“According to the FBI’s recently released second quarter Bank Crime statistics, bank robbers are most likely to rob a bank between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Friday…”

Which has us thinking about potential deterrents and wondering whether it would be effective to run digital messaging during this time slot, specifically pointing out the bank’s security apparatus (guards, cameras, alarm systems, etc.)?

The idea would be to unnerve or plant seeds of doubt in the minds of would-be robbers, much as store greeters are used in retail stores to thwart would-be shoplifters.

Of course, hardened professionals might not be swayed, but that’s not who we’re concerned with. According to the U.S. Department of Justice in its guide (PDF) on bank robberies:

“most bank robberies are committed by solitary, unarmed and undisguised offenders (and) can be considered the work of amateurs rather than professionals.”

Creative Commons photo credit: secretlondon123

Read the interview

If you’re new to The Financial Brand, here are some recent articles that give you a sense for the depth of this online publication (I’d call it a blog, but it offers more meat than most blogs):

• Branches refuse to die

• Datahead: Brand more important than rates, products (Some great, presentation-worthy statistics in this post.)

• Notably Quotable: Anger, blame and dynamite

• Women vs. men: Two different perspectives on money

• Caja Navarra: Pioneers in Civic Banking

• Results 2.0: Social media for financial institutions

NYT has an amazing interactive graphic showing the results of the American Time Use Survey. The good news for bank marketers is that you can see the ebbs and flows of how customers spend their time.

The bad news: Americans spend on average no more than 6 minutes per day doing “assorted services,” a category that includes doctor visits, haircuts, voting, hiring plumbers and…banking. At it’s peak in the daily cycle, no more than 1% of the populace is ever engaged in this activity. Compare that to the cagetories of “Work” or “TV and Movies,” which enjoy peaks of 33% and 39%, respectively.

Or is all this good news? Have financial services become so efficient as to allow Americans to conduct their banking affairs in fewer than 6 minutes per day?

It’s a reasonable hypothesis: online banking and ATMs have made money management so convenient that banking is now not much more than a utility — something that requires no extraordinary attention, except when things go wrong.

Of course, as they say, out of sight, out of mind. Utilities are critical, but not terribly interesting or remarkable.

How in the world can banks hope to regain mindshare, when consumers spend so little time thinking about banking? Is there potential in connecting banking to other activities which command more of Americans’ time and attention?

• En español

• English – A4 format
  

• English – Letter format

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.

Building on some of the ideas that were put forth by Pine and Gilmore and others, that’s what Samuel Rabino, Stephen Onufrey, and Howard Moskowitz recommend in their recent paper “Examining the future of retail banking: Predicting the essentials of advocacy in customer experience” in the Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice.

The difficulty in creating a better customer experience is that different customers might define “better” in unique ways. What is a great experience to one customer might be off-putting to another. What complicates things further is the fact that most people are not very good at telling you what they want, especially if it’s something they’ve never seen before. (Moskowitz’ pioneering work in the 1970s with spaghetti sauce bore this out.)

Rabino, Onufrey and Moskowitz presented participants in their study with vignettes that described a set of bank services. (Read the paper to see how they structured the study.) This allowed them to gauge consumers’ reactions to different experience “components.”

They found that consumers seem to fall into four experience segments:

The authors go on to describe a “knowledge-driven, ongoing learning system that

defines, creates, delivers and refines a favourable customer experience

using a four-step, closed-loop business process.”

Now, that’s a mouthful, but it gets at the next most pressing issue. The awareness of different experience-based segments is one thing. But how do you go about marshaling your resources (employees, branch space, marketing messaging, etc.) to provide those experiences? And how do you direct prospects and customers to the most appropriate experience?

If Onufrey et al. are correct, we’ll be reading more in the years to come about the importance of customer experience as a point of differentiation in banking. But, given the current economy, the experience advocates who will be heard loudest are the ones who can offer innovative, low-cost and low-risk approaches.

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.

Register now

How quickly are banks adopting digital signage? What obstacles are they encountering? What can we learn from banks who have already pioneered this emerging medium?

