Hello, my name is Jean-Pierre Lacroix, and I'm very pleased to have with us as part of this session, Chris Stamper. He's the former chief marketing officer and a senior VP at one of Canada's Big Five banks. Hey, Chris, do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah. Thanks for having me, JP. Glad to be here. Looking forward to a very robust conversation about all of the shifts in the new world order. Great. Thank you. And during this session, you'll see in your window you can chat us, ask us some questions, and we're going to have some polls for you to participate. We want to gain your insights on how you feel the COVID-19 is impacting your business. So let me start by thank you for taking this time to participate in this webinar, and we've got some great insights that we want to share with you. So about two months ago, we had written a white paper on what we saw coming as a major threat to North America, which was a potential pandemic.
And part of that was to start putting into place a review and some research on how consumers would react within the banking channel to a pandemic. And as it unfolded, unfortunately, it did happen. And two weeks ago, we were in field conducting a study, and I will share with you that we also recently conducted a similar study for the food service industry, and we've seen a significant decline on the level of optimism that we're seeing with consumers. But let me walk you through the key findings. Just a little bit about ourselves. As you know, we're a brand consulting firm. We specialize in brand transformation and do a lot of work in the banking industry around the globe. And our role really is to help inspire the future of immersive retail experiences from digital and physical. So this study looked at both the process customers take and the channels they use, but also what are the new potential venues?
What are the tools that banks currently use in their digital platform, their arsenal, that they could further leverage? So let's get right into the study. So really the question is: What is the new reality of banking as we emerge from during the pandemic, and as we emerge from the pandemic, how are consumers and the trade responding to these situations?
So our study really covered six different assumptions or questions. One is: What is the confidence level overall within North America, Canada, the US, within the channels? How are consumers using these channels post the pandemic, during the pandemic, and coming out of the pandemic? And what are driving these behaviors and these needs? Obviously, we're looking at the study was done in both Canada and the US, so we want to find age, gender, and country. Are there nuances? And indeed, there are significant nuances between the two countries. And then we explored a whole range of strategies. Many of these the banks have already embraced and initiating. We want to find out, are they relevant with customers in the banking institutions? Are there areas of opportunity that maybe banks have not considered? And then we interviewed 100 bankers to get an understanding of how do their insights align with those of the consumers.
So that was kind of the frame of the study that we did. And then the four key questions we asked was, we really understand the current and future customer banking behaviors. So when we come out of COVID-19, has the impact of the pandemic shifted and changed the behavior of customers? And there's some great insights there that we'll share with you. Which are the social distancing and health safety initiatives that are relevant to your customers and to your staff? Any potential different behaviors coming out from a national gender demographics? And then I'll obviously identify as we conclude the presentation, potential risks of the banking industry. There are several risks that you should be aware of. So just some boilerplate, just so you can get grounded. 49% of the study represented the response in Canada, US was 50%. So pretty well an even split between the two countries. 57% of the response were women and 43%
men. We did not gate or put quotas on these. We allowed the study to fill itself.
So one of the questions we asked is, what is your banking channel? And from a national to regional to digital only to really being unbanked. And so when we look at the total distribution, 62% of North America were banking with national banks, 15% were regional, credit unions were 12. We had 6% which were digital-only banks, and then we had 5% that were none. But when you look at the percentages across North America and you compare Canada and US, you can see that the US consumer has a much broader usage of the various channels or types of banks versus Canada, and that's representative of the fact that Canada, the five major banks dominate the marketplace, where in the US, you have a very strong representation on a regional level. So we wanted to really look into, has this type of distribution of national banks impacted the banking network? So there's a- There's a poll here, and the question is: which do you think will
be the most popular in COVID-19? We've got mobile apps, website, telephone, ATMs, chat functions. Now then, we'd love to get your insight, and we'll compare that to what the consumers have told us. So moving on here. At a high level, these various insights came. The attitudes regarding COVID-19 vary, obviously by age group, that makes sense, and actually by geographical distribution, Canada versus US. And that really is important when you start thinking of your tone of communication and how you're going to be speaking to your customers during the pandemic and after the pandemic.
