I am president of sld and I lead the U strategy team here at our company we specialize in brand transformation and we spent a lot of time working in the financial industry and I'm very fortunate today to have with me Marb Brown who is author lecturer and extremely knowledge within the banking industry Maru thank you very much for joining us and thank you jeanpierre I'm really glad to be with you today so uh looking forward to us having a a really uh stimulating discussion this afternoon great and could you explain to the audience a little bit about your background yeah so um well I've actually been in uh customer experience for for quite a while and I cut my teeth in customer experience mostly in Tech but um you know um after that I went into financial services and so uh for four years I was head of customer experience
For the consumer bank at Chase initially that included also wealth management um uh but we separated that into a separate business and um so you know I I have uh had that experience in uh the financial services World especially during the period of time now we were going through a major uh Branch transformation um at Chase um but prior to that I was at Amazon uh where I headed up uh CX and on cord and worldwide defect elimination um prior to that was Microsoft where I was um the leader of the uh customer experience measurements team and uh so you know I've been in uh the space of customer um for quite a while and I you know brought that to the financial services industry um several years ago and Mar you just published a new book you want to talk to us a little bit about your book and what the premise is yes so uh
My book is called blueprint for customer Obsession and uh you know there's a lot of discussion about the whole topic of customer Obsession but everybody's not necessarily speaking the same language and so uh what I did in the book was to profile 10 companies that uh people would not argue much about whether their customer obsessed or not and I show how those companies are differentiated from other companies even companies that are customer Centric or customer focused right so and and by the way in the book one of the things that that we do is to give a Continuum um a customer Obsession Continuum that goes all the way from companies that are customer indifferent to companies that are customer obsessed so um some of the the companies that are you know profiled in the book include Amazon Apple chewy Chick-fil-A Costco
Disney um you know Ritz Carlton Trader Joe Southwest uh Zappos so those are you know like uh companies that uh you know are are in the book and uh so you know it's designed to help people to understand what differentiates these companies from everybody else and what they can actually do to move the needle in their businesses to get the same kinds of benefits these companies have gotten by um you know making this a Cornerstone of their business strategy great yeah i' I've been reading your book there's some great insights um analogies and uh uh some strategies that um it's interesting um how being obsessed um is something new and it really should be fundament fundamental to how financial institutions operate a absolutely it it should be fundamental to how um financial institutions operate and uh you know um
Hey Chase had that on their radar in terms of uh of moving in that direction and uh so that was that was you know my remit to to help jumpstart that uh journey and accelerate it uh and uh you know significant strides were made so yeah well it's interesting when you you talk about Chase you you look at they've been in the news them and PNC and Bank of America where they've are investing billions of dollars in retooling their channel strategy specifically their branches you know there was a lot of Doom and Gloom about consumer not going to visit branches Branch traffic down you know what is driving in your mind this Resurgence to the importance of physical branches well let me say that I think that some of the others that you mentioned um not to you know throw shade on anybody like Bank of America and PNC
Are kind of late to the party um you know when I uh joined Chase in 2017 that whole notion of um you know continue to invest in in the branches um was already and and uh you know and to to invest in the transformation of of the branches um at that time I forget whether was 22 or 23 States but Chase had locations physical locations in 22 or 23 States um about a year or so ago they they completed the transition to be physically present in 48 states right so um you know it it is a truly National Bank but part of the idea aide there was um they would go ahead and invest in in um you know the physical infrastructure now here's the deal um the whole mindset was being able to to let customers Bank when where and how they want right and I want you to think about something for a minute think about Apple at the time all
Of the um but sorry about that okay um at the time that all of the the uh glom and Dome around physical locations was was going on and everyone thought that um it would everything would be digital Apple was investing in the Apple Stores right and the Apple Stores became like a very important part of their strategy and um you know it's it's paid off uh handsomely uh for Apple um creating deeper connections with their customers you think of the Genius Bar and all that it does um I don't want to belabor that point but that's a born digital type of of company that you know invested in their physical space and then you think of Amazon another company that's born digital but the flip side of the story though is that company also has invested in having you know physical um locations whether it's by
