If you have been to a modern bank, then you have probably seen self-service areas. These are areas where you can put money into envelopes and drop it off, you can scan a check and drop it off, you can draw out money from the ATM, and if it has an online banking service stand, then you can check your balance and do a few rudimentary things by putting your card and you pin number in (rather than putting in your online banking details).
Like most people, you are probably thinking, “Yeah, that is enough, that is all I need from my bank.” But, modern services only scratch the surface of what banks could offer if they modernized even more. Here are a few ideas to on why retail banks and financial institutions should invest in digital signage.
Data Driven Promotions and Situational Promotions
The days of posters in banks should have died out by now. Banks should be using digital signs to promote their many services. We see digital signs showing things like exchange rates but having signs around the location could do so much more. It could show interest rates for CDs, for bonds, for shares and investment packages. Digital signs could promote savings accounts, investment accounts and a range of tiered bank accounts.
What’s more, with the help of modern digital signage software, banks and financial institutions can create data-driven and situational promotions. For example, if you have live feeds of changes in the markets that could suggest some tasty investments, then start showing those investment opportunities right away on the digital signs.
A good example of a situational promotion may include when crime goes up or down and insurance rates start rising or falling. Any offers, discounts or good prices could be shown in the moment. In more bleak circumstances, if there has just been a weather disaster, financial promotions could be shown in certain affected locations (but not others) in which people are offered extended borrowing services to help them pay for reparations.
Interactive Access Could Go Much Further
The many functions listed in the introduction are just a few of the functions that could be undertaken through on-location technology. Things like setting up direct debits and bank transfers are often not available because they are too much of a fraud risk, and that is fine. Many of the now absent features should remain absent for security reasons, but there are plenty of alternatives that could be put in their place.
For example, why not allow people to run comparisons on the in-store computers and interactive digital signs. Rather than people running through easily manipulated online comparison websites, they could look through the offerings that are present in a financial building or bank.
On a similar note, people could be offered a range of package deals that they can confirm online, over the phone, or with a bank teller. It would be no different to going to a vacation booking firm and using their services. It would be no different to picking out your groceries, except that you are picking out insurance policies, investments and savings options. What’s more, since these offerings may pose a mild security risk, people are still given 14 days to pull out of them with no loss of money, deposits or goodwill. Under these circumstances, you could have people walking into banks and shopping on digital signs/computer screens/tablets in the same way they shop online for groceries.
Consider Using Digital Signs And Tablets As Security Checkers
We all know that you can walk into a bank and use your card and its pin number to check on your balance, draw money out, and even to do things like print out statements and such. However, there are plenty of banking services that require deeper identification, and it takes up a bank teller’s time having to run through these checks. On a similar note, when people have to email things in and show duplicate copies to prove their identity, it is expensive for the bank because they have to dedicate staff hours to the process.
Instead, things like digital signs could literally check people’s identity with facial recognition. There are a slew of biometric hardware and software solutions so banks could check people’s identity that way. Even things like voice recognition, which is common over the phone, could be used in person by having people talk to digital signs or tablet devices.
These checks could free up a significant amount of staff hours, which would save the bank or financial institution a fair amount of money. It would also mean that non-profit making activities, such as when a person wants to draw out more than their daily limit, wouldn’t take up staff hours. People could walk into the bank, have themselves identified through biometrics, voice and/or facial recognition, and then have their limit temporarily increased. And, at no point did the customer have to talk to a bank clerk or have any sort of identity check using a member of staff.
Digital signs and their associated hardware and software could help banks and financial institutions to promote their services intelligently and help save banks and financial institutions a lot of money too.
