Banking and Social Reimagined

I noted in the section of my website titled "Banks are failing at being Social" that banks are relying on the physical branch to bring social interaction to their clients.  By making clients come into branches for human social interaction it is no wonder that many publications and institutions are reporting that branch traffic is relatively stable in an online world and that client satisfaction goes up when the client uses the branch.  Let's be careful that this is not a self-fulfilling prophecy, that by making clients come into a branch to interact with a human they can relate to, to which human nature would say that is a positive thing, we're thereby justifying the branch's existence.  Let's be careful that a future competitor, perhaps one that is already in the marketplace today, is going to bring human interaction digitally to the client and produce the same level of client satisfaction as a physical branch visit.

Just how could a digital interaction be on par with a branch interaction?  Something as simple as Skype or FaceTime or perhaps as advanced as Augmented Reality will help move the hand-to-hand combat and social interaction that the bank branch has had a millennia plus hold on into the digital age.  A company called Layer, https://layer.com/, has built a platform that excels at realtime texting with clients.  Plug this into a CRM system like Salesforce and how you have an empowered associate who will have a better chance to empathize with a client in real time gleaming information from CRM and interacting with the client on their terms.  Extend this to video conference or send them a text link to call the associate directly if at any point a voice call is preferred by either party. 

An example Layer provides of being able to address a customer's need in real time via texting. 

What are the consequences of this?  Let's count among them the reduced cost of no longer maintaining a physical location, the reduced labor cost of operating out of central location, and the increased client experience by providing banking on the client's terms mean their location and not your branch's location.