The great news is that the banks have been on a journey of digital transformation for the last 10 years, and that's played to your strength. I can tell you that the food service industry that we're just completing a major study, haven't fared so well. The growth and the strength of mobile and online in the bank industry has allowed consumers to continue to bank and feel reduced anxiety about having access to their funds. But what was interesting is telephone banking actually had a significant increase, and we'll have a chat about that when we look at the charts.
There remains a reliance on the physical branch network, but you will see that that will actually have an impact coming out of the pandemic. It definitely had an impact during the COVID, the first month of the pandemic. And as we mentioned, there is a slight risk. 70% of customers are undecided, indicating that there is vulnerability in the marketplace if how you manage and handle the pandemic is not done properly, there is a risk of losing your customers. And obviously, when you look at anxiety levels, there's a high level of anxiety to the channel usages, and we'll get into more of what those anxieties are in this study.
So this is a great quote from one of the respondents: "At this time, I'm not sure anything is going to ease our minds. These are very uncertain times indeed." And that really reflects the anxiety level across most respondents that we interviewed. We had 2,000 respondents, 1,000 in Canada, 1,000 in the US.
So when you look at the general attitude towards COVID-19 in the last three months, you'll see that there's a high level of optimism from respondents. I will tell you right now that this study was fielded two weeks ago. The study we did for food service that just came out yesterday, the optimism has dropped by 50%. The average consumer now is about 20 to 27% optimism compared to the 50/55. So you can see as this pandemic extends in duration, lasts longer than expected, the level of optimism will decrease. Ironically, the US is much more optimistic than the Canadian market by a slight margin. But when you combine both optimistic and undecided, you can see the US is much more optimistic in their view, and that reflects in how they respond to the survey also.
So when you look at who's optimistic, put aside geographical boundaries, you see national banks or regional banks, customers within those channels or those institutions tend to be more optimistic, followed by credit unions. And then obviously the non-banks were the lowest from being optimistic about the outcome. That may represent socioeconomic factors, their level of income, and their job security. As we know, there's had a significant impact. I think in the US today, there's 2 million, or sorry, 20 million unemployed consumers, about 2 million in Canada.
So when you look at the study, and you look at
level of response, it's important for customers that banks are viewed as supporting the community. One of the questions we ask is, how important is it to you that your bank supports your country during the COVID-19? And you can see here that how you conduct your marketing, how you conduct yourself in light of the community, how you support the community, how you support the elders, plays a really important role of the level of loyalty that those customers are going to have towards your financial institution. So a lot can be lost on how you're managing this pandemic during the crisis and how you're going to manage the pandemic coming out of the crisis. So that's something to keep in mind. Chris, do you have any thoughts on this chart? Yeah, it's an interesting chart, and it does reflect a lot of the work that I have done as well in terms of the decisions that the institutions make in the middle
of the crisis will actually have full bearing on the decisions consumers make post-crisis. And so are you, as a financial institution, are you there to support your customers? Are you there to assist them in the times of trouble? And the consumers want to know that you will be there for them, and you will be there to help them. And that will then impact the decisions that they're going to make in good times. And so that ability to support your country and support the consumer base is quite critical. Yeah. And we'll share with you some of the strategies that we explored as part of the study.
When you look at that importance of commitment to the community, it actually plays a really important role with national banks and also credit unions. Obviously, credit unions are really tightly tied to the community, and so representing their members is really important. But the riskier for national banks, they're truly put a large effort in supporting the community and communicating effectively what your institution is doing for your customers during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic. And there were two things that stood out for me, JP, on this slide. And one is, I think, the link to your overall purpose and the purpose of your organization. And so, that purpose encompasses both what you do and how you treat your employees, in addition to how you support and look after your customers. And I think the decisions the institutions have to make have to have both of those at heart. I think the second thing
about it is just the ability to be authentic. And so authenticity matters in the type of communication and the type of messaging you're delivering. And I think customers, in any instances, will see through a sell opportunity versus a true support opportunity. And I think it's important to remember that authenticity makes a difference. Absolutely. Those are great points, Chris.