Partnerships with people like Kohl's where you know folks can make returns in the coal store or or at the UPS store or at at um um even Whole Foods so the bottom line is that even companies that have been born digital have been thinking about how do we let our customers engage with us when where and how they want and I would say that their success and the chase success in um you know um investing in the physical branches right has been part of what has fueled um you know a a new A Renewed interest um in in the physical Branch well it's interesting because we did a um Study last year on seamless banking uh that we're going to be sharing after this uh this presentation and what we found out was number one that Omni Channel really isn't Omni channel it's vertical channels that don't talk to each other
And um and really there's a huge break between what happens online and mobile and what happens in the branch it's number one so was a huge insight there and I can see that GP Morgan Chase no sorry it's Bank of America just made a notice that they've Consolidated nine of their WS but the other big Insight what probably is driving a lot of this this movement towards physical branches is branches Remain the growth engine for acquisition of customers uh for building stronger relationships and so I think you know based on our study banks are realizing that um that mobile you know the digital platform is table Stakes now the competitive advantage of having a better app than your competition is marginal but what isn't marginal is when that customer comes into the branch that recognition empathy and personal
Service is a key driver for growth your thoughts on that well look that's the other thing that has a renewed interest in in the physical branches and that is that you know uh people used to go to the branches primarily to conduct transactions right but now um the branches the focus of the branches is shifting from being a transaction Center to more of an advice center right and and you know that advice can take on a variety of different kinds of of uh approaches right so advice can be something as simple as learning how to effectively use my app to do things when it gets right down to it some of the people who um want to use the apps um they just don't know how they don't they don't even know what all they can do in the app right you know many people may not even realize that they can use their
App to um you know pre uh pre-star an
ATM withdrawal and simply authenticate at the ATM and take money out a lot of people don't even realize they can do that you know um a lot of people are apprehensive about um you know depositing checks with the app because you know intuitively maybe it's not obvious to them how something like that should work so advice can go all the way from getting people comfortable with using you know the digital Technologies um to do transactions all the way to you know planning for specific life events you know whether somebody wants to save for college or somebody wants to save for a house purchase you you know so there's all of this financial literacy and type of education and those kinds of things and the branch is the Hub where those kinds of things can take place right and so you have this whole spectrum of advice
And and now the branches are the hubs that are enabling those types of relationships to be made with the customers around the types of advice that they need well that's really interesting because we um we did a we did a study last year that led to another study and the study we did last year was what's driving attrition is it customer service is it the lack of product selection ction is it the mobile app or our digital experien isn't up to par and what we found out was that the the gap between competitive set in other words the gap between the number one leader in let's say mobile online and the the lagger the bottom one the Gap when it comes to customer acceptance is very narrow although you know GD powers and other no rating companies rate these at different levels the reality from a customer standpoint there isn't a lot of
Difference between them what we found out was that providing the right advice was a key differentiator and actually a key factor in customer loyalty and attrition so when you look at and I think that I'm sure that you know financial institutions have discovered that that that advice is really important in driving Customer Loyalty it's something that is we call it an unmet need it's something that is not fully available in the market Marketplace or delivered properly in the marketplace and so when you look at institutions what and you look at the branch experience Maru how would you change the choreography or the store experience to amplify this kind of level of advice what were the things you would give as recommendations well first of all um the folks who work in the branch need to be mobilized around the new mission right
They need to understand how the branch is transforming and what it's transforming to be so that they are engaging customers around the whole notion of advice so that's that's number one but the other thing that needs to happen is that the folks in the branches need to be equipped with the tools that enable them to deliver advice right and and so um you know uh it it may be guides that need to to be provided to those folks it may be training that needs to be um provided to them um it may be practices that they need to deploy in the branches so that um the folks who are working in the branches will be able to um you know deliver advice um you need to have the physical design U so that it's it facilitates uh you know those types of interactions where you you have spaces that are are set up for advice in that
