Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) this week announced that its business clients can now connect face to face with their personal bankers through video calls on computers, tablets, or mobile devices. RBC, the largest bank in Canada with a presence in every province and 80,000 employees worldwide, reports that it is the country's first bank to provide remote video banking.
Video banking started being a "thing" about five years ago, typically targeted at clients with high net worth. With the theory that such customers require specialist banking advice and expert-level services, banks began installing room-based video systems at branches to connect customers to experts located remotely. These services delivered a quality video experience, but were often quite expensive to deploy and typically required a customer to come to a bank location.
A few attributes of the RBC video service, which relies on embedded video technology from Vidyo and a contact center solution from Genesys, differentiate it from the first generation of video banking. RBC's Claude DeMone, VP of business enablement, highlighted those for me in an interview early this week.
RBC today offers video interactions from two of its contact centers with a specific team of agents who have received video certification training. RBC can offer a video option to customers who call into the contact center; the agent sends a link to the customer to begin the video. Based on the success of the program (too soon yet to measure), RBC will offer video banking not only to additional customer segments but also to branch employees who want to interact with customers, DeMone said
I asked DeMone what the driver was behind implementing the video service -- was it to display technical or thought leadership, a result of customer demand? "All of the above," he responded. "One of the things that is really important to us is convenience for our customers."
RBC is clearly focused on developing relationships with its customers. For customers who can't make it into their branches, the video option is not only convenient but likely will improve customer satisfaction by providing a more personalized interaction.
Follow Sheila McGee-Smith on Twitter and Google+!
@McGeeSmith
Sheila McGee-Smith on Google+
