Take RFID. It’s certainly not a new technology by any stretch, but the practical application of RFID within the context of in-store digital media is still somewhat unproven, or at least far from mainstream. If we drill down even further to the banking vertical (the world John Ryan works it), it becomes even more challenging to imagine how RFID chips can be used to enhance the customer experience or further the dialogue between bankers and their customers. Sure, lots of visions about the “bank of the future” involve RFID, which identifies customers as they enter the branch, etc., etc. But that’s way off, for a host of reasons, including privacy issues and cost.

So, what can be done with RFID that doesn’t require millions of dollars, complete branch overhauls and (gasp) the involvement of IT?

In the spirit of our last post on DIY digital signage technology, I’d like to draw your attention to some strange RFID technology that I found on a gadget blog and that seems to be ripe for integration with digital signage.

Mir:ror is a personal RFID scanner that connects to any PC via USB. When used in conjunction with its accompanying software, Mir:ror is able to trigger different actions on it’s host PC, such as launching software or running macros. The Mir:ror costs around €50.

Violet, the company behind Mir:ror also sells colorful RFID tags (cost: €20 per dozen), which users can affix to any object, such as file folders, coffee mugs, etc. The tags themselves can be assigned attributes, so that once you’ve tagged an item (say, your car keys), you can drop it on the scanner and it reads the RFID tag and then prompts an action (e.g., email your loved ones that you’ve arrived home safely).

So, back to the question of using RFID in a digital signage context: it seems that a product like Mir:ror opens up all sorts of possibilities for letting users (customers or employees) interact with on-screen content. For instance:

• Sales staff with RFID tags on their badges could interrupt regular programming to launch guided sales content.
• Staff or customers could wave brochures or objects representing different products in order to launch specific content about that product.
• Sales staff, identified by their own RFID tags, could launch guided sales content that is tailored to the products that rep is licensed to sell.
• Customers could interact with content by waving different tagged items in front of the Mir:ror scanner. For example, in response to a survey question, such as “Where do you live?,” a customer could wave a card with the Union Jack printed on it to register their answer as England.

With this form of interactivity, it would be possible to turn any monitor into an interactive monitor (good news, if your budget doesn’t allow for touch screens). That is, if your digital signage platform allows for interactive content.

What’s more, by having users move objects to interact with the screen, we introduce a kinetic element to the UI — a dimension that is lacking in many interactive experiences.

What would you do with cheap RFID scanners and tags? Please let us know in the comments section!

You could also look at TacTable’s Smart Table. No idea if it retails for less or more than Microsoft’s product, but it has been around longer. In the demo video below, which shows how a Smart Table was implemented at Sprint’s Kansas City, Mo., store, you can see that the interactivity is as sophisticated and elegant as anything that’s been done in the Surface realm, if not more so. Besides using one’s fingers to interact with the surface, one can place coasters (called “fiducials”) on the table and then use them as controls. Each fiducial can have its own properties and behaviors. A fiducial that looks like a TV-set dial can actually be turned to change channels on the TV set being shown.

This kind of interactivity opens up all kinds of possibilities. It’s no surprise that a number of TacTable’s installs have been in museums. The richness of the UI demands an equal richness of supporting content — and an environment where visitors have the time and motivaton to explore. But, no doubt over time we’ll start to see multi-touch experiences incorporated into more and more task-intensive retail environments

According to the Shifted Librarian blog, the DOK Library Concept Center in Delft, Holland has pioneered its own form of digital signage:

Amazingly, the information system is a Wii channel, and every one of these navigation TVs spread throughout the building has its own Wii attached to display the channel! the administrative backend can be accessed by staff via a web browser for easy updates from anywhere.

Photo credit:

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Slides

Below are the slides presented by Bob Steele, vice chairman of John Ryan, as well as a transcript of his presentation.

Transcript

[1] Thank you for attending “Digital Signage in Retail Financial Services.” I’m Don and I’ll be working behind the scenes to keep the webinar running smoothly. Please know that you can use the Webinar software to submit questions for our panelists. Now I’d like to introduce Bob Steele, Vice Chairman of John Ryan.

[2] Hi, I’m Bob Steele and I’d like to thank you for attending today’s webinar.  I’d also like to introduce our two special guests:

• Paco Underhill, Envirosell founder and CEO, and best-selling author of “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping”
• Mike Hiatt, Former Director of In-Store Media Networks at Wal-Mart

[3] Today we’ll begin by summarizing the results of John Ryan’s international survey, which highlights recent developments in the use of digital signage in banking. Then, after some intial thoughts from Paco and Mike, we hope to provide you with some valuable ideas to help you champion and implement digital signage in your bank.