Everything does not revolve around a teller line for example um you know you have to have the kinds of of um you know practices in the branch that encourage the the people who are working in the B Branch to engage with the customers in different ways you know um some of the companies now are essentially um adopting an appointment strategy where um the customers coming in can set up appointments ahead of time so that people can prepare for them ahead of time you know they can have time set aside for them they come into the branches and um you know those folks are ready to handle um not just a transaction but a meeting with that customer where they can discuss uh uh you know advice oriented types of things right so those are some ways uh you know that the the branches need to to change so that uh they'll be able to focus on
These aspects that are important to the customers yeah you know and these changes imply investment additional po additional cost and you know in our study 19% of the banks said that they don't put value in their Channel their physical Channel which was very surprising to us and that some of the challenge in transforming their network is the cost the rising cost of construction the rising cost of employment so how would you how would you build a case within your organization uh for transformation how would you convince the management and investing in the built environment uh the branch environment is a good investment what what were the things that you would recommend well look um depending upon the size of the bank right let let's just start with the you know the physical spaces I'll use a different
Company for a moment okay and then I'll come back to uh um you know Financial Services or or the banks so Costco worldwide all right 3 million people visit a Costco location in a day all right now I to tell you that um
The larger Branch the larger banks have more locations than Costco does so um you know they're not necessarily getting the same amount of traffic but but the basic point I'm getting is they're getting a lot of traffic let's say you get 500,000 people visiting your branches per day two or 300,000 people visiting your branches per day now those people who are going in there they don't spend 30 seconds in the branch they spend a lot more yet those same companies will pay Oodles of money to a a network television show for a 3 second spot right over the course of a year to influence the thinking of people who are watching a particular program on television yet every single day if they've got 500 ,000 people in there if they've got 300,000 or a million or whatever the number is they have an opportunity to influence those
People even more than than those commercials would but if they um you know create wow experiences for those people those can become viral so that is an investment all by itself that um that Rivals other Investments that um you know the banks make when when they go out there and uh you know um you know spend money to to invest in these branches but the other thing you talked about was attrition now look we can talk about outright attrition right but that's not the whole story there's deposit outflows now if you have stronger and stronger relationships with your customers you should be looking at inflows instead of outflows you you should be looking at expanded relationships with them not just around banking but around wealth management you should be looking at um you know not just Banking and wealth management but
Maybe Cs and other um you know kinds of of services so if you have a whole portfolio of services you've got you know Banking and wealth management and um you know uh hending uh you know cards you should be building your whole um portfolio out with the customers that you have and that's you know the the value of having the branch and being able to make these connections with uh customers on a lasting basis you can actually um shop in your own closet if you will and gain more business but not necessarily going out there and acquiring new customers but by you know um making tighter connections and expanding your portfolio with your existing customers and that will be done through human interact yeah well it's interesting you know we um we often get asked um you know what should I get in return what's the ROI of renovating a
Branch and we often ask well how do you track it today and what surprising is most financial institutions we speak to do not track Roi uh they don't track the investment the return on investment they say there are too many factors and so we went out and we interviewed 400 banking Executives to get a sense of the impact and then we then validated our findings with actual Bankers who do track performance what was interesting is that um finan institution who renovate their branches who transform their Branch their customer experience see net on average between 15 and 25% growth in their business and then we asked you know why why why would you see that growth and they said you know you're making a message to the customer that we're going to stay in this community that we're here to stay number one number two is that it creates
Pride and affirmation that the employees are important in that equation you know how how how how do you build loyalty with the customer if the staff feel that they're being neglected that the environment is negative that that it's not productive to engaging with customers and so all those factors play a really important role in driving growth because it supports the behaviors that you want customers to have but also the employees and so on average we're seeing about a 15 to 25% lift in performance in those branches but there's also a lot of discussion about Branch closures um you know we you know as as financial institutions relocate their branches they're closing in older markets opening up smaller footprint branches and new markets and that's disrupting uh the marketplace um we we noted that 37% of consumers part of our