So this is a really important chart that I want to share with you. And I know on the poll we asked you where are these channel preferences. After seeing these numbers, do you think that the channel preferences will continue post COVID-19? So what we've done is we asked a series of questions of what were the channels that customers were using prior COVID, during, basically at the moment of the study, and three months in, and then basically coming out of COVID-19, six months out. What were the channel behaviors? And what is obvious here is that the physical channel you can see. By the way, let me explain this chart because it can be confusing. This is a means chart, which means that the closer you get to one, the higher the importance of that channel is. The more you move up to seven, the lower the importance of that channel. So if you look at the orange chart, which is the branch, and you look
at prior, it was at a level four of importance. Obviously, online and mobile played a more important role. Telephone banking was less important. Chat and other were less important. Then when you move into the duration of the pandemic, you can see that telephone has increased in importance while the branch network actually decreased significantly. Became the last channel customers were thinking of going to, to do their banking. And as you go three months in, the physical channel has gained some importance.
But again, the telephone has maintained its importance. And you see here both mobile and online have maintained their importance. They've been pretty steady. But as you look at six months out, you can see that telephone has actually continued to increase importance, while when you look at ATMs, that has decreased slightly of importance. So when you look across these channels, it's important to understand that coming out of COVID-19, there is going to be a reckoning of channels, specifically the physical channel. Also, I think what's important to note here is
banks have been already on this digital transformation journey. What COVID-19 has done is accelerated many of these factors, which you will see coming out of COVID-19 playing out. Chris, do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, I would agree completely with that, JP. I was surprised, actually, in the poll results that said 60% think the channel preferences will continue post COVID-19. I actually think there will be a continue of that acceleration. I think clients and customers and the people that I'm speaking with, and I've talked to people in my network in Australia and New Zealand and the UK and Europe as well as the US and Canada. And people are rediscovering things that they didn't know. Electronic check deposit, chat capabilities, the ability to interact and engage in a different way than they have before. And I think some of these capabilities, people didn't know that they could, or they hadn't yet found a need to actually use them.
And the pandemic has forced that need to use some of those capabilities. And so I think once discovered, experience indicates that people are seldom to drop a channel once they've discovered it. And so I do think that switch to
a less reliance on traditional branch network and a greater reliance on digital capabilities will continue to accelerate. And I think it will pick up the pace on it. And as you said, I think there are a number of things that financial institutions have been playing with for a number of years, whether it's digital sales capabilities or e-signature capabilities or remote workforce capabilities that the pandemic has dramatically accelerated both a push on use, but a push on capabilities and strength in that capability. So I expect to see that continue. Yep. There's a question here from our audience. Do you think phone usage is higher because online and digital systems are not yet fully integrated? That's a great question because we did a proud presentation to two banks, a large Canadian finance institution, and one of the largest US banks. We walked them through these studies to get their insights, and
yes, the reality is that both banks saw a significant increase in their telephone banking, and it was due primarily because the consumers calling were asking for advice on how to use mobile and how to use online banking. They may have been following their investments, but now they had to deposit checks, or they had to shift balances from accounts. Something they traditionally did in the branch, they were now being forced to do it online, and that drove a lot of those activities to the telephone channel. I see that continuing, specifically as the pandemic duration extends, see the phone line. And again, as you look at, and for every challenge, there's a silver lining of an opportunity, and that is,
as you go through your digital transformation, this is an opportunity to convert your customers to the online mobile platform into the full range of services you provide digitally. Because you have a captive audience now that are being forced, not due to the banking network, but because of this pandemic, to change their behavior. So it's a really great opportunity to provide great customer service. Now, when we go to the next slide, I broke this down between channel behaviors in Canada and the US, and you can see that there are different behaviors. Canada's online usage slightly higher than the US. That's the black bar at the bottom. You can see in the US, it's shifted up and down slightly, but pretty well everything else, they're very similar in behaviors. The pattern follows both Canada and US. So whatever comes out of the pandemic or whatever happens in the next three months, I think you're going to see similar behaviors happening in both
markets. I think one thing I'll build on your point, JP, and it will be an interesting outcome I want to pay attention to over the next three to four months, is the comfort that people now have with face-to-face video communication. And so like you're doing this webinar today, or like you've done with your friends and family over the holidays, a lot more face-to-face, whether it's Zoom, FaceTime, Messenger, digital communication. There's a growing comfort level with the ability to sit down and have face-to-face video conversations, and it'll be interesting to see that translate as a vehicle for contact center capabilities. So the ability to leverage that staff to deliver that unique face-to-face communication. And I think that's one of the things that people are missing, which is actually hearing the voice and having the reassurance of having a conversation with somebody. And right now they're using it over the phone.