[4] John Ryan recently conducted an in-depth survey of marketing and retail executives, asking them detailed questions on range of subjects, including:

• How are you using P.O.S. techniques today?
• What’s the role of digital marketing in your bank?
• What’s working for you?
• What’s not working?

[5] We cast a wide net, covering leading banks throughout Europe and South Africa. Together, these banks represent over 44,000 branches across 23 countries.

[6] If your bank is still evaluating its digital signage options, you have an opportunity to learn from the early adopters in our survey, who provided insights regarding:

• Adoption rates
• Content creation, and
• Management tools

[7] The survey showed that digital signage is skyrocketing, with 90% of the banks interviewed having already deployed or planning to deploy soon. 80% of the respondents told us that they believe the use of digital signage will continue to grow rapidly over the next 3-5 years throughout the banking industry.

In fact, 50% described digital signage as a “utility” rather than a differentiator – a response that seems to indicate that digital signage is already considered a basic component of in-branch communications. No surprise then, that nearly 90% of the banks surveyed have already tested some form of digital signage. Of those, two-thirds expect to rollout a full digital signage program.

[8] The banks interviewed are using digital signage to fulfill many communications needs, with a third already taking advantage of its unique ability to “localize”—or show locally relevant messages in different branches. In addition, more than 10 percent of the banks are using digital signage for  “staff-directed communications.”

[9] Moreover, every indication is that even more banks would be using digital signage to fine-tune messaging if they could find an easy way to do so.  Almost two-thirds of our survey respondents told us that keeping content fresh with relevant and local messaging constituted their greatest management challenge.

[10] Why is localization so challenging?  In part, respondents blame lack of appropriate content management tools.  In other cases, respondents were frustrated by the fact that management systems were not web-accessible.

Other challenges include an inability to produce sufficient volumes of content affordably, a lack of internal work-flow systems, and a general lack of awareness about how to manage this new medium.

[11] In summary, early adopters are facing real challenges in creating, localizing, and managing content. Realizing the enormous promise of this new medium – which is the ability to target messages to specific branches and screens – has turned out to be far more laborious than anyone expected.

[12] So, what can a bank do to meet the digital signage challenge?

We suggest that you consider three factors, or as we call them, the Three Cs:

• Confidence
• Context, and
• Content

[13] First, confidence. We encourage you to have confidence.  After all, digital signage is simply a turbo-charged form of the P.O.S. marketing discipline you have already mastered.

Its value lies less in technology than in its power to vary messages by branch, time of day, or day of week….giving you the opportunity to put your marketing analytics to work in the branch for the first time.

[14] At Caja Mediterraneo, no two branches play the same content.

Messages are displayed in any one of 8 different languages, depending on branch location. A roster of neighborhood, provincial, regional and national sponsorships forms part of an “electronic” bulletin board. Real estate portfolio announcements show details about properties in the catchment area of each branch, and product-focused messaging is based on each individual branch’s sales results for the prior week.

Believe it or not, there are literally millions and millions of playlist permutations at work under the management of less than one fulltime employee. And most importantly, narrowcasting has its revenue rewards: At a press conference last month, the bank announced that the 500 branches with the digital signage system have experienced average sales increases of 14%.

[15] Context. As revolutionary as digital signage, is, it should be seen basically as another tool to implement your established strategy. Start with your core objectives, and then determine if the unique power of digital signage can help.

[16] This Malaysian Bank, for example, needed to address exceptionally long queue lengths in excess of 1 hour.  The solution: a combination of staff efficiency and incentives to migrate customers to self-service.

The result? On the left, a “queuing tree” is used as a user-friendly way to measure and show queue length for both the staff and customers.  As more customers take a queue number, the tree populates with leaves.  The longer the wait, the redder the leaf becomes. The branch manager and staff keep an eye on the tree, and “it’s all hands on deck” when queue lengths reaches a certain length.

Screens in other parts of the branch help, too, by shifting content to more entertainment-oriented messaging in deference to clients’ long wait.  To encourage migration, the bank pledges to give a percentage of its savings on transaction costs to charity when customers use self service. The digital thermometer shows the mounting contribution and an interactive kiosk at right lets customers vote for the charity they would like to see the proceeds go to.