Study indicated that their Branch had either gone through a renovation or a closure or relocation and those who were were the branch was closed and there wasn't a location left the financial institution there's a big concern as as these institutions retool their channel that there's there's it's not just silent attrition it's you know massive attrition so what would you advise financial institutions who are looking at right sizing their Channel well let me start off by saying that anytime you have something like a a closure or or relocation or downsizing or anything along those lines that is that is a prime time that's a trigger you know for for attrition because it's the time that that person's um or or that family is going to re-evaluate their relationship with the bank they they may not have been
Thinking about reevaluating their relationship with the bank but that of course will trigger a reevaluation with the with the bank look every Bank needs to have a Playbook around those types of events because because of the very point that I said that it's a trigger now that that Playbook needs to take into account all of the existing traffic that uses whether it's folks who frequent it um or or folks who come there occasionally but regularly right they need to um The Playbook needs to take into account um all of those folks and then you need to to essentially almost like you know simulate or war game it as to if if we make these changes what's going to happen because often there are unintended consequences of making change right and I think sometimes um you know like when folks are making these moves they're
Playing checkers and they're not playing chess right they're not thinking three four five moves down they're just thinking about the next move and so all of the parameters that are involved are not necessarily considered but that's what it's got to be there's got to be a lot of overcommunication of what's about to happen that has to happen with the folks who are working in the branch as well as with the folks who use the branch and you know anyone who calls that Branch home right or or you know their second home if you will right there has to be a lot of communication with folks ahead of time about what's about to happen but also to give them the sense that we thought about how this changes is going to affect you and these are the ways that we can minimize any impacts to you right and so with that
Type of communication and everybody who's working in the branch needs to be able to communicate what's going on with the customers um and they also need to be able you know um to to understand their part in it and articulated so so communication is a big part um making sure that you understand all the consequences that's got to be a big part you know prepping customers so that they know how things are going to change for them how you're you're planning to minimize the impact um all of those things have to come into play whenever that change has been being made because as smooth as you can make it okay that will limit that that customer's um you know need um or even Reon to reconsider their relationship so um yeah and I mean it could be simple things as is the new place going to have parking okay um it can be like some some
Very very simple kinds of things that can make huge differences well it's interesting because we uh we often ask you know what is your playbook for for enclosures and there isn't actually a lot of attention given to that so having a Playbook I think Maru is a great idea and having it fully flushed out to the I like the chess versus Checker's analogy looking at the five steps removed what does this mean from a digital transformation standpoint parking customer service training you know and even safety deposit box we were having this conversation just yesterday with you on there's a lot of discussion about safety deposit boxes uh as branches downsize there's a lot of pressure to eliminate safety deposit boxes what's your take on that is it is there value in keeping safety deposit boxes uh or do
You see that uh this something that's going to go away well look I think every every um institution and every Branch needs to know their clientele and needs to know their surrounding areas this is what makes um you know when you think of the Community Bank okay it's it's because of those connections and those bonds now look there are certain certain um you know uh populations ethnic groups that that have propensity um you know to use safety deposit boxes if you're the Community Bank you're the community branch in that area and and that's your demographic you need to be thinking about keeping your safety deposit boxes because people count on it and and you know they expect it to to be there for them and if you don't have it they will probably go to somebody else who does but again I think that you know you need to understand
What your what Your demographics are you know if you're in a university environment um the the clientele is going to have different needs then if you're in you know a bedroom community um you know then it's going to have a a different need than than if you're in the heart of a big Metropolitan City and so you need to make sure sure that you're accounting you know for your demographics and and that um you know the needs of the branch are are tailored to to those um you know scenarios um so safety deposit boxes are one thing but you can think of a variety of other types of scenarios that um you may there are some things that you may want to have in some branches that other branches will have no use for right because people are not going to go there on a Friday evening to take jewelry out of their um you know safety deposit