I think the future will be leveraging video capabilities to do a similar type of conversation. Absolutely. And we actually talked to that, Chris, later on. We asked a question about video ATM, so we'll share those insights with you. It's a great point. The question was asked, how does these channel preferences change by age groups? And what's interesting is that the ages 25 to 54, you witness here on these charts very similar behaviors. There's not a lot of difference happening within those age groups. However, the printer age groups, the 18 to 24 and the 55 plus, you can see significant changes of their behavior during the pandemic and post-pandemic. So understanding that both these types of consumers, these age groups of consumers, will have different needs. And this is talking to our point that how you communicate to these segments, age group segments, is going to be very important because their channel preference and their usage is quite different.
We asked the question as you emerge from this pandemic, what is your likelihood to consider an alternative bank? And this mirrors a study we did, the self-attrition study we did two years ago, where we asked the same question, and what we found out kind of mirrors here, and that is that digital-only consumers are much more apt to switch banks versus consumers who use all the bank's channels. But when you look at these charts, you can see that about 13% of the digital channel are considering a potential shift. In the physical, it's slightly less, it's 8%, but if you include the undecided, you can see the level of vulnerability that if financial institutions are not managing their communication with their staff and with their customers and demonstrating kind of empathy for their issues, that they are at risk of losing those customers. Chris, do you have any thoughts here? Yeah, I think that's very true. I think
people have time on their hands, and when you have time on your hands, it gives you an opportunity to think and reflect on things that you wouldn't have thought about on the every day, whether that's your cell phone provider or your ... cable TV provider or the subscriptions that you have. I think financial services are no different. And so whether it's wealth or insurance or whomever, I think it will cause people to sit back and reflect and say, "You know what? Maybe I should be looking at this relationship." You may not act on it right away, but I think there is a period of time where people are thinking about, "You know what? I'm going to have a pause." And that's what I think people are doing. Mm-hmm. I don't think it will be dramatic, but I do think there is an opportunity in the market. Yeah. So Chris, there's a question from the audience. Do you think commercial banking and/or investment services will shift
more to digital video where majority of reps are remote and on the road as opposed to personal banking and branch are widespread across the board? What's your thoughts on that? I think my perspective on it is erring on channel choice and preference of what your consumer's looking for. And I think it's always important to go back and reflect on rooting the decisions you make as an organization on what your consumer is actually looking for. And so I think having the ability and the opportunity to offer multiple channels of choice and connect to your customers in a way that your customers want to connect with you is important. And so I think video capability and face-to-face capability offers a level of connection similar to chat messaging and text. If you think about the quickest and easiest way to engage with someone that you work with or you're close with, it's not the telephone and it's not going to see them. It's text or
chat. And so the natural extension of that is to video chat and text. And so I think that capability will play a role. I think it also depends on the complexity of the issue that you're trying to solve. And so the more mundane day-to-day routine elements or questions that people have, I think can be solved that way. I think there is no substitute for the ability to sit down on complicated matters and have a conversation with somebody. It just may not be physical face-to-face. It may be virtual. Yeah. And it may also depend on the age group, right? When you look at those channel preferences and usage across the different age groups, you could almost deduct that the 55 plus will be less reluctant to do the video versus the younger, or actually the full spectrum of the other ages. And so I think you need to look at it from an age segment standpoint, but also the reality is this, is that to Chris's point,
we're being forced to use tools even if we're not familiar with them. We're forced to use tools that we're now becoming ritualistic in our lives. Right. And I think that will have a long-term impact for sure. There's no question the older demographic will yearn for the opportunity to go back and visit in a bank branch. But I think the younger demographic, I think it will be a permanent shift. Yeah. So we asked 100 bankers their thoughts to see how they align with the consumers.
They were actually more, financial institutions were more optimistic than the overall consumer base. You can see here quite a spread, a seven-point spread between the two, which is great because you definitely want your customer-facing staff to be optimistic, to be positive about the pandemic, to reassure consumers, their customers, that everything's okay.