Join us for “Digital Signage in Retail Financial Services: What John Ryan’s European Survey Means for Your Bank,” a free webinar that explores these questions and more. Hosted by Bob Steele, Vice Chairman of John Ryan, the webinar will review the results of John Ryan’s survey of European and South African bank marketing Envirosell, Wal-Mart, WalMart, Mike Hiatt, Bob Steele executives.

Bob Steele, Vice Chairman of John Ryan

Paco Underhill, Envirosell founder and CEO, and best-selling author of "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping"

Mike Hiatt, former Wal-Mart digital media director

The webinar also features two guest panelists, who will discuss their thoughts on the implications of the John Ryan survey:

Attendees can expect to learn about:

• The state of Digital Signage in banking
• The three Cs of Digital Signage success
• Ideas on how to use Digital Signage to optimize branch marketing

Reservations can be made at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/318457499

J.D. Power and Associates has released its 2009 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study, which measures satisfaction amongst consumer-bank customers in the U.S.

The verdict: customers are not happy. In fact, they’re 6% less satisfied with their banking experience than they were in 2007.

That alone is not terribly surprising. One, people love to hate easy targets, whether it’s the telcos, the airlines or big banks. What’s more, the credit squeeze has put banks in the position of having to be the bearer of bad news to many customers (”Sir, your account is overdrawn.”).

Nor is it surprising that fees are the single greatest source of dissatisfaction reported by bank customers. One out of 3 customers who switched banks in the last year did so as a result of fee increases. NSF fees (which rose from $30 to $35 in the last year).

What’s surprising is who is doing the switching. It’s the A-listers. The people who float to the top of the CRM database. Or, as J.D. Powers’ Michael Beird puts it, “the customers (who reported) the lowest level of commitment in 2009 just so happen to be the most valuable banking customers, i.e., those customers with deposit balances that are 15 percent higher than average.”

This study raises some very interesting questions:

• Is this the beginning of a longer term trend?
• Are fees truly the culprit, or merely a convenient hook for customers to hang their frustration on?
• Why have high-value customers waited so long to begin exercising their prerogative?
• Is share of wallet or high product penetration less of an impediment to switching than we have imagined?
• What is the decision process that leads high-value customers to switch?
• Is switching an entirely logical decision or does it have an emotional component?
• How does a customer’s experience with bank staff affect their decision to stay or switch?
• What are the types of experiences that get otherwise sedentary customers to flee?
• What factors affect a switching customer’s decision about which new bank to adopt?
• Is there a pattern in the types of banks customers switch to (e.g., smaller, credit unions)?
• What can front-line staff do to stem the flow of fleeing high-value customers?

What’s your take on this sad state of affairs for banks? Please leave a comment below. If we receive enough comments, we’ll publish them in a future blog post.

Image credit: powerbooktrance

Why digital signage?

In a word, it’s about communication. Digital signage provides banks with a way to communicate with customers with more frequency, relevance and efficiency than ever before.

Don’t panic…it’s only marketing!

For bank marketers who have worked primarily with traditional media, the prospect of moving into digital signage can be daunting. Admittedly, there are many new concepts and technologies that need to be understood and the learning curve can be steep. If put in the proper context, however, digital signage can be demystified, understood and harnessed.

Simply put, digital signage is just another point-of-sale (POS) marketing tool for bank marketers to use in furthering their retail marketing objectives. It may be new and apparently “high tech”, but in fact it operates on the very same principles that traditional POS marketers have been practicing for years.

Making the case for digital signage

Most people will agree that digital signage looks good and may believe intuitively that it works better than paper-based signage. But where’s the proof? Where’s the evidence that digital signage can help bank marketers do what they’re already doing…but better?

