MILAN, Italy – IBM Corp. has announced a new interactive banking kiosk to help financial institutions improve the customer experience.

The ‘virtual’ solution, developed by the IBM Bari research laboratory in Italy, will enable customers to communicate and interact with a virtual bank teller. Customers will see the teller on a display, delivering and receiving paper documents and checks, helping customers fill out and sign forms and providing support and specialized advice.

The virtual bank teller is designed to work across a bank’s local branch network from a central site. In the bank’s local branches, the interactive kiosk can be introduced to support traditional front office services, especially at peak hours, or in some instances could replace traditional operations.

Customer benefits include significant reductions in queues and real time access to tellers with specialized skills for complex query resolution. The kiosk can speed up the completion of more straight-forward self-service tasks (such as deposit slips and checks), while also offering customized and consistent support.

Business benefits include the ability to enhance customer service and competitive differentiation, as well as optimizing human capital management — deploying skilled resources in the most efficient manner across the branch network without the need for physical relocation.

Further potential benefits and innovations include seasonal capacity modeling to meet seasonal increases in demand at vacation locations or the dedicated provision of specialist skills to support events such as mergers and acquisitions.

The kiosk also provides a new CRM channel that allows banks to upgrade their branch network, roll out new products and integrate new services.