Trustmark in Jackson, Mississippi, had been testing video-enabled ATMs since 2017, starting in a branch lobby, a drive-through lane and a “transformed” branch that shared space with a coffee shop. The experiments were promising, but the company felt there was room for improvement.
So in 2019 it asked NCR, the vendor of its interactive teller machines, to help make the devices more popular. Among other things, NCR determined optimal locations for the devices and helped improve teller presentation over video. Trustmark also extended the hours that live support was available. Within four months, usage rose 40%, according to Trustmark officials.
Although social distancing boosted traffic to the machines, their benefits are expected to outlast the pandemic. They can provide live help in low-volume locations without requiring tellers to be on site, as well as a way to stretch resources by assigning 10 video tellers to cover 45 machines, also known as ITMs.
“There are certain situations where maybe an ATM didn’t completely fill the gaps we needed in a location, but the concept of the ITM seemed like it could do that,” said Joe Gibbs, director of customer experience for the $16.5 billion-asset Trustmark.
The uptick in usage also indicates ways that other banks could maximize their ITM deployment.
NCR, in Atlanta, is one provider of video-enabled ATMs; Diebold Nixdorf and Hyosung offer their own versions. "We have definitely seen an increase in deployments of interactive video teller ATMs, especially over the last year due to the pandemic," says Heather Gibbins, head of banking software sales for North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Nixdorf.
NCR has the most clients of any provider, said Bob Meara, senior analyst in banking at Celent, although only a handful have rolled these machines out broadly. NCR says that it has more than 14,000 ITMs enabled at more than 650 financial institutions globally.
According to NCR, its devices go above and beyond the capabilities of regular ATMs in several ways. They allow customers to withdraw cash over regular limits, cash checks to the penny and pose questions. ITMs may sit in a branch lobby as an alternative to speaking to a teller in person; sub in for teller booths and pneumatic tubes in drive-throughs; or exist as a stand-alone setup in a nontraditional branch that doesn’t have full-time employees.
Trustmark took several factors into account when deciding where to deploy its ITMs. In some places, it wanted live support, but the volume didn’t justify keeping a teller around. In others, Trustmark wanted to extend the hours where customers could receive help.
One lesson Gibbs learned was that location matters with ITMs. When ITMs were installed in some Trustmark branch lobbies, customers still gravitated toward tellers.
“It’s human behavior that if you see a machine and two to three tellers inside, you won’t go to the machine first,” said Gibbs.
But the devices proved more successful in drive-through lanes, where they replaced tellers in service windows. The ITMs in drive-throughs also got a boost when branches temporarily closed in the spring of 2020.
Trustmark started consulting with NCR in February 2020 to figure out how to get more traffic to its ITMs. That effort required a better understanding of its customers' needs and how to make the video experience more appealing.
One change was “hiring the right people, who are not afraid of looking at the camera and are aware of their presence when they are online,” said Gibbs.
The bank also used ITMs to extend on-site customer service hours where it made sense. For the most part, weekday hours are 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and perhaps until 6 p.m. on Fridays. In areas that saw early or late commuter traffic, the ITMs provided service from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. More recently, Trustmark started opening ITMs on Saturday mornings as well.
Today, Trustmark has distributed 45 ITMs across its footprint staffed by 10 video tellers. Its success in drive-throughs is influencing its deployment strategy.
“We cover locations from Memphis [Tennessee] to Pensacola, Florida,” said Gibbs. “That’s a pretty compelling story right there, that we can leverage staff across three to four states.”
Although reaching millennials through this channel wasn’t a specific goal, “we were hoping it would appeal to that segment,” said Gibbs. But he found that all generations use drive-throughs, and while millennials were initially more interested in ITMs, it wasn’t long before everyone started using them.
Meara cautioned that the situations where video teller machines make sense are fairly limited. But they align with the situations where Trustmark has found success.
“The reason that customers were willing to try new things was typically because of extended hours,” said Meara.
He also finds that video teller machines are faster to use than pneumatic tubes in drive-through lanes, meaning the user experience is likely to be better. They can reduce the costs of keeping tellers on-site during slow periods. And video teller machines can also be used as a precursor to a full-service branch if the bank wants to test if that investment is warranted. But if a live teller is present, customers are still likely to start with them.
Overall, he doesn’t expect these devices to see the same broad-based adoption as regular ATMs.
Still, video teller machines may get one more boost post-pandemic.
“In the earlier days of ITMs,
