I am sure you are hearing from many fronts about concerns and preparations over the Corona virus issue. My favorite hardware store even sent me a note about how concerned they are. It is important to heed advice from your governmental and health care authorities. I will not speak to the medical side of the issue, primarily because - in spite of being a regular at the Holiday Inn Express - I am in fact not a doctor. I am someone with extensive experience in disaster recovery, contingency planning, crisis management and PR. So I’ll take that approach.
What I want to provide are some common-sense steps you should consider relative to your bank and branch operations. Let’s remember that the goal is to maintain an adequate level of service for your customers, while ensuring a safe working environment for your staff. Most of the suggested measures below will serve to improve your overall readiness for any kind of business disruption, so there’s a silver lining in the current cloud for you.
Take some time now to understand actual traffic counts in your lobbies. I suggest you attempt to identify the volume of traffic, and the type of encounter or transaction being conducted on each visit. This will give you an important picture of actual activity. Simply put: transactions of any sort (financial, address change, new accounts, loan applications, etc.) by hour by day in each location.
It is important to segregate drive-up teller activity from walk-in activity, as one consideration would be to move to drive-in only traffic for all teller activity.
As a way of assessing overall activity, go ahead and bring remote delivery channel transactions into your reporting, so that you have a complete picture. This would include balance inquiry, funds transfer, bill payment, on-line applications, and mobile or remote deposit. The purpose of gathering this data in the short term is to help you assess just how much activity you have, and plan for ways of accommodating these transactions if you have to reduce services. In the long run, measuring in-person vs virtual activity is a solid management tool.
Prepare for one or more of your locations to be in a quarantined area, and make sure you are prepared to communicate to customers that a particular location is closed, and where they can find the next closest location that is open for business. Note that this is good advice for any number of scenarios that might impact branch operations, ranging from severe weather to robbery aftermath, so think broadly when developing these communication plans.
Aggressively remind customers about your remote delivery channel options, including Internet, mobile, remote deposit, and on-line account opening or applications. You may want to loosen current deposit restrictions (only for existing customers) to ensure that they can use those channels for all of their standard deposit activity. Of course, you must consider the risks involved with any changes in these parameters, but in general terms, (as I’ve told you for years) allowing existing customers to make their normal deposits through an alternate channel does not really introduce additional risk.
What’s the best way to communicate with your customers? Ideally, you have good email addresses for all those who use your remote delivery channels. You will also find that social media like FaceBook or Twitter can provide excellent “one to many” communications for notifying customers and the public in general about your operations.
Let’s talk about your staffing needs. We often see references to “non-essential” employees when operations are limited during severe weather, or other situations. No one wants to be considered non-essential, so let’s avoid using that term. Let’s do however determine what a minimal staffing scenario looks like, so that you can reduce person to person contact, account for those who are ill and may need to be out for an extended time, etc. Take a close look at your overall operations across all applications: loan, deposits, accounting, etc., and make sure you have good coverage if staff has to be reduced.
Evaluate work at home scenarios, realizing that some of the steps we’ve discussed above may reduce branch traffic and allow you to handle daily work with a limited staff. One key best practice is to encourage employees who are sick to stay at home. The old work ethic of “come to work at any cost” has to be replaced by common sense, and managerial understanding, especially during flu season, and in light of any situation like the current virus outbreak.
It is wise to communicate with your primary regulator about any significant changes in your operations – reducing hours, staff, or changing service levels (such as moving to drive-in only for teller transactions). They may provide additional guidance for you, but I think mainly they will want to be sure you have a plan in place are are managing to this plan.
Finally, as in any crisis management situation, employees need to understand that ONLY a designated spokesman is allowed to speak for the bank. Employees should not provide any information on behalf of the bank to anyone, including friends, family, strangers or news media but should instead refer any questions to the bank’s designated spokesperson. Here again, this applies broadly to any situation, not just the current virus outbreak concerns.
I hope I’ve given you some constructive ideas for dealing with the present environment, while making sure your existing plans are updated to provide the best chance of success. Working on these matters is a far better exercise than watching endless news coverage or fretting over possible outcomes. In addition, if you do not have some of the tools mentioned above, like on-line account opening, or remote access for traveling employees, it might be time to add those to your technology planning wish list so that you are better prepared in the future.
As always, I stand ready to help. Email, text, or call me anytime if you would like to discuss these or other matters. I remain hopeful, and intend to do everything I can to help community banks thrive.
Trent Fleming
trent@trentfleming.com
901-896-4007
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