Virtual meetings with bankers can offer convenience, flexibility and efficiency for customers while providing cost savings, expanded reach and valuable insights for banks. While virtual meetings are not something that is yet desired by the majority of small businesses ($100K-<$10MM in sales), for those companies that do want them, they can pay dividends to the relationship when they are received.

Barlow Research started tracking the number of actual and preferred virtual meetings scheduled by an Account Officer at the primary bank in 2023. Currently, just 10% of small businesses say they want one or more virtual meetings scheduled per year. However, specific segments are more likely to desire virtual meetings:

• Larger small businesses with $2.5MM-<$10MM in sales were 7% more likely than smaller small businesses to want 1+ virtual meetings.
• Large bank (assets >$50B) customers were 9%+ more likely than customers of medium (assets $1B-$50B) and small (assets <$1B) banks to want 1+ virtual meetings.
• Companies with younger owners (<45) were 6% more likely than those with older owners (65+) to want 1+ virtual meetings.
• Woman-owned (>50%) companies were 5% more likely than non-woman-owned to want 1+ virtual meetings.
• Diverse-owned (>50%) companies were 8% more likely than non-diverse-owned to want 1+ virtual meetings.

While in-person visits with a banker offer unique benefits that are unlikely to be entirely replaced, for companies that desire virtual meetings, these interactions can strengthen the relationship more than phone calls. As the graph below shows, among small businesses that desired 1+ virtual meetings, if any proactive contact was made (calls, virtual meetings or in-person visits), their primary contact performance scores improved. However, when virtual meetings were received, we saw further improvement in the primary contact performance scores for promptly following up, being accessible when needed and being proactive in suggesting solutions in comparison to the scores on these items when phone calls were received.