seems that teller technology has progressed significantly over the years and will continue to advance. But what does the future hold? "I think the classic branch will evolve further to give the teller more flexibility," says Rasch. "There will be no structured counters, but instead free seating, leading to a more relaxed customer experience. Tellers will have tablet PCs or similar to allow further freedom, so they can visit clients at home if necessary. This is already common practice at some banks in Europe where there has been a move towards the mobile branch.

"Furthermore, all banks will have the ability to recognise the individual characteristics of each customer when they interface with the bank, and can respond to their individual needs. Using business intelligence, analytics and rules engines, banks will be able to route the servicing of a customer to the most appropriate channel (that is, least-cost routing). This could also provide valuable segment differentiation ability for premium banking customers. In practice this means that a customer entering a branch, calling a contact centre or going online will receive recognition of their worth to the organisation and their likely needs. If a customer performs the same transaction every time they enter the branch, the bank will have this information and be able to act on it in an anticipatory way."

"Tellers will continue to be a vital resource to the bank," says Bryant. "They put a face and personality to the bank. Technologies will continue to allow tellers to do their job more efficiently while expanding the services to their customers. In addition, the use of secure, private RFID for preferred high street customers enables a personalised approach to servicing all clients. This includes that all-important high street shop owner who is typically one of the most profitable customer groups that the bank services."