[17] Content. Content is king…but only when it’s relevant That means putting in place the right tools to author, target, and assemble messages affordably.

[18] In this unique example at Toyota Financial Services’ flagship in Japan, targeted female shoppers are encouraged to use the red “listening posts” to provide their views on family finances.  Results of surveys are dynamically posted on the large 12-screen media wall behind.  Thus, the site’s content is automatically generated by users.

[19] Other ways to automatically generate content:

• Link to the web so that updates to the web automatically update screens, as in the picture shown here
• Develop a “hopper” of product campaigns and use weekly sales results to automatically determine which appear at specific slots in the messaging in each branch location
• Provide portals for segment managers to use to populate templates related to their segments.  Let centrally determined business rules establish which segment messages can be played at which branches—and when.
• Use external news sources, such as market information and weather—but be sure to visually render these in your brand format.

[20] I’d now like to turn to Mike Hiatt for some of his thoughts on the survey.

[Please see webinar highlights]

[21] Thank you, Mike. Let’s now turn to Paco.

[Please see webinar highlights]

[22] I’d like to thank you for attending today’s webinar.

[23] That concludes our webinar. I’d like to thank everyone again for attending and want to note that we’ll be providing everyone with a link to a recording of the webinar in the near future.

If you have additional questions or comments about today’s webinar, please feel free to contact us directly…or to leave us a comment at www.johnryanblog.com.

Yesterday, we hosted the webinar, “Digital Signage in Retail Financial Services: What John Ryan’s European Survey Means for Your Bank.” Hosted by Bob Steele, John Ryan’s Vice Chariman, the webinar featured retail luminary Paco Underhill and Mike Hiatt, the former director of WalMart’s “smart” digital signage network.

So, all in all, we had some serious firepower in the house, which drew attendees from across Europe, North America and South America.

Bob kicked off the event with a 15-minute recap of John Ryan’s survey of European and South African banks on their plans and aspirations for digital signage. Bob, Mike and Paco then each offered their thoughts on the implications of the survey and how bank marketers should approach the task of planning for and implementing a digital signage network.

The remainder of the event was a panel discussion, in which our “gurus” fielded questions from the audience, including:

• What lessons did Wal-Mart learn from setting up their digital signage network?
• How will digital signage integrate with mobile?
• Who’s doing digital signage well?
• How did Wal-Mart measure the success of their “Smart Network?”
• What are your thoughts on cameras, eye-tracking and other viewership measurement technology?
• How do you get employees on the floor engaged in supporting digital signage?
• Is digital signage cheaper in the long run over paper-based signage?

The questions kicked off a rich conversation and provided attendees with great information and advice — informed by decades of international experience in retail and financial services. In our internal post-webinar debrief, Bob Steele quipped, “That had to be one of the most sophisticated conversations about digital signage I have ever heard.”

Of course, we couldn’t get to every question. So, we’ll be following up with Paco, Mike and Bob to get answers to the outstanding questions, which we’ll make available here.

A document with highlights from the webinar will be available in the next day or two. If you were registered for the webinar (even if you couldn’t attend), we’ll send you a link to download the report. If you’d like to be notified when the report become available, please let us know and we’ll be happy to do so.

Thank you to everyone who took time out of their schedules to attend. Apologies to those who told who were victims of time-zone confusion. Next time, we’ll be sure to communicate the start time more clearly!

A big thanks to Paco Underhill and Mike Hiatt for letting us tap their high-caliber expertise.

And finally a special thanks to sandsss for livetweeting the event.

A number of bloggers and tweeters gave high marks for Paco Underhill’s keynote address at the 2009 Digital Signage Expo on Feb. 26. He also gave DSE an exclusive interview on the subject of retail marketing and the role of digital signage. Below are some highlights:

“Part of what is interesting for us is recognizing that in 2009 almost all purchasing decisions can be influenced if not made at the point of sale.”

“…our visual language is evolving faster than our spoken or written word, meaning that the way we process visually has gone through a revolution thanks to the Internet and television. On the other hand, our eyes have never been more tired, and never been more bombarded.”

“And this is what the poignancy of digital signage is, which is that correctly applied, it is a remarkable medium. But if somebody hasn’t approached it with a plan, then it doesn’t work.”

“…it isn’t the hardware, it’s often the software that’s absolutely critical.”

