Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
ALEX SAFFERT, owner of The Sausage Shop in New Ulm, feels there’s a definite “intimidation factor” when he steps through the door of many banking institutions.
Employees are usually inaccessible, hidden behind walls and windows, he says. And then there are the long lines.
Saffert instead prefers the look and feel of the New Ulm branch of Sleepy Eye-based SouthPoint Federal Credit Union, of which he is a member. Since opening in January 2006, the branch has featured a more casual style: An employee greets each member in the lobby, and then leads the member to an open-air work station, also called a dialogue tower, where transactions are conducted standing side by side, elbow to elbow. The more heavy-duty business, such as loans, is handled in nearby cubicles.
This so-called concierge style ditches the conventional teller line in favor of a less restricted, free-flowing environment. Upon walking through the door, “I can see everybody,” says Saffert. No one seems off-limits or unapproachable, he says.
The design speaks for itself: Without physical barriers, employees and customers can get closer, leading to better relationships, says Dick Nesvold, president of SouthPoint.
In an age where banking is increasingly regarded as a commodity, when customers are liable to hunt for the best interest rates or the lowest fees, high-quality and personable service is key to making them stay put.
While only a handful of Minnesota banks and credit unions have adopted the concierge style, it’s catching on, thanks to word of mouth and heightened publicity, says Jeff Pflipsen, a partner with HTG Architects, an Eden Prairie-based design/build firm that designed the SouthPoint New Ulm branch.
As credit unions reach out to more commercial clients, primarily small companies, the new concierge style is an asset for gaining and keeping their business, says Bill Winter, president of St. Cloud Federal Credit Union. In January 2006 he opened a second branch, in Sartell, built with the concierge style.
Small-business owners appreciate flexibility and accessibility at their banking institutions, which is why many of them are drawn to community banks and credit unions, he says. Though a hands-on, customer-centric attitude has always been present at his credit union, he says, the new concierge style better represents it, and actually reinforces it.
In many cases, banks and credit unions adjust their operations to fit the concierge design. Instead of segregating duties — limiting money-counting, deposits and withdrawals to tellers, and lending to loan officers, and so on — employees are trained to handle almost any banking task. They are called universal associates.
Members can appreciate that kind of streamlined service, says Nesvold. “The utopian thing is you then don’t have to tell your story to two or three different people — there’s some continuity.”
The personalities of employees getting hired by banks and credit unions that use the concierge style are also different. In the past, managers were preoccupied with choosing workers for their technical prowess. Now, the focus is on friendliness and social skills.
It’s easier to train employees on banking and finance than it is to teach them how to be warm and personable, says Winter.
What really drove the point home for him was when he attempted to transfer some employees from the St. Cloud headquarters — built with a traditional design — to the new Sartell branch. “Some people didn’t want to do that,” he says. They didn’t feel comfortable, or were simply intimidated adjusting to the higher level of customer interaction required with the concierge style.
Minnesota has been slow to catch on to the concierge style, says Pflipsen. Though he’s been promoting it for the last six years, clients have shied away from it up until the last two years or so.
The trend has been growing on the West Coast over the last ten years, by banks such as Washington Mutual and Umpqua. The Midwest, however, tends to be more conservative: We let the coasts “mumble and fumble and make their mistakes. And then, once it’s figured out, we do it,” he says. As a result, “we’re a few years behind the times.”
Winter says he, too, had that mindset. He didn’t have the “intestinal fortitude” to pursue the concierge style five years ago when Pflipsen first introduced it to him as a proposed design for the St. Cloud Federal Credit Union headquarters, he says.
Some banks and credit unions balk, says Pflipsen, because they’re concerned about security risks. Without clear boundaries separating employees from the public, they speculate they could get robbed or ripped off more easily.
Though there aren’t enough banks and credit unions using the concierge style to generate any statistics either way, Pflipsen says he believes it isn’t any less safe. People don’t just walk in and help themselves to the work stations on their own; they understand, almost intuitively, that they should be escorted by an employee.
Ultimately, he says, technology makes the difference when it comes to security. He advocates the use of teller cash recyclers — minivaults that, like ATMs, dispense cash, but also accept deposits.
The employee keys in all the information from a computer screen at each work station. The machine tracks all the pluses and minuses, removing the risk of human error that otherwise comes with counting money manually.
And since employees don’t have immediate access to cash, as they do with traditional cash drawers, they can’t readily hand it all over to a stranger. In some cases, employees set teller cash recyclers to dispense a specific cash limit, so someone can’t drain its funds.
Winter was more concerned about turning members off with an unfamiliar, untested format. But now, with such a positive response, he won’t go back to the conventional style.
Though the look and feel of the concierge style appeals to many small-business owners, the function is still being tweaked to better accommodate all their needs, says Pflipsen.
The work stations were designed primarily for consumers, for transactions that take a few seconds. Since commercial clients — especially those at credit unions — bring in a lot of cash and coins for their daily or weekly deposits, those longer, more complex transactions are usually handled by the drive-through teller, located near the back of the building.
With the concierge design, the drive-through teller isn’t closed off to the lobby; the teller can assist customers via an open-window counter, in addition to handling the pneumatic tubes that are sent back and forth to cars.
Pflipsen says the work stations can be revised to make room for a safe or vault to hold large volumes of cash and coins, rather than tying up the teller cash recycler.
Either way, banks and credit unions with a lot of commercial traffic could get backed up. “People will be waiting in line; they won’t feel special anymore.” Indeed, “this isn’t a one-size fits all.”
[contact] Dick Nesvold, SouthPoint Federal Credit Union: 507.794.6712; di**********@***********ed.com; www.southpointfed.com. Jeff Pflipsen, HTG Architects: 952.278.8880; jp*******@************ts.com; www.htg-architects.com. Alex Saffert, The Sausage Shop: 507.354.3300. Bill Winter, St. Cloud Federal Credit Union: 320.252.2634; in**@********cu.coop; www.stcloudfcu.org