More effective than paper-based POS communications

For starters, digital signage is more powerful in attracting “eyeballs.” According to the 2007 Digital Out-Of-Home Media Awareness & Attitude Study conducted by Online Testing Exchange and SeeSaw Networks:

• 63% of adults said digital signage catches their attention — the highest level reported across all media surveyed including billboards, magazines, TV, the Internet, newspapers, radio and mobile phone advertising
• 53% of survey respondents found digital signage to be the most interesting medium
• 51% of 18-24 year olds reported taking an action as a result of seeing ads on digital signage

A more fully featured POS communications tool

While eye-appeal is important, the true potential of digital signage becomes apparent when one looks at the new capabilities it enables. Unlike paper-based signage, which requires costly and time-consuming production and distribution of “one-size-fits-all campaign materials, digital signage allows for nearly infinite variability, which results in:

• More relevant messaging through tailoring/localization – right down to the branch level
• More frequent refreshes (more messages per customer visit) resulting from more “shelf space”
• Greater speed to market through the use of messaging templates and near instant message distribution
• Greater timeliness of messaging with dynamic messages that are responsive to local business conditions

Digital signage performance in the bank environment

Positive metrics from our own installed base of 4,000 sites and 15,000 screens under management help to drive home the value of digital signage in banking. In recent years, we have seen digital signage results that include:

These metrics certainly help to make the case for digital marketing in the bank branch environment. However, bank marketers who are making the case to their higher-ups will need to set realistic expectations.

A way forward

Unlocking the potential of digital signage requires some up-front diligence on the part of marketers. Depending on the choices that are made about hardware, software and other network components, marketers run the very real risk of ending up with a digital signage network that does not support their needs. Choices that might seem perfectly reasonable from a budget or technical standpoint could actually result in not being able to communicate with customers with the level of sophistication that they envision.

The key is for marketers to be clear and specific about their goals for this new medium and how they expect it to help them better communicate with their customers — and then use those goals to guide planning, purchasing and implementation decisions.

In a recent study for a major North American bank, we interviewed both customers and branch staff to find out what, in their opinion, could be done to improve the bank.

Staff suggestions on how to improve sales effectiveness:

• “Digital screens with bank messages on them.”
• “Better product information — closer to customers.”
• “Reduce clutter — customers feel overwhelmed.”
• “Cater more to the local community/ Different languages.”
• “Brochures need to be updated more regularly.”

Customer suggestions on how to make the branch interior more comfortable:

• “Get rid of the queue corral.”
• “Make it more colorful.”
• “Soften it up.”
• “More seating and better/more comfortable chairs.”
• “Add some homier, warmer touches.”

Obviously we asked each audience a different question, which partly explains the disparity in answers,. Whereas the bankers were worried about how to get out more effective sales messages, the customers simply wanted a welcoming environment. But in the end, this is a fairly accurate representation of what each party wants. The bank wants to make a sale, while customers want to be comfortable first (which really means being relaxed, respected and in control). This situation is not unlike that of a dating couple in which (how shall we put this tastefully?), one partner is eager to jump in bed, while the other is thinking that perhaps it would be nice to be romanced first.

There is certainly nothing wrong with banks wanting to grow relationships. But the key is to create a setting that’s actually conducive to relationship building. Here are some prerequisites:

• A pleasant and relaxing environment – Not in comparison to what your bank looks like today, but in comparison to other customer-friendly retail environments, such as coffee shops, department stores, restaurants, etc.
• Space and time – in other words, an entry area that is not congested, a traffic flow that is not overly hectic, and a layout that helps customers understand what they can/should do next.
• Comfortable waiting areas - This doesn’t necessarily mean couches, but an area that either lets customers be productive (free wi-fi, outlets for plugging in mobile devices, etc.), or makes the passing of time more tolerable, thanks to compelling digital media, reading materials, etc.
  
• A thoughtful intake process – Nobody wants to feel like they are under appreciated or, worse yet, a nuisance. To that end, the process by which customers are asked to wait and then called for service, is quite important in conveying respect and helping the customer feel valued (something very different from simply being told they are valued).
• Staff with soft skills – People who have the skills, authority and tools to humanize the banking experience.
• Private meeting spaces that are private, but not claustrophobic.
  
• Small touches throughout the experience that emphasize the bank’s consideration for its customers. This can be anything from having hand sanitizer and tissues on-hand, to making fax, copy and internet facilities available for small business customers. As in dating, it’s the little things…

Photo by ibm4381