Upcoming webinar featuring Paco Underhill

Paco Underhill will be one of the guest panelists (along with former Wal-Mart digital media director Mike Hiatt) at the upcoming webinar: “Digital Signage in Retail Financial Services: What John Ryan’s European Survey Means for Your Bank.”

Monday, June 29, 2009
10 a.m. to 11 a.m. (EST)

• Find out more
• Registration

Update: Bill Yackey at Digital Signage Today posted a great recap of Paco’s keynote address.

Photo credit: The Retail Marketing Society

In his Consumed column in the New York Times magazine, Rob Walker describes Plinky, a web site designed to prompt bloggers who are having trouble thinking of what to say. As he puts it:

“You have the technology. The only thing the technology cannot do is solve this problem: What if you don’t really have anything to express?”

Retail marketers face a similar dilemma, particularly marketers who have the ability to engage customers using touch-screens, kiosks, Microsoft Surface tables or other interactive devices. What kind of content engages customers (who most certainly don’t come in with any intention of being engaged)? Indeed, with great capabilities come great responsibilities.

Below are some interesting prompts from Plinky that might serve as good starting points for in-store interactive content (click through to see users’ responses).:

• What’s your hidden talent?
• What’s the most important thing you’ve learned recently?
• You have to give away a million dollars. How?
• What are you doing to help the environment?
• What gadget is at the top of your wish list?
• List five things to do before you die.
• Describe how you’d spend $1,000.
• Share where you’d fly for the weekend if your best friend had a helicopter.
• Recommend a place to get a good cheap bite to eat.
• What’s your dream ride?
• What’s your favorite place to enjoy the great outdoors?
• What would you do with an extra 3 hours today?

Plinky is designed to prompt long-form responses, so not all the prompts would lend themselves to interactive responses in a retail space. And not all of the subjects are appropriate. But overall, the side does a good job of getting at subjects that get people thinking.

Some of the prompts above are simply entertaining, which is an important quality for any digital multimedia content. Others prompts might lend themselves to some fun multimedia content within the store (e.g.,”55% of customers in this store like X”). And yet other prompts could be used to help marketers learn more about their customers.

In the spirit of Plinky, below are some additional prompts worth considering:

• How did you get here? (bus, bike car, walked)
• How far did you travel to get here?
• What errands are you running today?
• What would you do with an extra 15 minutes today?
• What are you saving for?
• How will you pay for college?
• How do you balance the family budget? (spend less, work more, borrow)

Photo credit: Samuel Mann

Clicks are replacing bricks. The post dot com boom era is seeing a paradigm shift and financial transactions are no longer confined

to branch counters but have been extended to ATMs, computer screens and telephones.

In order to remain competitive, banks must continuously take advantage of the limited opportunities available when a customer enters their bank branch.

As John Ryan’s website reads, “Forget direct marketing, telesales and even e-commerce. When a person crosses the threshold into your establishment, it’s the ultimate opportunity.”

The banking sector is becoming a prime sector for digital signage. This is because customers of banks have dwell time while they wait to be served and digital signage not only reduces the perceived waiting time but also provides a consistent look and feel to the bank and its services.

John Ryan, a leading player in the Digital Signage Solutions field for the financial sector, has been engaged by numerous banks globally to employ effective marketing techniques that make the most out of each customer’s visit.

Traditionally, banks have spent huge sums of money refurbishing their branches often without clear pay back. This is because more often than not large sums of money are being spent on sprucing up aesthetics of the branch rather than improving the customers’ retail banking experience.

Also, there is no consistent or conclusive evidence that refurbishments improve a bank’s revenues says a recent study sponsored by John Ryan.

Conducive branch environment

CIMB Group expanded aggressively in 2005 and 2006, by acquiring regional stockbroker GK Goh Securities, merging its investment bank CIMB with its commercial bank Bumiputra-Commerce Bank (BCB) and buying niche commercial bank Southern Bank.

This fast-paced inorganic growth meant that CIMB Bank’s branches, which had ballooned to number over 400 in Malaysia, had to be streamlined in terms of appearance, lay-out and processes. What started out as a practical necessity extended into the need for a standardised version of customer-fronting.

Hence, instead of simply having a new ‘look and feel’, CIMB Bank wanted to define the banking processes that would identify it as CIMB. The primary intention was to create a memorable and productive experience for customers.

This project was handled by John Ryan, a leading expert in the field. Having had extensive experience in this area, John Ryan did a sampling of customer behaviour, which varied from branch to branch.

