December 2, 2002

Financial Services Industry Newsletter

Strategies for Success

Branch Staffing Analysis: Key to Improved Service plus Improved Operating Cost

The typical bank has almost two-thirds of its expense base tied up in retail distribution. Retail banking requires facilities and staff, and it is where you touch most of your customers. It stands to reason that small improvements in expense and service levels leveraged against a large base can produce big gains.

This is an area where a systematic approach pays significant dividends. Branch arrivals have a reasonable level of predictability. For example, we know that customer usage of branches varies in predicable ways by hour of the day, day of the week and month of the year. In addition, there are special events that can be anticipated, like 3 day weekends or paydays, that can impact branch usage. So, the closer we can manage to have the right sales and service staff in the right place at the right time, both customer service and cost efficiency will improve.

But this is a difficult area for most banks to tackle. Predicting customer arrival patterns requires data, forecasting models, and a management process to insure the most effective use of the banks capacity. And the process must be managed over a large number of retail branches, each with slightly different characteristics. So it is not surprising that many banks either dont have effective systems in place to manage this process, or have systems which are not effectively maintained.

As the saying goes, If you dont know where you are, you dont know how to get there. You need to have a baseline model that predicts staff requirements based solely on capacity needed to handle customer arrivals. Then youll know how much extra staff resources -- and expense -- you are maintaining above minimum customer requirements. Of course it is unrealistic to staff to the minimum, but you should be able to look at the excess (non customer required) capacity with the following questions in mind:

• Why are we maintaining excess capacity? Is it because of a planned strategy to enhance service levels? If so, are we in fact generating higher satisfaction and leveraging it into greater attraction and retention of customers? Is it to create more time for sales? If so, are we using our capacity to actually generate increased sales results?
• Is our capacity in the right places? Are there branches which are below the level they should be to deliver the right level of service? Are there branches with high potential for sales growth that would benefit from additional staff? Should resources be re-allocated?
• Is some of our excess capacity because of limitations in accurately forecasting arrivals, or limitations in recruiting and scheduling part timers? Both of these areas lend themselves to specific improvement actions.
• How much operations work is being performed in the branches? Is excess capacity being used for operations work that might be better performed in another way?

Our distribution size up can help you identify the right level of capacity to meet your current and future customer requirements. We have helped numerous clients improve their retail branch effectiveness resulting in significant improvements in service delivery, sales effectiveness, and cost management.

We have tools to help, whether you have 10 branches or 1,000. Please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further information.