But this is
important now. We asked them the same question we asked consumers, would you consider working in this case, would you be considered working for another financial institution? And there is a significant flight risk for your employees. So as you focus your energies on providing reassurance and safety to them, it's also important for effective communication, ensuring that their anxiety levels are put at ease, that they'll feel comfortable coming to work or dealing with managing customer relationships. Because if not, you are at risk of losing your high-valued employees to competitors. One of the things I talk about in some of the work I've done is protection. And protection applies equally to how you protect your data and how you protect your customers to how you protect your employees. And is it a great safe environment to come to work and do their job? And you're seeing that today in food services and
retailers and frontline services as well as financial services. Yeah. Absolutely. And here's a great quote to just build on that. The bank should help staff to safeguard customers from COVID-19. It isn't the bank should help safeguard customers from COVID-19. It's the fact that they equate the staff as an important role to play in providing that level of confidence and reassurance that the bank is doing everything right to safeguard customers from contracting the COVID-19.
So I want to look at some other strategies now. We're getting into the tactics of what we've studied, and I just want to anchor these tactics and strategy based on our omni-experience model. We look at what are the customer needs and priorities, and what are your financial needs and priorities, and how do they impact the structure, the branch layout, service offerings, process, the customer journey, and message. What are you communicating when? We want to investigate all of these factors and find out which ones of these are the most relevant for your customers. And again, this explains a little bit more about the process, the message, and the structure.
So when you look at, we had a whole barrage of strategies. So obviously, what's relevant and really important is this whole sense of sanitation. Anything to do with the concern customers have of contracting the virus during a branch visit needs to be mitigated. And so you look at things like automatic doors play a really important role. Mm-hmm. And that has an implication moving forward. So if you're going through a branch transformation, post pre-COVID-19, you wouldn't consider putting automatic doors. Now, that is a must. You look at sanitation stations throughout the branch are really important. Things that you've already done, adequate separation between the customers. What was interesting was the separation between the customer and the staff played a lesser role. It was more the separation between customers and customers that were really important here across these strategies. Some other things we looked at was
the idea here, if you look at the idea of the use of digital technology, it plays an important role. So as you look at the question that was asked about would they migrate to wealth management online, virtual meetings scored 40%. I'm sure that if we did this study a year ago, virtual meetings would have scored significantly lower. Mm-hmm. We also pushed the boundaries. We looked at facial recognition technology. Really when you look at the top two boxes, 44% of respondents said that this was something good. And then we pushed the boundaries even further. We said heat-sensing device to identify potential ill staff or customers. A startling 37% indicated this was an important factor. And if we just read the most recent news from Google and Apple partnering on developing some of these technologies, you're going to see this playing a key role, that customers are going to be willing to give up some of their perceived liberties,
freedoms, in order to be compensated and ensure that they're safe. So these demonstrate some of the digital tools. Obviously, flexibility between the customer and branch staff plays an important role. A lot of you banks have watched that, so understand that that's important. Being able to book appointments ahead of time plays an important role here through the app. Chris, do you have thoughts here? Yeah, I think all of those things speak to personalization and the ability to custom and tailor the experience uniquely to me. And so I don't want to be sitting around in a lobby waiting for 35 minutes for an advisor to be available. I want to be able to come in and come out and protect my interactions and the frequency of how I engage. And so I think you'll continue to see that. It, to me, is a more customized experience, again, respecting and being cognizant of my individual needs versus, JP, your individual needs. And I think that will continue to be a theme that we're
going to see throughout. Yeah. If you look at the next slide here at some other, you look at mobile app features allow customers to avoid touching insert pin pads. And I'm sure you even feel it yourself if you're going to the branch and you're using an ATM, there is a concern about the contamination of that ATM, the pin pad that you have to use. So the opportunity of using digital facial recognition technology, things like ensuring that there is sanitation happening at the ATMs, the ability of covering that touch pad with plastic so that the customer doesn't come in contact with it. Things where the customer is actually touching the branch experience is really important to mitigate their concerns. We also looked at drive-thru video ATMs, voice-enabled ATMs, ATMs with facial recognition technology. They all scored really well, and we'll see later on in the next slide which country plays a more prevalent role.