Armed with the statistical data, it came up with an extensive project, which initially comprised four phases.

Four phases of John Ryan

The first phase was the experiential retailing concept. The concept defined the retailing strategy to be established throughout the bank branches. In order to do so, John Ryan did research to identify existing retail opportunities and challenges.

There was a special focus on important issues for CIMB Bank such as network analysis, increased migration to self-service, generation of customer enquiries, consultation and elevated sales rates.

In the second phase, John Ryan brought the retailing strategy to life by developing the concepts, which involved environmental design and choreography and retailing upgrades. For the second aspect, a “tool kit” of retailing tactics was created for deployment in both refurbished and non-refurbished branches.

In the third phase, specific recommendations were made and basically the concept was refined further for implementation in the various site types.

There were also key front office choreographies involving customer reception, traffic management and self-service and assisted transactions.

During the process, human resources, operational and infrastructural constrains for the implementation of the retail strategy were identified. Phase four involved implementing all the plans from phase 1 to 3 and was launched at CIMB Bank’s The Curve branch.

Adapting the plan

Malaysia was a new market for John Ryan and hence this project posed some challenges. The team rose to the occasion and used its perceptiveness to spot and exploit untapped opportunities, and produce solutions for CIMB Bank branches.

Since different branch locations catered to different market segments, John Ryan considered having a segmented branch system, which includes club, retail service, prime and mini branches and service kiosks.

Some of the suggested concepts could not be adopted due to the space constraints. As a result, a list of mandatory elements, which would be incorporated into the branches, was drawn up, leaving other elements as optional items to be integrated on a case-by-case basis.

The mandatory elements included a Branch Manager Workstation (BMW), the welcome area and hot sales area.

BMW is an island in the middle of the banking hall, which enables the branch manager to observe customers and lend a helping hand and play an active role when the waiting time increases above a certain threshold.

This not only enhances the customer retail experience, but builds a good rapport between the branch manager, bank staff and customers.

The welcome area was created to receive walk-in customers and attend to their needs immediately. The hot sales area had an open concept, creating a less daunting environment in which customers can interact with the sales staff.

John Ryan believes that concepts like the BMW strengthens ties between branch staff as the branch manager is no longer isolated from the daily happenings at the branch and gets to constantly feel the ‘pulse of the branch’.

On top of these features, John Ryan encouraged migration to e-channels and implemented intelligent queue management. With intelligent queue management, long queues are managed by offering customers comfortable amenities and changing content on the plasma screens to reduce the perceived waiting time.

This enhances the customer experience, raises branch efficiency levels and enables pro-active customer care.

Further, ‘thermometers’ were installed in each branch to chart the level of funds raised for Community Link projects. Community Link empowers customers to pro¬pose initiatives or social causes that will enhance the lives of those within the community.

Behind the scenes technology

John Ryan incorporated a collection of leading-edge applications designed to display dynamic point-of-purchase messages within retail environments with their Digital Marketing Platform (DMP).

The platform includes the player and the content management media centre. The player software is loaded onto a standard PC, located within each bank branch, and is capable of playing multiple simultaneous streams of content (channels) as well as an additional “audio” channel.

It is versatile and is compatible with most programs. Since the player does not reformat or re-encode the content in any other way, the files are played in their native format. This ensures the ‘intelligence’ embedded within the content is retained.

The player’s numerous built-in interactive modes enable Internet browsing, interactive selection of content and scan/swipe selection of content. Since the player can be programmed to browse only selected websites, it prevents unwanted browsing and enables the bank to restrict management of highly date-sensitive information to the website.

Meanwhile, the Content Management Media Centre (CMMC) facilitates data distribution with minimal manpower. It is a web-accessible interface for the scheduling management and distribution of content.

Succinctly put, CMMC is a database of every site in the network. CMMC has a memory of what is being played on each channel. Thus, each time a play list is updated, it can determine which message files may already be resident at the site and which messages are new.

This way, content is never re-transmitted to a site and bandwidth requirements are kept to a minimum. It also adjusts the existing play lists and schedules for all the resulting channels, to taken into account any updates. The Media Centre can also collect and log any service date to be monitored.

Warm welcome

Despite initial hiccups and changes, John Ryan’s versatility coupled with CIMB Bank’s extensive involvement in the project produced a result both parties were proud of.

John Ryan felt that the branch rejuvenation was not only warmly welcomed by customers and staff alike, it helped project the strong CIMB brand.

