Why digital appointment booking will be commonplace in three years

A friend of mine is a successful small business owner in his forties. Like so many in his demographic, Bryan developed a longing to own a Harley Davidson. He could easily afford a Harley, but chose to seek financing instead. Getting this business should have been a walk in the park for his bank. Bryan is a digitally-driven consumer who values convenience. With some frustration in his voice, he shared with me his disappointment that he couldn’t simply arrange for a loan on his bank’s mobile app. With resignation, he stopped by a local branch only to find the staff members engaged with other customers. After a few moments of impatient waiting, he chose to leave and return the following day. His second trip met with an identical outcome. With increased frustration, Bryan called his bank while en route to a business appointment, hoping for a straightforward way to quickly close on a loan. Instead, the cheerful staff member explained that Bryan could simply visit any branch at his convenience to close on the loan in about an hour. Bryan’s bank lost his business to a credit union. Bryan’s experience is probably not unique. His bank would have won his business easily – had they simply offered him an opportunity to engage with them on his terms. While certainly no panacea, digital appointment booking would have been exactly that. And, it would have been exactly what Bryan expected from his bank. After all, he makes appointments to see his accountant, healthcare provider and barber and books dinner reservations similarly. But, few financial institutions offer their customers this ability (Figure 1). The idea has recently caught on among the largest North American banks, while 40% of surveyed midsized institutions say they are “considering” the idea. Meanwhile, 70% of community banks (assets less than $1 billion) have no plans to implement. That’s going to change. Source: Celent survey of North American financial institutions, October 2014, n=156 The benefits of digital appointments are manifest. Among them:

• Convenience: Customers avoid unnecessary waiting for service by scheduling an appointment on their terms and at their convenience while online – where much shopping occurs. A worst case scenario is the customer who, after a lengthy wait, discovers the bank resource with the requisite skills and licensing to meet their needs is not on site.
• Capacity planning: Sales and service interactions have historically been more difficult to forecast than teller transactions. Digital appointment booking provides a much-needed view into future demand for sales and service resources and improves an institution’s ability to plan accordingly.
• Sales impact: Automated product origination platforms have been effective at facilitating self-service enrollment of simple products, such as checking and savings accounts. But many institutions see an opportunity to improve close rates of more complex sales such as mortgage loans or investment products that began with customers interacting with the bank online. Knowing that many customers would be more comfortable with in-person discussions in these cases, digital appointment booking offers a concrete next step for interested prospects.

A perhaps less obvious benefit of digital appointment booking is its favorable impact on institutions’ face-to-face interaction. Said simply, frontline employees are better equipped for sales and service interactions when they know who is coming and for what reason. More commonly, bankers must offer an impromptu response to walk-up interactions. A minority of institutions equip frontline staff with a “customer snapshot,” or optimally a “next-best action” recommendation, but that information is not available to staff until customers authenticate. With essentially no time to react to the information, consistency of service delivery is a tall order. To coin an overly-used expression, it’s not rocket science.