CU’s and WiFi
I’ve heard some whispers that the credit union industry might be uniquely positioned to provide WiFi service to areas surrounding their branches. While this proposition could pose security risks, additional cost during a margin-shrinking period, and operational problems (think about people hanging out in the lobby all the time), it is also ripe with opportunity.
Currently our branching structure isn’t exactly setup to house people just sitting around in our branches, but it does provide a unique opportunity to offer our services to anyone using the WiFi and it can drive foot traffic. Marketing materials could encourage people to come to the branch and try out the new kiosks, check out the CU website, use online banking to pay their bills, balance their check book in the car, or give them something to do during their hopefully short wait time.
Additionally, the added bandwidth (assuming you didn’t want to share a branch’s main line) could be used in a fail over situation. We, for example, have direct T-1′s to all of our branches. But if one of those connections went down, we could simply direct traffic to our fail over.
Lots of possibilities, so it will be interesting to see if anyone can implement something like this.
I can see how this might be a good fit for a service center that is in a campus student center, at a school, or perhaps even in the “shopping complex” set up on most military bases…
But for a stand alone service center it would take quite a change in member experience for that facility to become a “place to hang out”… IMHO. I’m not saying that isn’t a vision we try to shoot for -> but I’m just starting to see examples of where the facility itself is setup for that type of member experience. (Umpqua Bank being the closest so far?)