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PNC Bank and the ABCs of enabling users of EMV-enabled ATMs — Part 2
In the second part of our inside look at a successful EMV implementation, PNC Bank shares its formula for ensuring that the bank's 6 million customers will be comfortable using chip card technology at its 9,000 ATMs.
September 15, 2016 by Suzanne Cluckey — Owner, Suzanne Cluckey Communications
In part 1 of our look at a successful EMV migration and rollout, we talked to PNC Bank Senior Vice President and ATM Executive Ken Justice about the logistics behind EMV enablement and activation for the bank's mixed-vendor fleet of 9,000 ATMs.
Today, in part 2, we're looking at the customer experience with EMV at the ATM.
PNC is well into the process of chip card delivery and expects to have a smartcard in every customer's hand by the end of the year.
The bank views a successful customer migration to chip cards as being no less important than the successful hardware and software migration it has already achieved.
To ensure a hassle-free customer experience with EMV at the ATM, PNC focused on early and effective communication, as Justice explained in a phone interview with ATM Marketplace.
Q: How did you handle customer education about EMV the ATM?
A: [E]ven before turning EMV on, we had a preview welcome screen on the ATM with a "coming-soon message," so they'd start to be aware of those.
A lot of people have had an EMV experience, whether at another ATM or at the point of sale. So it's not completely foreign to them and giving them that heads-up — we found that to be helpful.
Q: What issues did you have to overcome with customer use of chip cards?
[O]n our remote ATMs — the ones that aren't at branches — for the most part, they all use a DIP reader. … And when you do dip on EMV, that's a big change in user experience. Instead of sticking your card in and pulling it back out, in this case you had to stick it in and leave it in.
We created a video on the welcome screen that walks the customer through that, so they could see what to expect before they put their card in.
The other thing I would say is our motorized readers. … Pre-EMV, we would take the card in and we would spit it right back out, so the customer would have their card.
With EMV, the card has to stay in there. So how were we going to not have customers driving off and forgetting their card?
What we did is we developed the transaction flow so that you have to take the card out before your cash comes out. People may forget the card but they very rarely forget their cash. So you take your card out and then the cash comes out and we did that on purpose to try and be thoughtful about customers not leaving their card.
So those are some examples of planning in advance on the customer experience and how you want to make them aware, how you want to educate them, how you want to lead them through the transaction.
Q: Any pleasant surprises?
A: [A]t a point of sale, I find the experience to be slower if I swipe my card vs. EMV. At the ATM, it's actually not.
I do things differently — I put my card in and it has to stay there — but the transaction itself is no slower at all.
I had prepared myself, when I first used the ATM, for a slower experience, based on my conditioning at the point of the sale, and I was like, "Wow, that was fast!" It wasn't any faster than a normal ATM transaction would've been, but to me it felt faster because I was expecting it to be slower.
We've not had issues. I tried to prepare people for, "Hey, people might not like it and we could get some people calling and complaining. "I've not had anyone call me and say, "What are you doing to me?"
Q: What I've found frustrating with POS transactions is not knowing whether it's a chip transaction when you approach the reader.
A: What's interesting about that … when banks moved from envelope deposit ATMs to no envelopes, the people that were kind of on the tail end of that had a lot of issues with customers who had gotten used to not needing envelopes anymore going to their ATMs and just putting checks in it without the envelope when they needed the envelope … So you're absolutely right. I think the people who move faster will find it easier for their customers. It's the people that are moving last that will get the most grief.
photo istock
About Suzanne Cluckey
Suzanne’s editorial career has spanned three decades and encompassed all B2B and B2C communications formats. Her award-winning work has appeared in trade and consumer media in the United States and internationally.