Boxes for you know um uh weekend functions if you will whereas in other communities you're going to see that yeah and and we see we do a lot of Consulting work globally and and uh we do a lot of Consulting work in Europe and Europe is much further ahead on the shift uh transactional shift towards ATMs I mean on average 87% of transaction in Europe are done at ATMs which kind of frees up the staff to better engage with customers on the advice and sales side of the equation whereas in North America I think we're at around 45 or 47% so about halfway what where Europe is so when you think of ATMs are there strategies of things that you as we look in the future that we would is it sales cograph it's the location of the ATMs what would be your recommendation there to make to help make that transition of separating
Transactions versus advice well let me start up by saying that there are various reasons why people may be apprehensive to use ATMs for certain things this is where that whole notion of um you know coaching right first of all people don't know all the things that they can do in secondly they may not be aware of what the policies at the ATM and the policies at a transaction window are the same you know like for example funds availability If I deposit a check in the ATM does it have the same funds abil availability you know timeline as if I deposit that at a transaction window um can I deposit the same amount at an ATM as I can deposit at a transaction window right are there certain types of things that I can't deposit in an ATM coins for example versus a transaction window so this is where when you start talking
Because I think of ATM as a channel right so when you were talking about Omni Channel and you were talking about some of the uh disconnects between the channels I think of ATM as a channel um so how do the policies of that ATM Channel align with the policies of the transaction window or another Channel right these are are some of the kinds of things that um create uh hesitancy around um using ATMs but let me tell you I mean this might almost sound oh I don't know counterintuitive but it might make sense sometimes to have people you know um do almost like uh uh side bys side coaching with people on ATMs and what all they can do there because uh look a lot of times people are unaware of how far they can go um can I get a cashier check at an ATM you know there there's just like uh can I can I do a wire transfer at an ATM some
People don't even know they can do wi transfers in their apps right so there there's a lot of stuff here um you know that uh maybe we almost take for granted we think that people should know and Hey listen if your population is primarily digital okay um you know genz whoever they might just figure these things out on their own but when you have a mix of your population sometimes it's not that the mix in you know um in the population is not interested it's that they haven't been coached to get um you know comfortable with the new way of doing things with the new technology once they are those very same people who are always coming in to do certain things may not you know want to to to go do that physically they might be doing it in other ways but let me say this if that's the case don't forget about them
Okay you know I I let me let me just throw out this you know like sometimes they tell people in marriages make sure you have date you know you got to keep the fire going okay when you're a bank you got to keep the fire going all right you gotta have date night with your customer okay so because for for for real there's a lot of customers that they just park stuff there and they forget about it and you forget about them but if you want to maintain a connection with those customers you got to have date night okay so um you know yeah well that that's great great analogy so when you look at um and we we we talk about this kind of shift from you know how do you shift from transaction to advice because a lot of the branch network is set up for transactions you know looking for funds you know deposits which fuels easy money
For the banks to reinvest we understand that but as they shift from that mindset to to an advice mindset which is much longterm you know what are and and I'll I'll you I'll just throw one you know when we asked in Europe we asked the banks how did you make this transition from you know 40% ATM transactions to 87% ATM transactions what what did you do that allowed you to achieve those numbers and they said number one is we had the and I think Mar you talked about that we had the redefine the purpose of the branch and and gain alignment internally with the employees on what that purpose is number two is that we need to educate our employees that digital banking mobile banking wasn't a threat to their jobs that actually was an enabler for them to do better to to better engage with their customers on
The things that were more relevant that brought value to them which is the advice side the sales side of the and then they also built in renumeration and recognition for those branches that move those customers to mobile and digital where where a lot of those new transactions were happening in a digital world versus that physical world that that Branch was still being recognized and that employee was still being recognized for that sale or that relationship and once they harnessed those behavioral changes and the I'll call it the infrastructure that you talk about the ATM connecting and the rules of the ATM which makes a lot of sense they were able to Pivot that mindset and get that traction so when you think of that shift from transaction to advice and you think of the North American Market what are the things that you
