“During the pandemic, leveraging video experts was critical in staffing branches with experts who would not have normally been able to cover every office,” America First Manager of Branch Technology and Innovation Jeremy Deamer stated. “By having staff on video, you could provide members with expertise on consumer loans or account openings and ultimately have conversations that put the best of the best in front of our members.”

Video banking can be a critical lifeline for financial institutions facing rising costs and increased pressure to maintain smaller physical footprints. The $1.8 billion, Cyprus Credit Union, based in West Jordan, Utah, is another credit union that has embraced video. It installed several self-service lobby devices and drive-up units with video capabilities to give members a digital experience and personal interaction when necessary. “This model allows us to centralize employees, where they can serve multiple locations while giving members the same interaction with the teller regardless of the branch they visit,” Cyprus COO Buddy Bennett stated.

Video can be critical in driving efficiency at branches. With video, physical branches require fewer employees while offering an opportunity for the most skilled and valuable staff to be retained and compensated as remote experts. Ultimately, video assistance should not be expected to replace the branch but rather to transfer in-branch services to a different channel to improve operational efficiencies, optimize the branch network and capitalize on untapped opportunities. By exposing more account access and services than what is traditionally available via an ATM alone, branches and staff can be more engaged with advisory functions, not routine transactions.

The $3.1 billion Vantage West, one of southern Arizona’s largest credit unions, took this as a strategic opportunity to refresh all of its branches with interactive teller machines (ITMs), deploying 32 video teller devices across 18 locations. According to Jimena Valdés-Walls, SVP member experience, success was driven top-down and by the employees.

“The full support of our executive leadership team was essential and really set the stage. My role was to engage each different supporting department and explain how we would deploy our ITMs and why we were embracing the technology,” Valdés-Walls stated.

Support from the member-facing staff is also crucial to adoption. “Ensuring that our branch staff were well-trained, fully engaged and understood the ‘why’ was essential for a successful rollout,” Valdés-Walls said.

The primary objective of these video-enabled devices is to cost-effectively provide banking services to members in more locations and at more convenient times. Locations can include drive-up lanes or other locations away from the branch. This enables the credit union to provide a convenience for members who may not be able or want to go into a branch.

Bennett stated that Cyprus Credit Union’s first units were in a retail store branch. Today, it has seven locations with a total of 46 devices featuring video tellers, and it staffs up to six devices with a full-time remote video teller. “Seventy-five percent of the transactions are directly done via self-service. So video is used when members can’t do something on their own,” Bennett said.

For America First, video allowed it to quickly enter the California market following an acquisition. According to Deamer, “We needed to be able to quickly enter that market and start serving the existing 12,000 members. Within a month we stood up the video banking solution, providing both experts at a distance and video tellers, which made it easy for us to focus on other parts of the merger and acquisition.”

It’s no secret that the more transactions that can move completely to the self-service environment, the better the ROI, as resources are not working in the back end to facilitate those transactions. Video use also helps members get familiar with using a device rather than a teller line and can help prepare members for future technological innovations. Ultimately, when it comes to video, most members just want to know that someone is there to help when they have questions and need guidance on a specific task. The key is delivering a positive experience so that they will be empowered to use these devices.