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How does it feel to compete with yourself? In some ways that’s what local bank branches find themselves doing.
As customers turn to the convenience of the online and mobile options offered by their financial institutions, those same banks are challenging their local physical branches to increase customer engagement. More than engaged, the expectation is that these locations will help bolster the bank’s overall business objectives by increasing sales of retail banking products and services.
The answer many branches have turned to is an increased use of digital signage. These are not mere monitors, displaying cycled ads in a repetitive loop throughout the day. Digital signage is an opportunity for focused, custom content — including showcased regional news, sports and local weather that can be tied into the product offerings. These are vibrant digital displays, powered by intelligent content management systems — and they are transforming a trip to the bank into a modern, innovative customer experience.
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Help Customers Buy Into Their Financial Future
Financial institutions were the earliest adopters of visual displays, helping to drive the development of more interactive and sophisticated devices. So, it should come as no surprise to find that banking is using digital signage to innovate ways to meet customer expectations and evolve from service centers to retail destinations.
This type of environment is more personal and engaging, promoting new services and products and improving customers’ brand loyalty. When you consider that 90% of purchases are made in branch, digital signage can directly influence the opportunity to sell and upsell the products that banks are offering to customers to meet their needs — and increase revenue.
Banking digital signage makes it easy to interact with customers, visitors and staff by displaying real-time information — targeted to one branch, or to multiple branches at the same time. As customers wait their turn, dynamic messages and media on screen can tell them the story of how your bank products are helping people like them everyday. Maybe it’s informational, like the special features of a new credit card. Or it’s the real-life highlights of a customer experience of being able to purchase a home for the first time thanks to a special mortgage rate. Replacing a static placard with a screen-based video or animation gets people to pay more attention and may be the push for them to choose a new retail product from this bank.
It’s simple to create and display content relevant to the bank branch, such as:
- Real-time rates and quotes with automated data imports.
- Products and service promotions, such as personal and home improvement loans, rates, or credit card benefits.
- Definitions of financial terms or recommend resources to help people learn about savings or investing.
- Local news and weather, with a tie into banking products — for example, a news feature on vacation planning that encourages branch visitors to open a new savings account.
- Bios of bank employees, humanizing the staff for visitors and customers.
- Directions to use on-site self service kiosks for bank employee directories, maps, or even sign-up for products.
This combination of inform and entertain has the additional strategic value of helping reduce perceived wait times. On the real end of things, consumers can sign in with interactive touch screens for a text notification when it’s time to meet with an associate. Digital bank signage can also communicate wait times, direct customers to different options if they don’t want to wait — and even encourage customers to return during non-peak hours.
The average customer isn’t willing to wait more than 10 minutes, so it’s a boon that digital signage solutions for retail banks have been proven to reduce the perception of any delay by 10.8%. Customers watching engaging content vs. the clock are more relaxed while they wait, making it more likely they will be in a better mood when they finally meet with bank associates.
The Dollars & Sense of Content Management
Managing your content is possible thanks to the platform that drives your monitors, big and small, maximizing the possibilities of your digital signage. This is far more than single use display software. This is an intelligent Content Management System. An “iCMS” is the secret behind making your content unique to your changing set of customers — and doing it in an efficient way that streamlines the effort it takes to create, publish and maintain the information displayed on your screens. Information that is regularly updated and targeted to the financial needs of your customers.
A modern workplace communications platform will include automation features for customizing your signage for day of the week or the time of day. Do big investors typically come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Focus on currency conversion rates and stock prices in real time. Run financial service info for retirees during the morning hours. When it’s late in the afternoon, switch to promoting the convenience of a new credit card for millennials and refresh the imagery to include videos of healthy take out delivery. (70% of millennials report awareness of signage, and 27% say they took action based on what they saw.)
Take it a step further by connecting what’s on screen with events in the news. Home sales on the rise in your area? One part of your screen can feature that report as a feed for a local news channel, while another part suggests a home improvement loan to raise the value. This is the kind of regularly updated and targeted content that keeps your customers engaged, based on their interests and needs.
Prepping these schedules in advance takes the burden off retail bank managers, allowing them to focus on the operation of the financial institution. The digital signage will continue to update per branch — or on multiple signs across locations — without the need for physical travel or interaction, for additional savings in time and resources. With just the click of a button (or tap of a screen) the right content is shared in agile fashion across locations, quickly and reliably. There’s exceptional value in being able to ensure that the bank’s brand stays consistent, and customers are exposed to the right message at the right time.
Bank Digital Signage Solutions By the Numbers
Being a financial institution, there’s bound to be interest in the hard numbers. In other words, when it comes to digital signage for banks, “What’s the Return on Investment?”
The most immediate are the savings related to print costs. Print production — posters, pamphlets, flyers — is drastically reduced, as is the need for individual employees to manage, traffic, and swap out these materials. What about when a customer needs the additional detail that was on that multi-page brochure? A URL or QR code directly on screen provides easy access for that more detailed information.
Many original assets can find new purpose as repurposed content. Images and headlines from print, commercials, advertisements and even social media posts can come to life on digital signage as animated elements.
There’s more to ROI than legacy print vs. modern day digital. There’s the promise of sophisticated analytics. It’s possible to know in real time the content impressions and engagements for each screen. By including QR codes on screen, you can initiate and track interaction with customers who scan those codes to connect to services or download offers. As digital screens increase in sophistication, it will become possible to track how many individuals viewed each screen and for how long, differentiating viewership by gender, age and time of day. This is in service to deploying targeted ads and content based on these demographics — ultimately helping to fine tune marketing campaigns and improve the appeal of retail offerings.
With Bank Digital Signage, Seeing is Believing
Customers are bullish on their in branch experience featuring digital signage. 87% of customers say a retail bank with financial digital signage is trustworthy. 90% consider that bank is experienced. And 86% of those customers are likely to recommend what they’ve seen to friends and family. Trading on that good impression, consider that there are more places for digital displays than the traditional wall monitors in the waiting area.
Outdoor digital signage can have a strong impact on brand awareness and help to guide customers through the drive thru ATM service. The bank’s ATM screens are themselves digital signage in their own right: these can feature personalized messaging to a single user. Digital signs in the reception or lobby area can be keyed to welcome and guide visitors, and also function as a form of digital community board, to inform guests on local neighborhood announcements and news. (While simultaneously creating an association for the branch back to the community.) And small counter screens can provide specific customer instructions, along with more intimate forms of product promotion that contribute to the overall recall of information, branding and offerings.
As diverse as these screens are, they can all be managed from a single, centralized platform. For visitors, customers, and employees it’s a seamless, coordinated campaign of information and engagement that builds community, loyalty and trust in the bank — and interest in your products.
Invest in the Long-Term Benefits of Digital Signage
So, is it banking website and mobile vs. the local branch? Not so long as the physical world makes use of the full power of digital signage.
Dynamic, great looking visual content helps retail banks generate interest and raise awareness about services and products — including web and mobile! (And in the sprit of shared services, anything from web and mobile can be channeled onto these on-site digital screens.) Informative and entertaining, lobby digital signage is the omnichannel concierge of the neighborhood branch: a mix of timely service, upsell and cross-sell that maintains and builds on existing customers — and entices new ones.
In short, digital signage for banks is great customer experience. And that’s money in the bank.
