Digital POS brings people to the bank branch

Today customers want to be addressed and looked after using modern means. The digital POS offers a new possibility. This allows banks to provide a kind of virtual branch – anywhere they want.

A customer enters her favorite café around the corner. A touch screen has recently been installed there. She places her latte on a board attached to the side, sits down on the bar stool and activates the screen. A quartet of stocks from the local bank can be played on it. You can win a free piece of cake in the café and a cup with your name in the bank as an additional gift. To do this, she enters the information she needs.

A week later she goes shopping near the bank. A reminder appears on her cell phone that she could pick up her cup now. In the anteroom of the bank branch you will find digital signage displays and digital tables that can be used interactively. She takes a Coke bottle from the shelf, puts it on the table and immediately receives the latest information from the listed beverage company as well as offers to buy shares with a dividend forecast.

Reach customers everywhere

This example shows how banks can bring customers to the branch in a modern, playful way. After all, fewer and fewer people today want to make an appointment by phone, then go to the branch and wait for an advisor at the counter. Thanks to smartphones in particular, they are used to doing their tasks immediately and spontaneously.

Especially when compared to FinTechs and other online services, banks often lag behind. Because they usually continue to use proven solutions that run reliably and without errors, but are not very flexible. Banks can compensate for this disadvantage with their well-known brand and the high level of trust of their customers . But to do this, they have to achieve this first.

For this reason, banks should first ask themselves: Where are existing and potential customers? For example in department stores, restaurants, cafés, at the train station and airport or in the football stadium. Everywhere there, banks can invite people to immerse themselves in the mobile and digital world of the bank – be it via the smartphone app or a digital POS (point of sale). This means the digital screens and tables mentioned at the beginning as examples.

Create incentives and offer benefits

However, mere marketing statements or pretty pictures are not enough to really interest customers and get them to take the “next steps”. Incentive measures are particularly necessary for new customers. Sweepstakes or vouchers have proven their worth. The interested parties are then often ready to provide personal data and their e-mail address. This can be used to send further information to special offers for current accounts or loans.

In the second step, however, it is then crucial to retain the customer. This requires a clearly structured and easy-to-use mobile banking app that runs quickly and reliably. The basic functions are largely the same for all banks. Additional functions or offers that offer specific added value and benefits serve as a distinguishing feature. This in turn can be vouchers or discounts.

It is important that all offers from online and mobile banking to stationary branches are summarized in a dashboard. Today there must be no more silo functions or isolated data pools. Real omni-channel solutions must be based on a platform and use a common database. In addition, they should always provide the information to the customer on the optimal channel (omni-channel strategy) in order to ensure the best possible user experience.

Numerous possibilities through digital POS

This can also be the digital POS in the regular café. If new games or information are regularly available there, trying it out again and again can develop into a ritual that has become dearly loved. For example, cars from different brands can be examined and driven virtually – ideally using virtual reality glasses with gesture control. This then leads to various offers for the leasing or loan financing of vehicles.

The possibilities are almost limitless. Sports games can lead to accident insurance, a house designer to real estate financing and the latest news on the stock of the relevant media company. Current information must always be provided. Possible partner systems, for example from leasing companies, lenders or insurance companies, can be easily connected via standard interfaces.

The advantages of a digital POS are clear: the customer is made curious in a playful way and introduced to the topic. The offers are then explained in an easily understandable way, can be haptically touched or experienced via 3D animation and can be easily understood in concrete terms. It is important that the solutions can be used quickly and also run smoothly with the partner offers. This is guaranteed, for example, by proven digital POS solutions from weFinance with a Cisco Meraki infrastructure.

The bank drives to the customer

A digital POS can be made available not only stationary, but also mobile. For example, there is already a converted bus for the healthcare sector that drives through the country and connects doctors with residents in rural areas via video. The technology provided by Cisco in the DB Medibus is stable and easy to use. Banks can adopt this concept in order to better reach their customers in rural areas.

Particularly in the face of new competitors such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, whose apps are already pre-installed on the smartphone, banks have to react appropriately so as not to lose the connection and market share. In addition to high reliability and trust, you can score points here with competent advice. Since customers go to the branch less and less, they should bring their expertise to the customer with the help of the stationary or mobile digital POS.

When it comes to advice, the use of AI-based chatbots is also becoming more and more interesting. In the case of banks, these can be significantly more intelligent and detailed than in non-branch companies due to the more comprehensive background information and greater professional competence. In this way, they also reach their customers in a modern and increasingly accepted way.

Conclusion: Digital POS enables innovative customer approaches

Due to the classic business models, banks can no longer achieve large sales margins today. In addition, fewer and fewer customers go to the branch and instead only use the online or mobile banking functions they are familiar with. Therefore banks have to break new ground.

This is made possible by a stationary or mobile POS that stands or drives wherever customers are. In addition, together with experienced partners such as Cisco Meraki and weFinance , they can provide the right touch points with the right customer approach in the right places – and thus lure customers back to the branch.