By Walt Albro
When your bank decides to implement a universal banker approach, it has to ensure that its employees believe in its benefits—both for themselves and for their customers. Otherwise, your institution runs the risk of not reaping the full value from the universal banker concept.
This is the experience of David L. Oliver, senior vice president of retail banking at Windsor Federal Savings (assets: $400 million), Windsor, Conn. Oliver participated Sunday, Oct. 4, in a roundtable discuss on universal banking at the ABA Bank Marketing Conference in Denver.
Windsor Federal is about three-quarters through the process of implementing universal bankers, a system that the bank calls “personal banking.” The institution has six regular branches as well as four limited-service branches in high schools and residential communities for seniors.
Two years ago, before Oliver started at the bank, Windsor Federal decided that it needed to begin introducing the universal banker concept to its staff—a process in which bank personnel would have the skills and flexibility to act both as tellers and platform customer service representatives. Why? Millennials seeking career growth and opportunity were rapidly entering the workforce and branch lobby traffic was on the decline. Customers conducting transactions were opting to use online banking, mobile banking or ATMs.
Bank management observed that the customers who were coming into the branches tended to have more service-oriented issues, such as the need to apply for a loan.
Additionally, the bank realized that employees who had a greater depth of skills would provide it with greater staffing flexibility. The combination of the two would provide the bank with more highly trained personnel to be able to establish multiple relationships with its customers thereby, contributing to the bank’s growth.
The bank began to recruit personnel with universal-banker skills. But skills alone are not sufficient to successfully implement the concept, Oliver says. When Oliver came on board 15 months ago, he quickly assessed that both tellers and customer service representatives continued to spend the majority of their time engage in the more traditional retail banking job functions. “They were not going back-and-forth from one job to the other,” Oliver says. “As a result, we were not achieving any sales growth.”
Oliver searched for a training program to help the bank achieve its goal of successfully implementing the universal bank concept. He selected ABA’s universal banking online training. Rather than treat it like “mandatory training”—in which employees forget what they have learned as soon as they finish the course—the bank developed an elaborate program that combined education with accountability.
Recognizing that as adults we learn differently than we did in elementary school, he supplemented the training with a series of extra-curricular individual research project and group branch presentations, complete with rewards in the form of points and prizes. This was done to ensure that all staff had a good understanding of the course contents prior to continuing with the next course. Overall, it allowed the training to be only valuable but also fun and exciting for all, Oliver says.
Everyone involved in retail banking—a total of 36 people—participated in the training, which consisted of one course a month for 11 months. Everyone in the branch is taking the training, from manager down to teller. Personnel are divided into teams by branch, and the teams compete with each other for points in a contest similar to “The Amazing Race” on television. Points are awarded for notable accomplishments such as first team to complete the month’s course, the highest-scoring employee and the most-improved branch score and so forth.
After each online course is completed by all of the staff in a particular branch, the students receive a new “challenge” in the form of an assignment, such as writing an essay about a topic relevant to the course just completed, preparing presentations or organizing a project.
For example, after completing the “relationship selling” course, students had to engage in role-playing exercises in which they attempted to sell each other various bank products and services. All the courses are scheduled to be completed in early 2016.
What is in store at the end of the 11-month journey? The bank is confident that it will have a well-rounded, engaged and skilled retailing staff that will be ready to establish long term, meaningful in-depth relationships with their customers, Oliver says. An award banquet may even be on the horizon to properly recognize all of their outstanding efforts and achievements, Oliver says.
Even though students have not yet completed the training, benefits are already visible. “Cross-selling is above expectations,” Oliver says. The number of new checking accounts is up, as are the balances of checking accounts. The bank saw a $22 million increase in core deposits compared with 12 months previously. “In the past, we were very much order-takers,” Oliver explains. Today, bank personnel are engaging in conversations with their customers. “Before, when someone asked to open a checking account, we would talk about features and pricing. Now, we start a conversation by asking them how they plan to use their checking account, what they liked or didn’t like about their previous checking account at another bank, etc.”
Although it was anticipated that some employees would be uncomfortable with this perceived change in the way of doing things, Oliver was confident that it would be a great way for employees to expand their knowledge in a non-threatening way and develop their careers. And, he says, he was right. The majority of his employees, both new and those with longevity, were eager to develop themselves professionally by learning new skills. “We have not had a single employee leave the bank because of the universal banker training,” he notes.
Oliver lists the following suggestions to other banks attempting to implement the universal banker approach:
- Put all retail-side employees through the training. This exposes all employees to the same universal banker experience. “We want them all singing from the same hymnal.”
- Make it fun. Integrate games and friendly competition into the learning activities.
- Don’t rush it. Space out the training over a long period of time, giving each employee the opportunity to learn and digest the learning materials at his/her individual pace.
- Ensure that tellers and customer-service people job shadow each other and try out the opposite job role in the early stages of training.
- Insist that everyone in retail spend at least 60 percent of their time either in the lobby or on line. Assign an office to only one person: the branch manager.
- Be patient. Change can be difficult, especially for employees who have been doing the same job for 25 years. Understand how your people work. If employees are having a problem, spend the extra time to work with them. Give them the time and resources they deserve: You’ll get more success that way.
One added benefit of universal banking is fewer staffing problems. “When we have vacancies in a branch—whether from illness or something else—anyone can fill in,” Oliver says. “People can move easily from branch to branch. Staffing is far less complicated than it used to be.”
ABA Online Training for the Universal Banker Certificate
The ABA provides 12 online courses leading to the Universal Banking Certificate.
The certificate provides banking knowledge and skills needed for the newest and fastest growing role in retail banking. Universal bankers have multifaceted job responsibilities, ranging from minimal cash handling and basic transactions to product and service sales, and referrals to other lines of business.
Walt Albro is content editor for ABA Bank Marketing. Email: [email protected].
