First Reliance Bank: An NCR Case Study

The customer

Founded in 1999, First Reliance Bank has grown to become one of the top twenty banks in South Carolina. It was included in the top 25 fastest growing companies in South Carolina, four times in succession—the only organization ever to be honored in this way. In 2006, 2007 and 2008 the bank was recognized as one of the best places to work in South Carolina by the SC Chamber of Commerce. Today, First Reliance has assets of $637m, employs over 150 associates and has six branches with another under construction.

First Reliance’s official strategy of being “Easy to Do Business With” has earned the bank a remarkable customer satisfaction rating of 97.3%. This strategy is based on innovations such as extended opening hours and a commitment to offering the highest levels of service that meet the needs of its customers.

The challenge

As part of First Reliance’s commitment to offer high levels of customer satisfaction, they were eager to improve the transaction processing times at their drive-thru branch in Florence, South Carolina. First Reliance has many cash intensive customers, such as convenience stores and restaurants, who use the drive-thru to make sizeable deposits. The problem was the wait time associated with these transactions—it was simply taking too long.

Many of First Reliance’s competitors either refuse to take large business deposits through their drive-thru branches or limit how much a customer can deposit in one transaction —the opposite of First Reliance’s belief in being easy to do business with. What they wanted was a powerful, reliable system capable of taking even the largest deposits in its stride.

After researching the issue they realized they had two options—spend several hundred thousand dollars expanding the drive-thru, so it could handle more cars, or find a way of reducing transaction times so that cars could move through more quickly. First Reliance realized the construction option was an expensive compromise that might not produce the right results. They knew there had to be a better way; the question, of course, was what?