Westpac goes with community centre themes for new look branches including Queen Street's 'foreshore' branch

By Gareth Vaughan

Westpac hopes its new look community centre-style flagship Auckland branch, which features cheap coffee - for central Auckland at least - and a Lego replica rescue helicopter big enough for two people to sit in, meeting rooms with names like Mechanics Bay and Narrow Neck, plus iPads and iPhones, will prove the ongoing relevance of bank branches in a world where more and more people are doing the bulk of their banking via the internet.

Ian Hankins, Westpac's northern region head of retail distribution, told interest.co.nz in a Double Shot interview that the bank's 79 Queen Street branch, which now has a foreshore theme because where it's located used to be the foreshore, was part of a drive to localise branches and get them relevant and hip in an evolving world.

"What we want our branches to become is an intersection of all the technology that we have," Hankins says. "So the different ways you can engage with the bank, whether that be online banking or mobile banking, intersect with the people that we have who can make decisions locally.

"So it's an intersection of all of those things. So absolutely it's about keeping the branch relevant as we look forward, but it's also about knowing that we've been here for 151 years and people are really important and relationships are really important. So it's a combination really of those two things."

In coming up with its new look Queen Street branch Hankins says Westpac looked at banks in the United States that have developed community centre-style branches and taken lessons on board from retailers. However, unlike rival BNZ, which has taken on board tips from retailers like Gap and Michael Hill Jeweller, and calls its branches "stores" and its branch managers store managers, Westpac is sticking with "branches."

(See more here on how bank branches around the world are changing - Will bank branches go the way of the dinosaur or are they becoming a driver of buying decisions, financial playgrounds and spas? And see the charts at the bottom of this story from Westpac showing trends on where and how its customers are doing their transactions).

Targeting non-Westpac customers too

Hankins says a key aim of the new look branch is to create an environment in which people actually want to come in and talk, as opposed to having to come in. Westpac's also keen to encourage people who aren't customers to come in with the hope of winning them over. The coffee is sold out of a caravan bought for NZ$2,500 off Trade Me with a regular flat white, for example, setting back a Westpac customer NZ$2.90 and everyone else NZ$3.50.

"It's absolutely about getting people to want to come in and experience the great environment we have here and the different things that we have to offer. And whilst they're in there we want to take the opportunity to talk to them and see how we can help them, ultimately."

Westpac's not planning a theme at every branch across its 200-odd national network at this stage, Hankins adds.

"With Queen Street we are trying some things that are quite different and we need to learn from those and ultimately how our customers respond to them. So the first thing is actually getting some feedback from our customers on whether the different elements are working, what we need to tweak and we need to get that first before we make a decision on what else we do," says Hankins.

"Early signals from our customers are very good and where it's relevant we'll definitely roll out elements like self serve because ultimately that gives customers far more flexibility and people are busy and our environment needs to cater for that."

Self serve transactional machines are available 24/7 in the Queen Street branch, which Hankins suggests gives customers, especially business customers, the freedom to do their banking when it suits them. That said, Banking Ombudsman Deborah Battell told interest.co.nz last month that among a range of reasons for increasing complaint volumes across the financial services sector globally is customers increasingly having to do things for themselves.

Whangarei's whales

The bank has also just opened a spruced up Whangarei branch featuring conference facilities for business customers, with a "meeting of the whales" theme incorporating carvings by local Maori, taniwha and the Northland rugby team.

"We get the local communities involved in the branding and some of the messaging that's in the branches so they feel that not only is it a Westpac branch, it's their place as well," Hankins says.

Looking out 10 years Hankins says the branch will still be a "relevant channel". He expects about 300,000 customers to visit the Queen Street branch over the next 12 months.

"It's really important that it (the branch) evolves in that the reason for coming into the branch will probably change in 10 years. We want our customers coming to the branch because they're going to be receiving great advice and great education around the different ways you can bank and the advise will probably be more specialised  in 10 years."

"So it's really important that you position your branch channel for that quite early on and Queen Street's a good example of where we see that environment heading in the future," Hankins says.

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