The best retail store is a bank! – Creating transactions from experiences.

The Retail Design Institute’s 2014 Store of the Year award was presented to a concept for Umpqua bank! Some banking myths were definitely broken here. What’s really going on with banking in this digital age? what kind of transformation is in order for retail branches? While a lot has been said about this trend – operational efficiency, the death of the branch, more selling and less service at the branch – it will help to take a systematic view of the trends and how that translates to the future. The first realization is that we must question the momentum of the charging herd. For several years we’ve compared the branch experience with the online experience. That may not be the right comparison. The question we must ask is whether the branch is expected to serve a very different, much more profitable business? For banks the answer is yes, and perhaps for retail, the answer is a resounding positive too. Too much time has been spent on trying to counter the movement of customers from one channel to another. It’s time to help that movement and get on with bigger, better things. Given that assumption, does it imply that that the concept of Omni-Channel customer experience must be looked at in a different way. Is it really about “Omni-Channel relationships” – with the data, transactions, people, motivations and history stored in a central place for “multiple stakeholders” to contextually access? Does a customer really need a persistent shopping cart, or should their underlying need come across more clearly instead? […]