So you can see technology is an important factor. Once you start peeling away the sanitation aspects, digital technology can play a role in ensuring a lower level of anxiety of contracting the virus. And knowing that if you look at research and what's coming out from the healthcare industry, they're predicting that this unfortunate virus is going to repeat itself. So I believe that these behaviors, these understandings, these needs are here to stay. These are not things that are going to go away once the pandemic is over. These are things that your customers are going to be looking for on an ongoing basis. And I would echo that and build on the acceleration of contactless. And for me, it was a dramatic step last week when the Bank of Canada in Canada came out and said, "Listen, please still accept paper money. We need you to continue as a retailer to accept paper money." You're seeing the leading edge of what the consumers are saying, which is, one, I
don't want to handle it, and two, I just want contactless payments. And in North America, we're a little bit behind, where places like Australia and New Zealand, it's very difficult to actually use cash. And so I think there'll be a continued acceleration of that payment mechanism as well. Absolutely.
So when you look at drive-thru ATMs, ATM with facial recognition, and voice-activated ATMs, you can see that the US is much more open to use these technologies versus Canada. I think part of that is realization that Canada's Drive-thru ATM network is limited. Although we have probably the same number of ATMs from the standpoint of per branch network, I think in the US, I would say that drive-thrus are much more prevalent than in Canada. Chris, thoughts on that? Yeah, I think that's true, and it's interesting. There's a little bit of uniqueness in the US. A number of drive-thrus are actually staffed by people versus just a drive-thru where you use a drive-up ATM. And so there is a uniqueness on both sides of the border with respect to what drive-thrus can offer. Yeah. So we ask from a communication standpoint what's important. So in the branch, digital signs that communicate social distancing is
really important. So you need to really look at your G and what are you communicating. I was in one of the Canadian banks on the weekend doing a deposit, and it was interesting that none of the digital signage talked about COVID-19 or some of the social distancing or even the cleaning sanitation that the bank was doing above and beyond the normal things. These are all opportunities that are, if not being done, are missed opportunities. And again, it goes back to having empathy for the anxiety customers have and your staff also, and that impact that it'll have coming out of the pandemic from a customer loyalty standpoint and attrition factor. So these are really important. These are things you can do tomorrow if you haven't already done them. They're definitely things you need to think about. And I would say food services are leading the way in that respect, obviously because it is food. But even the large retailers are talking more often about
frequency of cleaning, extended cleaning. One of the pushes and one of the interesting thoughts I've heard is, should we actually go back to closing on Sundays permanently to allow for a chance to restock, refresh, clean, give our frontline workers time off in all facets of frontline retailing. So that will be an interesting debate to see what happens from that perspective. That's a great point.
So when you look at the key strategies, I think what's important here is the HR sales choreography process. Looking at where are those anxiety points customers are going to have coming to the branch. But also online, on your telephone network, your telephone service, on your chat. Understand that those customers have a high degree of anxiety. Part of it is COVID-19. Part of it is that you're being forced to use channels that they may not be familiar with. And what may seem simple for an 18 to 24-year-old may be very complicated for someone who's 55 plus. Obviously, look at digital features to eliminate those contact touchpoints. I think there's real opportunity in the queuing area. There's opportunity to pre-booking appointments, to Chris's point. Think of your digital strategy now as an important facet of eliminating some of those friction points and anxiety points. I know of a lot of banks have pushed back on digital
queuing in their branches. It's ironic that in China, every bank that we do has digital queuing. It's natural process. Mm-hmm. The ability of customers coming in and digital queuing using their mobile device is something that is coming that needs to be adopted because it overcomes those anxiety points. Supply staff with visible health and sanitation gear. I think it's really important, again, that you demonstrate you're taking care of your staff because it's a reflection of who you are as an organization. And then obviously, the integration of sanitation stations and multiple customer touchpoints at the ATM, at the counter. All of those touchpoints, you need to reassure the consumer that you're taking their
health to task. Chris, do you have any other additional thoughts here? Well, I think it's a very good list, and I think the interesting thing about a number of the things on the list is they're not difficult to implement. It just requires the decision to implement them. And so I think that speaks to a willingness and leadership to be able to say, "You know what? We're going to make a decision, and we're going to move forward on some of these things." So I think it's a great list and easily executable on a number of fronts. Yeah. And our recommendation to our clients is that you really need to have a COVID-19 task force that focuses on the consumer experience and looking at all of those touchpoints and how you can eliminate them, convert them to other technologies like digital. Look at your branch layout and look at how you structure that branch layout from a communication standpoint. It's important if you have digital signage within your branches to leverage those
