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RemoteTeller beats ATM in personality contest

It's more personal than an ATM, but more cost effective than a teller station. Diebold promotes its RemoteTeller system as a bridge between the two types of transactions.

January 30, 2003

Many banks have experimented with promoting products such as mortgages and certificates of deposit at the ATM, and a few have moved to link their ATMs to their CRM (customer relationship management) systems in an effort to offer more personalized marketing experiences.

Yet there is not enough technology out there to make an ATM as effective a salesman as a human being.

A number of financial institutions believe they've found an effective middle ground by installing Diebold's RemoteTeller systems, which allow tellers to communicate with customers via two-way closed circuit television and, if desired for privacy, a handset.

The systems also have pneumatic tubes so that tellers and customers can exchange paperwork and other items.

Steve Stapp, senior vice president of Sacramento, Calif.-based Golden 1 Credit Union, said his institution runs sales promotions -- and information such as stock and weather reports -- at three RemoteTellers in one of its branches as well as on other closed circuit monitors. Golden One pays a monthly fee for the service, which is provided by a Lancaster, N.Y. company called Inlighten.

"If any of the promotions pique a customer's interest, they can get more information from a teller, and the teller can direct them to the appropriate area, whether it's the loan office or our new accounts desk," Stapp said.

More personal than an ATM

The ability to answer follow-up questions is a key in marketing efforts, agreed Derek Williams, senior vice president and chief deposit officer of Canton, Ohio-based Unizan Bank.

Unizan has two RemoteTeller systems in the lobby of one of its highest-volume branches. All those entering the branch are greeted by a customer service representative, who directs them to a RemoteTeller for quick cash transactions and to other areas of the bank for more complex transactions.

The rep also accompanies customers to the RemoteTeller if they are uncertain how to use it, Williams said.

Williams said that Unizan, which has 42 full-service and three drive-through branches, was able to move an employee from the teller window to the "meet and greet" position because a single teller can serve multiple customers at the RemoteTellers.

"We didn't use the RemoteTellers to reduce our staff, but rather to redistribute them," Williams said. "We've put them in positions where they can be more proactive and use their skills to identify client needs and sell our products."

In addition to relocating tellers, said Dan McIntyre, a senior product manager at Diebold, the RemoteTeller can possibly help branches extend their hours by reducing labor needs.

At November's Retail Delivery conference, Diebold showed a concept in which it combined its RemoteTeller system with an ATM.

The RemoteTeller was designed as "a bridge between full-service and self-service financial transactions," McIntyre said.

"It is still more personal than a strictly self-service transaction. For many people, personal contact is a very important element, whether they're making a simple financial transaction or opening a new account," he said.

Not as personal as a teller

"Is (RemoteTeller) more impersonal than a standard teller transaction? Absolutely," Williams said. However, he added, Unizan trains its tellers to use effective communications techniques - such as making eye contact with customers or greeting them by name -- whether they are working in a traditional teller station or at a RemoteTeller.
 
Stapp said the RemoteTeller allowed Golden One to add teller service to a 3,000-square-foot branch that had previously offered no teller transactions. There was little room to spare for a traditional teller line, and Stapp didn't want it to become the main focus of the branch.

"I was looking at the floor plans, and I knew I didn't want a huge teller counter to become the dominant feature," he said. "You don't want the customer to see these windows with nobody working or everybody busy with long lines."

Since the RemoteTellers were installed in late 2001, Stapp said, the northern Sacramento branch now averages about 6,000 teller transactions a month.

"Do I think our members would prefer a live teller?" Stapp said. "Probably. But at this branch, it's a choice of the RemoteTeller or nothing."

Security sells

Golden 1 plans to install another RemoteTeller at a southern Sacramento branch in April. The branch, in a busy commercial area, went from non-cash to a full-service facility -- but back to non-cash after it was robbed several times in a 9-month period. Stapp said the RemoteTeller's will make it possible to return a teller to the branch.

Security was also an issue for Unizan at a branch where several robberies had occurred. Two years ago, Unizan installed a RemoteTeller in the lobby and another in the drive-through lanes -- and has not had any more robberies, Williams said.

Diebold's McIntyre said customers have told him the RemoteTellers also help reduce check fraud. "Think how check fraud occurs," he said. "(Perpetrators) look for tellers they think they can intimidate. RemoteTeller makes it difficult for them to single any one  teller out and do that."

At last November's Retail Delivery conference in Atlanta, Diebold showed a "concept" RemoteTeller that included an ATM. The concept would allow a financial institution to offer both assisted and self-service transactions at a single station, McIntyre said, and would allow customers to seek immediate assistance if they experienced any problems with "new" ATM transactions such as envelope-free deposits.

Diebold has installed RemoteTellers without ATMs at about 370 locations in the U.S., China, South America and South Africa. The addition of ATMs may boost the RemoteTeller's uptake in countries like China, where industry analysts are predicting self-service technologies will explode in the next few years.

While McIntyre would not discuss pricing, he said, "You figure the average customer station is in the $13,000 to $16,000 price range, and you have four to six of them at a typical branch. Most of our (RemoteTeller) customers get a return on investment in under two years."

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