As financial institutions continue to seekways to replace lost revenues and increase overall efficiencies,and their customers and members look for increased control overtheir financial lives, both camps are rediscovering ATMs (and otherself-service and assisted-service channels) as key components of animproved customer experience.
Today’s ATMs have evolved to be something greater than simple cashmachines. They are an integral part of customers’ daily bankingexperience, and are increasingly being used in place of many tellertransactions. With some ATMs, customers can even communicate withremote tellers and customer service representatives, or start atransaction on a computer or mobile device and complete it at anATM.
New features are also being introduced in various marketsthroughout the world to offer increased customer choice and systemsecurity, and to enhance the overall customer experience. Someinstitutions are offering customers such capabilities as openingaccounts and applying for loans, cards, and cashier’s checks viaATMs.
Other institutions are expanding their use of ATMs to include suchfeatures as currency conversion (some ATMs even support dynamiccurrency conversion when withdrawing funds), as well as onlinebanking connections, videoconferencing, and biometricauthentication of customer identity.
In addition to such interesting and useful ATM features, there areseveral new ATM-like products that have recently been announced, orsoon will be, that combine key elements of ATM and tellercapabilities.
These are but a few examples of why ATMs and other self-service andassisted-service products and solutions are central to manyfinancial institutions’ channel strategies and growth plans.Institutions of all sizes should consider devoting time to researchsuch capabilities to assess the appropriateness, applicability, andpotential value to their organizations.
