Where the best brains in banking will one day be found

If customers think bank employees already spend too much time staring at screens instead of looking them in the eye, the concept of adding more video might seem a bit much.

In a recent post on Bank Systems and Technology, however, Vern Hanzlik made a point that got me thinking differently about video as a customer service channel in financial services. The executive vice-president and general manager of business video platform Qumu, Hanzlik’s post offered Five Ways Video Can Extend a Banker’s Brain. I was reading primarily for thoughts on videoconferencing, but it was his fourth use case that really jumped out: “Knowledge and Wisdom Transfer”:

It used to be the case that when a banker with 30 years of experience retired or moved elsewhere in the organization, they took all of the knowledge they had accrued with them. With Employee Generated Content (EGC) departing bankers can create engaging videos containing a wealth of knowledge that takes years to develop and pass that knowledge on to incoming bankers. In this way, banks can leverage the sum of banking insight developed at all of their branches over the lifetime of their institution and help new hires onboard quicker and work more intelligently from day one.

What Hanzlik is talking about, of course, used to be called knowledge management, a field that tended to offer more intriguing ideas than tangible results. In this case, the promise of video for educational purposes is huge, but only if a few critical factors are addressed as early as possible.

First off, the content has to be of considerably high quality. It would go beyond the traditional HR exit interview and require those retiring or departing to walk through specific scenarios that presented common problems, and explain concisely (but with enough detail) how to solve them. Tone and personality would play a role here, too: those old bankers would have to come across as coaching and mentoring, rather than lecturing or pontificating. It would be a lot more difficult than it sounds to compile al library of clips like this.

If a well-organized bank could pull that off, though, the other key component would be accessibility. These videos would have to be available on-demand almost anywhere — for a teller who can’t immediately ask his manager for help, or for senior executive who is about to steer through a complex client situation. They would need to be playable on desktops to mobile phones and tablets, and ideally with a sound-off option that presented close-captioning instead.

Finally, this is the kind of content that is often forgotten when unified communications projects have begun. We set up UCaaS tools so that employees can reach each other in whatever way they wish, but the reason they’re usually reaching out is to inform or ask. Static content like video “knowledge transfer” clips could provide the kinds of answers that UCaaS users seek. It’s not merely extending a banker’s brain, but offering bankers a way to reach the brains of their colleagues who are long gone.

Image courtesy of 2nix / FreeDigitalPhotos.net