Remember when everyone declared retail dead? When branches were a relic of the past and the future belonged entirely to apps, chatbots and digital-first experiences?
Some things that came back probably should have stayed gone – JNCO jeans, for example. But malls are back. And branches are next.
I've been watching this play out across the credit union industry, and the pattern is hard to miss. COVID accelerated an already-building push toward digital service delivery, and that was good. Contact centers got more efficient. Members got answers faster. Institutions that invested in AI-driven conversations and digital tools saw measurable gains.
But somewhere along the way, we solved the service problem and forgot about the sales problem.
Walk through a typical credit union website today. You'll find a chatbot ready to answer FAQs, voice AI handling routine calls, and help content covering everything from routing numbers to CD renewals. The infrastructure has never been better.
Now try to shop for an auto loan. Try to find a monthly payment that accounts for your trade-in, your credit profile and whether gap insurance is actually worth adding. Try to figure out – in seconds, without calling anyone – whether this credit union is going to beat the 4.99% rate the dealership just quoted you.
Most websites fall completely silent at that point.
Netflix just announced an experience center outside Atlanta. Malls are seeing foot traffic that would have seemed impossible five years ago. What goes around comes around – and people are choosing to show up in person again, not out of necessity but preference.
Credit unions have always understood this. The branch has been at the core of the member relationship since the beginning. What's changed is that members now expect the transition between digital and in-person to feel continuous. They want to start researching on their phone, get the information they need to make a real decision, and walk into a branch already knowing what they want. Or they want to leave a branch conversation and have that same context follow them wherever they go next.
The institutions figuring this out are treating their branches as revenue centers, not just service hubs. They're asking what happens when a member walks through the door already knowing their payment, already pre-qualified, already confident in the decision they're about to make. The answer is more loans closed, faster, and members who feel like the credit union was actually trying to win their business.
The Anxious Generation conversation has reached financial services. Younger consumers who grew up glued to screens are increasingly choosing in-person interactions when the stakes feel high, and financial decisions are about as high-stakes as it gets. People want a human being when they're borrowing $40,000 for a car or figuring out whether to tap their home equity.
The appetite for real, human interaction never went away. COVID made that clear the moment restrictions were lifted – people rushed back to see family, fill restaurants, attend games. You can see it in social media data too: Engagement is fracturing across platforms, declining on Instagram and flat on X, concentrating on short-form video that mimics the immediacy of being somewhere rather than reading about it. People want to feel present. The financial services industry noticed that shift, then got distracted building more digital tools. The window to get this right is open right now.
So what does any of this mean practically for credit unions?
Three things.
First, the branch has to become a revenue center, not a cost center waiting to be explained away. Traffic is coming back. The question is what you do with it when it walks through your door.
Second, your website has to do more than inform – it has to sell. A member who lands on your website with a competing rate in hand should be able to get a better answer from you in under a minute. Payment calculated. Rate quoted. Application started. If that experience doesn't exist, they're going to the competitor who built it.
Third, the experience a member has at your branch has to travel with them. The conversation they had with your loan officer on Tuesday shouldn't vanish by Thursday when they're back on your website comparing options. Members now expect it.
COVID did a lot of things to this industry. It pushed institutions to build better digital service infrastructure faster than anyone expected. That was real progress. The credit unions that grow over the next decade won't be the ones that built the best chatbot. They'll be the ones that used every tool they had to close more loans, open more accounts and make members feel like they were actually being pursued.
Credit unions have always been built on personal relationships. That was true before COVID, and it turns out it's still true now. Act like it.
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