According to Ravindran Subramaniam, Head of Strategy, Consumer Sales & Distribution Division at CIMB Bank, the new branches evoked a very positive response from both CIMB Bank staff and customers. The revamp spruced up the branches and brought a fresh feel to the retail banking experience. He added, “The many touch points within the branch were not just service-based but took into consideration sales as well.”

Many banks in the region are now in the process of engaging John Ryan for their re-branding campaigns. With the increased demand for digital signage solutions, it is very likely that John Ryan is looking at many busy and profitable years ahead.

John Ryan was the recipient of two awards for excellence in Digital Signage at the 50th annual POPAI Outstanding Merchandising Achievement (OMA) Awards. It was awarded with a silver award in the Retail Network category for its digital signage network installation for PNC Bank, and a bronze award in the Retail Content category for a PNC digital spot titled “No ATM Fees.”

Marketers often struggle to keep pace with their digital signage network’s daily demand for up-to-date and relevant content. Data-driven content is one way to “feed the beast.”

What is data-driven messaging?
By “data-driven” we mean content that is automatically assembled or updated based on external business rules or data sources.

Data-driven spots
Spots that are data-driven are automatically refreshed based on incoming data feeds. Most often, the spot is a template with specific elements that are affected by the incoming data are text and visuals, like the temperature and weather graphics in the example above.

Examples of data-driven content include:

• News, weather or stock market updates fed by RSS or XML feeds
• Directional messaging (such as arrows or aisle numbers) fed by store plan-o-grams
• Calls to action that are updated based on time of day (a countdown clock, for example)
• Message backdrops fed by postal codes (for example, skylines or local monuments)

Data-driven playlists
Playlists can also be data-driven. Examples include:

• Using individual store performance results to choose the right spot among a pool of product spots designed for this purpose.
• Matching loop length to traffic-flow data based on predefined business rules

User-generated data-driven playlists
Data-driven playlists can also be updated based on local user interactions versus centrally established business rules. For instance, if an interactive kiosk is registering widespread interest in a particular topic, screens elsewhere in the store may be updated with content loops more strongly weighted toward that theme.

The benefits of data-driven content

• Enables a very high-frequency of message refresh
• Integrates “outside-world” information for a more entertaining and engaging content loop
• Improves message relevance and timeliness — fully leveraging the power of multimedia messaging over static paper-based P.O.S. communications
• Reduces daily management attention while ensuring messaging is closely aligned to business priorities
• Reduces production costs by creating spots “on the fly” with a library of visual assets, versus commissioning agency production of each individual spot

Important considerations
Not all content management systems (CMS) manage data-driven content with ease. As you evaluate your CMS, here are some questions to ask:

• Is the CMS restricted to video playback? If so, each iteration of content will need to be specifically rendered up-front, minimizing flexibility and cost savings that might normally be associated with data-driven content.
• Does the CMS play common multimedia types in native format? If not, the spots may act more like video spots in the file-conversion process, losing some or all of their original ability to ingest (and update) based on external data feeds.
• Does the CMS player have the necessary processing capability to manage “on-the-fly” store-level assembly of content?
• Does the CMS permit rules-based scheduling?
• Does the CMS manage interactive content? If so, does it have the ability to instantly monitor interactive results and use those findings to update playlists?

Not sure who has the budget for this kind of implementation, but it certainly does impress. So does Barclays’ new, futuristic branch in Piccadilly Circus (good coverage here).

Incidentally, Barclays’ branch of the future is the first EU bank to implement Microsoft Surface, a technology that has been getting some attention in digital signage and other technology circles. This demo of Surface, recorded at CES in 2008, provides a decent glimpse of how the platform might work in a retail environment:

While fantasies of a seamlessly wired world and seamless, GUI customer experiences are enticing, are they realistic? Heck, customers are still plagued by malfunctioning ATMs.

A good number of these technologies — mobile payments, biometric scanning or the integration of interactivity on all manner of surfaces — could very well become part of the branch experience in the near future. Or they could go the way of the flying car. It all depends on context.

The context for any technology investment, whether it’s a digital signage network or a mobile banking system, is the customer. What do they need out of a banking relationship in general? How are their needs changing in the current economy? What are their ever-evolving shopping habits and how does banking fit into the mix? Of course, the tricky thing about customers is that they can’t tell you what they need or want.

Bottom line, unless banks are able to understand their customers and create experiences they actually want to have, then no amount of amazing technology will bring customers into the bank.