Would recommend financial institutions should be doing to drive that shift well let me say this um Let me let me start off by saying that um advice is not necessarily always a much longer term thing okay um I was listening to a football player once talking about how his mother taught him about money management and one of the things that he said his mother always used to do was something called the holiday club and and she would start at the beginning of the year and she would put a certain amount of money aside every week and that would be the money that she would use to buy Christmas gifts for them when um you know Christmas rolled around right and so she practiced that habit of saving up so when Christmas came around you know she knew how she was going to pay for the things that she was going to
Buy for Christmas and he said look some years she was able to save more and some years she was able to save less oh that depended on you know how big the Christmas gifts were that they were going to get well just actually coaching um you know customers how to do that type of saving and and you know some apps have been designed to enable people to to set aside you know like different uh um you know parts of their account that say Hey you know this amount is going towards my vacation and this amount is going towards you know my next car or this amount so some of those things are not all of that all all that um long term that's so I think that's that's one of the things that um you know we can we can help folks to understand that there are these you know life moments you know these milestones in their lives and and the folks in the
Branches you know can can work with folks to to get them to do that and I guarantee you if people are saving for things and they get to those Milestones they celebrate and the people in the branch celebrate with them let me tell you that will energize people in in the branch to to see that you know they're making a difference in somebody's life right that's a huge deal so um you know that's that's one aspect of um what what needs to happen for people to understand there something's different is going on here but it's better and it's something that's going to make a difference in my life it's going to make a difference in the lives of the people that that I'm serving but I can't you know emphasize this enough that people need to be coached into the transition all right um I think that most of us even those of us
Who are techsavvy underuse the capabilities that we have with our digital tools and we underuse the capabilities because we don't know what all they are right um like I was saying you know presetting up a a ATM transaction before I ever get to the ATM so all I have to do is authenticate many people don't even know that um you know they they can use nearfield Communications to just use their phone authenticate at the ATM and do their transactions I mean there's so many of these things that um people just don't know and and so people need to be coached into um that transition and And if every time somebody does a transaction they can have a tip or two about how they can you know make this transition it would be super helpful to them if they can get a tip or two that helps them to understand guess what um
We've aligned the the uh you know funds availability uh policies so whether you do the transaction in the ATM or you do it out a window all right um your your funds are going to be available to you at the same time can you find out the same information from the ATM that you can find out from the window these are the kind of things that are going to you know um make people more comfortable and then there may be some other things that are involved too um you know some some uh banks have put in their ATMs and have like extra features where if somebody's having a challenge or something like that at an ATM they can actually engage a u you know they can actually engage a live person for uh you know on the fly to be able to help them with it or to ask a question you know so some of those kinds of things I think would would
Facilitate the uh the transition but I I think that you know there's two sides to this one is for people the employees and the customers to experience the value of the de the advice side of the equation so that they will value utilizing their time on that more than you utilizing their time on transactions and having that side by-side coaching to help people make the move I think um you know those things will will be super helpful to um um you know accelerating this transition so when I look at some of the advice you provided us with with um as part of this uh session number one is you know make sure that the relationship is seamless you know so look at the backend infrastructure to allow people who are online or mobile to complete those transactions in the branch and that they don't have to repeat those
That is truly seamless and I think that's a great piece of advice the other one is you know invest in your people to train them um you know give them the guidance required to make that shift from transaction to advice I think that that's a really important point the other one you said at the beginning of the session is clearly Define purpose you know that you know that as the branch role shifts that shift needs to be reinforced to what is the purpose of the people working in the branch and and to clearly Define that purpose in a way that's emotional with them so that they can get fully embrace the change and and support the change and not fight or resist that move which you know you any change involves risk and there's always reluctance to make that change the other thought you had was this idea of refle
The branch should reflect the demographics of that trading area and to build those services and products specifically around the demographics so safety deposit box ATMs drive-throughs the amount of parking those are all driven by by what are the demographics of that trading area and that the branch should be a microcosm of that trading area and reflect those demographics and then you also talked about relocation one of the things that that financial institutions should be considering is a Playbook you know a relocation transformation Playbook that that is very deep that is as you say it's it's chess not Checkers it's five steps deep it looks at holistically the implication across all of the channels not just the branch and it touches on people technology and the physical aspects I think those are really great insights
