About the author: Kevin Meltzer is co-founder of Consology.

Banks have long understood that their branch infrastructure and call centres represented a massive cost, and that they had the opportunity to save significant amounts of money by getting customers to help themselves. Banks also offer a product that is mostly informational (or virtual).

For these reasons, the banking industry has pioneered self-service for customer acquisition and support in South Africa for the past two-and-a-half decades.

Banks first seized on the idea of self-service when they started rolling out ATMs. They were also among the first companies in South Africa to roll out online self-service offerings in the form of Internet banking, and now have mature offerings in place.

Now, the next wave of innovation is upon us.

Banks are under pressure in a market where they have had to tighten their lending criteria and extend services to poorer parts of the population. With tighter margins and limited scope for revenue growth, most banks are now focusing on relentless improvement of their cost-to-income ratios.

Self-service – which helps to deflect customers from their costly contact centres and physical branch infrastructure to low-cost electronic channels – will become even more central to most banks’ strategies to contain costs.

The most recent Self-Service Strategies Survey (2010), conducted on Consology’s behalf by World Wide Worx, indicates that banks see self-service as more important than ever before for call centre deflection, customer service and satisfaction, speeding up payments and ensuring consistency of customer experience.

The survey also shows that banks and companies in other industries regard self-service as a channel strategy rather than a product strategy. Online banking was initially seen as a feature or product within the banking portfolio.

Already, there are some great new features coming through, like mobile apps and online Kruger rand trading. Banks will soon offer their clients richer personalisation options through their online banking portals, as well as use self-service to cross- and up-sell products more effectively.

Self-service has already transformed the way banks and customers interact, from the first ATMs to online banking. But the revolution has only just begun.