Branch Time-spend and Activity

Why it's important

Evolving customer behavior and channel preferences are significantly impacting the way banks operate – and branch-resourcing models are becoming outdated as a result. As roles evolve, it is more important than ever to understand how branch staff are spending time with customers, and how this is divided across product, servicing, and educational interactions. The Branch Time-spend Benchmark helps participants understand and monitor these changes and address critical questions such as:

Customer-facing time:

• How much time is spent on sales and advisory activities, and how much on customer servicing or education?
• How do meeting lengths vary by product and outcome?
• What activities could be removed or centralized to enhance the customer focus?

Productivity and proactivity:

• How can we best use our FTE capacity?
• How much customer contact is proactively generated?
• What are the best sources of advisor meetings for both volume and conversion?

Branch performance enablers:

• How does the technology in the branch impact the way branch staff are spending their time?
• Are our branch staff using opportunities to educate customers on the use of digital channels?

Best practices:

• How much customer contact is generated by our advisors?
• What is the definition of success in an environment where sales are increasingly migrating to digital channels?
• How can we waterproof meetings to improve customer outcomes and conversion rates?

What the Branch Time-spend Benchmark provides

• Benchmarks branch performance at the individual branch FTE level, rather than as a single channel
• Helps you understand the typical diary of a branch advisor and compares it to regional peers and best practices to pinpoint opportunities to reduce commercially less productive activities
• Pinpoints the relative importance of each meeting source and their effectiveness at generating sales
• Segments advisor performance, e.g., by branch size/format or by staff tenure, to maximize comparability and identifies concrete improvement opportunities
• Develops an action plan to optimize time spent on commercial activities and to increase sales pipeline conversion

Methodology

Data is captured anonymously at the individual branch FTE level allowing for granular analysis of network performance. The time-spend aspect of the study allocates time between 20+ activity categories including commercial, servicing, operational, and administrative tasks. Typical populations surveyed included mass market advisors, mortgage advisors, or small business advisors; other populations, such as bank managers and tellers, can also be surveyed, using an even more granular ‘observer-based’ methodology.