to communicate effectively. You should have permanent signage on the door at the ATM talking about the way you clean your branches, the level of commitment you have for your employees, and also ongoing communication with your employees. They're your frontline staff. They're interacting with your customers on an ongoing basis. It's important for them to continue to be optimistic and confident in being able to deal with customers who have a high degree of anxiety, who may be frustrated or angry because they're being forced to use or being challenged to use new channels. And so this is really important that the messaging is done effectively. It's interesting in the food service study, which we unfortunately didn't include here, we looked at various social cause initiatives. And ironically Next to sanitation, demonstrating that you're committed to a clean environment, social commitment to the
community played a critical role in building that brand loyalty and in building those relationships with their customers. So I would guess the same could be said within the banking industry. Well, I think that's very true. And equally, I think in terms of communicating to your employees, I think listening to your employees is critical in this process. And so what is the frontline feedback? What are they hearing? Do your employees have a vehicle or a mechanism to provide feedback back to the organization on the changing dynamics of what customers are looking for, how they're feeling, the interactions that they're having, and what they're needing? And so you need that two-way dialogue and that two-way exchange of information between your employees and the organization to make sure you're supporting the customers in the way that they want to be supported. Yeah, absolutely. Lisa, the last lever of change, structure,
and I think at a very high level,
the pandemic has accelerated the value relevancy of the physical branch network.
We recommend that you reevaluate who
does the branch network bring great value, why, and how can you transform that to be more relevant? I truly believe that the branch network will remain an important facet of growing your business, but its role and value from a standpoint of customer needs will shift dramatically. Obviously, implement strongly for social distancing within the branch, so permanent demarcation of where to stand. We've seen that in the supermarket industry. They were- Absolutely ... fast to respond to COVID-19 by having clear floor decals identifying the distance customers have to space themselves, both inside the store and outside the store. The same could be applied to the bank industry. As you look at implementing and renovating your branches, automatic doors are really important, and obviously plexiglass panels between the staff and the customers. You need to consider those as important facets for both the
customer's safety, but also for the staff.
And that kind of rounds up. Chris, any other thoughts you have? No, I think it's a thought-provoking study, and I think it's very good information that participants can take back to their respective organizations and just push the thinking and push the dialogue within the organization on what are we doing and what are we doing immediately, what are we doing near term, and what are some of the broader implications for long-term strategy? And I think that's going to have a significant role to play, and this will help push that dialogue. Yeah. One of our clients asked us, do you believe that the pandemic and what you see here as patterns will continue to shift channel usage and behavior for each of those channels? And I would say absolutely. Banks were already on that digital transformation trajectory. What the pandemic has done is accelerated those channel behaviors and put some of them under a
microscope. I think telephone banking was something. Stealth attrition study three years ago was actually shrinking, and you can see here grabbing a lot more consumer attention and usage. I think you're going to need to rethink your telephone customer service lines. You're going to need to rethink what the role they do as part of your digital transformation. But the biggest impact will actually be your channel, your physical branch network. You really will need to evaluate what we've been proposing through our next branch study that we did two years ago, you can download from our website, where banks need to move from transactional to an ecosystem. And a few banks in the world are actually embracing that strategy. It's something that is going to be accelerated with this pandemic. So I'm going to open up here to the panel if you have any questions for Chris or myself. There's a question box there. You can type us questions.
We'd love to respond. And by the way, this study is available. Our office will be emailing you the full report. And if you need the actual tables of the report, we're happy to share that also. So any questions? Here we go. Do you think there is an advantage, disadvantage for large or small banks either way? Chris, your thoughts? Well, I think that there is an advantage for local, and so I think both small banks and large banks can deliver on local. And so I think that matters. And so the ability to have a connection in your local community and understand your needs and your local market. The needs of a customer in Texas are very different, and have different implications than the needs of a farming community customer in the Midwest compared to someone in the Northeast. And the same applies to Canada. And so I think there are unique opportunities in terms of scale and the ability to ramp up that large institutions might have.
