You Built a Digital Fluency Program. Is Your Frontline Actually Fluent?
Every bank and credit union got the memo. Digital fluency isn't optional anymore. Your tellers, your MSRs, your branch managers all need to promote your digital channels, explain the tech, and troubleshoot it when customers are flummoxed (yeah, I just wanted to use that word!).
So everybody built a fluency program. In fact 89% of financial institutions have now fully or partially rolled one out.
Here's the part nobody wants to say out loud: having a digital fluency program and having a team of frontline digital ambassadors are two different things.
We teamed up with Future Branches Insights to ask 100 leaders, from global banks (more than half managing $20 billion or more in assets) and small credit unions, an important question; Is your staff actually fluent?
The answer is messier than the implementation stats suggest.
The challenge nobody budgeted for
Nearly 9 in 10 FIs have a program running. And yet the leaders running those programs describe their own frontline as only somewhat competent, capable of using the tools, but inconsistent the second a real customer asks a question.
So what's actually in the way? It's not that leaders don't see the problem. It's not even the tech.
More than half point to staff resistance and low confidence as the wall they keep hitting. An equal number say they still don't have the budget to fix it properly. Two very different problems, and most institutions are stuck fighting both at once.
Not every training dollar works the same
We also asked leaders to rate seven different ways institutions are trying to build fluency: classroom sessions, e-learning modules, vendor-led training, game-based simulations, and a few others.
No single approach ran away with it. But one strategy came out clearly ahead of the rest, and it's not the one most training budgets are built around.
The institutions that pushed all the way to full implementation aren't just further along than everyone else. They're seeing the kind of results the rest of the industry is still chasing: stronger staff confidence, fewer routine branch visits, and real movement on digital adoption.
What leaders actually want
Asked what an ideal program would look like, one VP of Digital at a regional bank didn’t hesitate: "Include real life simulation exercises that feel like actual branch situations so staff can practice without pressure."
A lot of leaders offered a similar answer. Now, is their FI actually building it? That's a different story.
Where does your program actually rank?
Digital Fluency and Knowledge Management in Frontline Banking, a new Future Branches Insights report sponsored by LemonadeLXP, lays out where 100 of your peers stand right now: what's working, what's stalling, where the budget is going, and how the furthest-ahead institutions are proving ROI on their frontline investment.
If you want to know how your program compares, and what actually separates the FIs seeing real results from the rest, this is the one to read.
