The challenges of the pandemic started with social distancing and gathering guidelines that immediately closed or restricted access to several of our branches, especially those located on medical or educational campuses. With fewer physical locations to turn to, and a steady increase in calls to our Contact Center, it became clear that our focus needed to be on our remote services and offering the best experience possible without entering a branch.
We started immediately, bolstering our Contact Center and Video Teller staff by cross-training our Member Service Specialists from our closed branches. We also installed new ATMs equipped with our Video Teller functionality. One in our Hadley Branch drive-up to reduce wait time at the staffed window, and the other at our Worcester branch, where the creation of our external branch entrance with this Video Teller-enabled ATM offered a service solution to members at our most remote branch, including—for the first time—Saturday hours at this location.
The challenges continued as we navigated handling tasks that couldn’t be completed online, over the phone, or through a live video transaction with our remote Video Tellers. There were some transactions that a member simply had to complete in-person. While we were already making the most of encrypted emails and electronic document signing, we didn’t have a good system in place to handle appointment scheduling with limited staff and the number of phone calls suddenly doubling, or at times tripling pre-Covid times.