DN Intersect 2019: “US banks can learn from McDonalds”
Banks should look to the likes of McDonalds and their self-service customer experience, says Diebold Nixdorf’s head of content marketing, Norbet Knievel and Juergen Kisters, VP of banking marketing.
“It’s a lot of fun, very easy to navigate and offers the customer complete choice,” says Kisters. “The part-automated experience gives staff more time to make meals and focus on other areas of customer service.”
Since McDonalds introduced its self-service machines, the fast-food chain has seen a 15% increase per kiosk customer in the amount they spend at checkout. 
Knievel jokes that part of the reason we’re seeing this increase in spending is because customers are less embarrassed to order more food at face-to-face checkouts as it isn’t judging them.
Taking this model, banks should look at their branches in a similar vein, according to Kisters and Knievel. In Norway, all DN’s banking customers got rid of teller lines completely. All those services are now self-serviced.
“If you look at Germany, you can see that despite the similarities it has with the US financial landscape in terms of its large number of publicly-owned community banks and credit unions, the market there is still mature,” says Kisters.
As well as self-service, the duo also uses Europe to highlight cash recycling. Small medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) still work with cash, so introducing cash recycling to more banks in the US will mean “they’ll be filling up bank’s ATMs for free”.
DN is looking to lead this introduction of cash recycling to the US, by integrating a software update into its latest ATMs so banks can switch machines without needing to rip and replace them.
