Alice P. Frazier: Relationship Banking vs. Transactional Banking

How many times have you heard that we, as community banks, need to respond to “today’s immediate gratification society?” It has become a regular refrain. While I don’t disagree that speed has its place, so too do personal connections, and building those relationships takes time. 

In an era of same-day deliveries and instant downloads, it can be tempting to think that speed equals customer satisfaction, but as relationship bankers, we know better. Speed is about transactions: How can I get them done more quickly? But community banks have always been about relationships, and relationships grow over the years. 

And with those relationships comes a unique brand of customer service and an unparalleled accessibility. Community banks are always available, and that’s one key factor that differentiates us. Our executive team and CEOs are on call after hours; we don’t turn off our phones at 5 p.m. In fact, I was recently attending a state banking convention, and I got an emergency call from a client who needed help. I ended up talking to him after 7 p.m., and we were able to address an emerging fraud situation. It truly is an around-the-clock engagement—and a speed of response—that isn’t available outside of community banking.

How to balance speed and personal connection in banking

But we are at a place where we want to combine that deep understanding of and connectedness to our customers with next-level services that take the wait out of truly transactional banking moments. This is where we look for the digital solutions that create efficiencies, simplify the customer experience and do so with a rapid response rate that sparks a surprise-and-delight moment for our customers. 

That’s where the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator comes into the equation. As we seek out solutions, we use the Accelerator to help us identify products designed with the community banker and our relationship focus in mind. We can use those tools to simplify the process, creating speed in the service of the transaction. Then, we engage our team to continue making the connections that bring value to the client. 

Community bankers can’t confuse the speed of a transaction with the connectedness of the relationship. We can’t get so caught up in a push for faster, faster, faster, that we lose sight of what makes us so special in the first place: our relationships with our customers. 

So, I implore you, even as the rhetoric begs for expediency, fall back on the certainty of who we are as relationship bankers. If we focus on connection before transaction, we will continue to thrive.