Designing Branches by Walking Around

BAI's RETAIL SHOW in Las Vegas (Nov. 16 to Nov 18 2004)

Prophets of Industry suggesting to move on value chain from Customer Relation (CRM) to Customer Experience (CEM).


It isn’t often that a conference speaker takes his shoe off to make a point, but that’s what Paco Underhill did in a Thursday afternoon General Session. Underhill, a retail anthropologist and author of Why We Buy, spoke on the general theme of applying retailing principles to banking.

To underscore the theme that institutions often design their branches without carefully considering how customers actually use those facilities, Underhill took off his shoe and held it up.

Instead of working behind a desk at a PC, he said, branch designers need to invest in some good rubber-soled shoes and walk around their facilities as actual customers do in order to understand the full ramifications of the customer experience. Underhill had earlier showed some amusing video clips of customers in actual retail situations, which demonstrated that the needs of customers can be unpredictable.