Maru when you start looking now at the Future Let's look five years out all of these these chest pieces have been played out where do you see the future of the branches you know if I look now 2020 there was 14,000 financial institution were down to 4,000 today and they're predicting with consolidation in the marketplace we saw our US Bank acquiring Union Bank RBC acquiring HSBC we're seeing this consolidation in the industry so we're five years from now what do you think the branch network is going to look like is it going to be the same as we have today what is it going to look like well um first of all I I you know um nothing's going to be static it it it's not going to look the the the same as it is today but but I I do think that um you know you're going to have this uh this hybrid uh type of movement going
Forward where um folks are investing in physical but they're also investing in digital and and uh you know the digital is going to make what the physical looks like continue to morph right so so that's that's part of the the um the scenario but look one of the things we haven't talked about so far is this whole notion of AI and conversational Ai and what impact that is going to have right because when we when we go forward conversational AI is going to make it possible for um customers to interact with our digital um you know our digital assets different than they do today right and as they as they are able to do that better as those digital assets become smarter there are some things that they have been you know interactions that they've been having with people that they will be comfortable doing in a in a
Digital type environment look let me let me give you an illustration of something you know if you're a Mac User you tend to know everything where your Mac is right um if you're if you're a Windows user user you know things behave a certain way and and you you know how those things behave right if you're if you're primarily do one versus the other whenever you make a change um you're a little bit lost because you don't know where to find things you don't know how what what you need to do to make things react right so I I bring that up because when somebody goes to banking apps every banking app is its own thing right there don't necessarily all have the same interface where you find things in the same places and all those kinds of things um and so one of the biggest issues has been discoverability like I
Was saying that you don't know what all you can do but now as you have conversational Ai and folks are able to basically talk to their apps um you know and some of them already have virtual assistant in them the virtual assistants may not have that many features but over time the number of features is going to grow and it's going to grow exponentially it's going to grow fast right and so people will be able to talk to their apps they'll be able to do discoverability in their apps um or at ATMs you know um even online I mean all of these digital assets are going to have like you know a whole new set of capabilities right and so what what that's going to mean is that with all those new capabilities that those digital assets are going to have the the kinds of things that the people will be doing will be those more complex those
More complicated those more intimate um you know types of scenarios right that's what what they're going to be focused on so some of the things that folks are doing today at windows at transaction windows are going to you know scale back and so you may see um you know footprints that are significantly different in terms of transaction windows and those kinds of things but much more in terms of meeting spaces um you know you may come into a branch and see a lot of people engaged in deep conversation and stuff like that nothing going on at transaction Windows because there's not much to to to to do there anymore but I think that's how we're going to see um you know things evolve because you're going to have like um um you know all of these new capabilities that folks are going to be able to interact with their um you know
The digital assets and that includes ivr by the way I mean um you know we're going to see a whole new set of smart ivrs that people can interact with that you know the whole um yeah uh landscape is going to change in terms of those types of things yeah definitely it will definitely challenge some of the current paradigms that we have before we close it up if uh if you want to use your chat um Bubble and ask us any questions ask Robert and myself any questions please feel free to do so as we wrap this up just want to capture if you had any questions we're going to be sharing this this uh video podcast in addition to the research studies that we are referring to one was on Roi the other one's on seamless Banking and the impact of Branch closures so so look forward to sharing those with you via an email I'm
Just going to see here if there's any
So farit minut see thank you very much for your time and uh look forward to catching up with you in uh at the bcx conference in Charlotte in September well I certainly look forward to catching up with you there as well uh JP and you know I I've enjoyed our conversation I hope the folks that uh joined us have enjoyed it as well and they've uh they've gotten a lot of takeaways from it and um hey we should do this again sometime um but uh you know if not in between now and then looking forward to uh the bcx conference um in Charlotte in September super thank you very much everyone thank you for joining everyone bye now
