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.”