But then at the same time, you could say a small institution is more nimble and can act faster. And so I think there are pros and cons on both sides. I think really a deep fundamental understanding of what's important to your unique customer base is what will set you apart. Yeah, so I have a different thought, Chris, to this question. It's a great question to ask, by the way. Most banks right now,
we call it different phases of the bank industry. If you think 10 years ago, the bank industry was going through digital transformation consolidation. Before that, it was actually the reverse. They're opening more branches to be closer to the customers. The current phase we're in is what I'll call a centralization of power. In other words, I'm sure, Chris, the bank you work for, they went from strong regional representation by EVPs to now bringing all of that clout and that thinking to a centralized for efficiencies and operational savings. We're seeing that this COVID-19 is going to force banks to rethink their structure from a hierarchical standpoint, giving the regions more autonomy. What's happening in Vancouver is very different than what's happening in Quebec, or what's happening in New York is very different than what's happening in Detroit or in Atlanta. And being able to respond to local
needs is really important. As you see in the study, it's really important to have empathy and support the local community as part of COVID-19. So I predict that banks are going to not only rethink their channel strategy and rethink their physical branch strategy, they're also going to rethink how power is distributed and the ability of the local branch network to be agile and nimble. So we are in violent agreement. Local matters. I could not agree with you more. Yeah. Good. Great. You scared me there. No, that was my point. Local matters. I think understanding what's unique, as I said, in the different parts of your community is what drives the difference. Yeah. I think smaller institutions have an inherent greater ability at local because they're more connected to their local communities by definition. It's the opportunities of the larger players to actually be more local in how they approach it.
Great. Any other questions from our audience?
So I have a question for you. Sebastian, we had a panel on how optimistic or how long they thought our... Do you want to give us a share what the panel communication was? What they voted on, Sebastian?
So you're sharing the poll results. So number one, which do you think will be the most popular mobile app? 85%. And then chat function, 15%. And that was it. Those are the two channels. I guess branch are going to be zero. Telephone and website, zero.
What was the other- There's another question on do we think biometric touchless security will get a boost from the pandemic?
I think definitely. Well, you saw the study that consumers are actually surprisingly more open to have these new technologies. And I have to say, we have an office in Shanghai. We're currently working with five different banks. And they're probably 10 years ahead of North America on we're already adopting biometric measures in their smart banking platforms. Their technology when it comes to onboarding, I can open an account, get a credit card, debit card, without ever talking to a bank staff. This would be unheard of in North America. And so they're further developed. And biometric PIN replacement is very prevalent. You can buy pop from a vending machine using your facial recognition, and we'll see more and more of that here in North America when 5G fully gets embraced. I would agree.
If there's no other questions, what I'll do is we'll wrap this up. I want to thank you for participating in this session. I hope we've been able to share some insights on probably a checklist of the things you're currently doing and the value it brings to your customers, and maybe some insights on things that maybe you're considering or have put on the back burner that you need to now put on the front burner. I want to thank Chris Stamper for joining us, bringing his banker hat perspective. Chris, do you have any closing comments? No. Thank you for the opportunity and the dialogue, and feel free to reach out or connect with me on LinkedIn if you have any additional questions. But I do think there's a new future ahead for everybody, and I think the time is now to actually accelerate the planning for it. So it's great timing to be able to have the dialogue. Great. Again, thank you very much.
This report, we will email you, and you can also download it from our website. I actually invite you to join our food service study, the webinar, which we're going to be hosting on April 30th. You may find some additional insights on consumer behavior and attitudes. And then we're doing a third one on these consumer packaged goods, and then one on retail in May. Similar format, looking at what are the behavior channel change attitudes. And we'll be able to track over these two months what are the level of optimism consumers have. So come back to our website. Please download "Stelpatrition" and our book on the future of retail banking. There's some great insights there on the value branches play. Anyways, thank you very much for your time, and I hope this session was very helpful for you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day. Yeah. Thanks, Chris.
