Good Customer Focus Idea for Banks

But this overall strategy also included a Trojan horse, and that Trojan horse was the bank’s Penny Arcade. If you walk into most Commerce branches, you’ll see a machine or two that will count buckets of loose change. Unlike the Coinstar machines that you might find at supermarkets, Penny Arcades don’t take a cut of your change as a fee if you want plain cash in exchange for your coins. Instead, the arcade simply counts your coins and prints out a receipt you can take to the teller to get crisp bills.

And here’s the crazy part: The Penny Arcade is free for anyone, whether they have an account at Commerce or not. It seems like an act of corporate generosity–and, actually, it sort of is–but having Penny Arcades in a branch also benefits the bank, as I discovered when I went to use one about a month ago. In rapid succession, I noticed three things:

1. I was in the bank on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve never been in a bank on a Sunday afternoon, because no other bank I know of is open on a Sunday afternoon.
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3. I was on a line about seven people long. In addition to two tellers, there was a greeter at the entrance and a manager who walked around. About a minute into my wait on line, the manager directed the greeter to leave her post and open up a new teller window. Three minutes after that (and after about four more people joined the line) the manager himself opened up a new window.