One of the discussions I was having recently was around a future vision for banking, and the idea of branchless banking reared its ugly head again. I don’t believe in branchless banking in the future... just fewer branches for banking.
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Anyway, this discussion veered in another direction that also rang bells: remote visual banking. Just as we YouTube everything, the idea that your banking would be serviced through a remote advisor who you could chat with onscreen came up as the ideal way to be serviced in the future. This is a similar theme to branchless banking, cashless societies and biometric authentication. It keeps cropping up and then disappearing again.
Ready to go?
The question is: can we really have a future where the bank deals with customers via remote visual media?
Yes.
Why do we not have this today?
Because we’re not ready for branchless, cashless, intrusive biometrics or remote visual communications?
Maybe, but that will change.
After all, all of these things have been around for a long time. Pretty much since the invention of the telephone, video connection via the telephone network has been on the cards. It’s a subject I talked about regularly over a decade ago and my view back then, as it is now, is that we will see visual communications as a channel for bank services take off at some point. The question is when, rather than how.
In fact, it has also been tried by banks in many countries on a regular basis. One of the first I heard about was the New England Credit Union (NECU) in Australia. Back in 2005, it was using video to talk with customers at home due to the great distances that needed to be covered to reach them. Many of NECU’s clients would be living in the outback, a long way from their nearest branch, and so this was the best way to talk with them.
Then, in 2008, Monabanque in France added visual banking to its homepage on the internet, as broadband speeds improved to offer such easy and visual connectivity. And in the UK, 32% of communications are made via internet video or telephone, up four times the 8% forecast in 2007, according to a recent Financial Times article.
So what's the problem?
So why has this not appeared as a proper sales and advisory channel? I guess it is in part to do with the culture: we are not yet using video calling as a service channel for much at all. As of today, video calls are almost exclusively used for keeping in touch with friends and family.
Part of it is also to do with process: the businesses that could use Skype-to-call or similar for servicing are not yet geared up for this.
And part of it is to do with cost: not the cost of the infrastructure, which is just internet-based video, but more the cost of the resource set up, training and programme.
In fact, this last part – training staff in how to be exceptional in a visual service delivery via remote channels rather than just on the telephone – may be the biggest gating factor. That is not to say that it still won’t happen. In fact, just like biometrics and less branches with less cash, these things appear to be inevitable at some point in the future. The question is just when?
Then, as part of this, the other component of service that I talked about almost a decade ago should also come into force: avatar servicing. I talked about avatars well before the James Cameron film appeared, and still believe that we will see avatars automating many transactions on visual communications, in the same way that we use the automated voice menus on audio telephones.
The idea is that you film human agents delivering a variety of about 200 words and sounds, and then there mouth movements can be automated in line with scripts to appear similar to natural human conversations. The problem is that this technology is still not particularly sophisticated and has to improve considerably before it will be ready for mainstream usage.
So, I still believe that the hardy perennials of visual servicing via remote channels, along with biometric authentication, less branch banking and a less cash society are all within the near reach future. It is just a question of when, rather than if.
Oh, and of course getting technologies that can automate these processes properly, for example, getting avatar services that are smooth and clear and that work.
