Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 10

142 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 10 have gotten so used to using their phones for everything, that we’ve had to adapt our mobile technology to make sure it is really robust. Anything you can do on a PC, we want to be available to do on our mobile platform. “Technology in general is so much easier than it was. So I think that those who are still coming into our lobbies, really want to come in to visit with people. It’s a social thing. For example, at our Massena, NY location (our highest volume branch), a member will go right by an ATM and walk in to deal with a teller. I really feel that people like human interaction still. And it takes something like a global pandemic to make them stay out of a branch, and have to use the technology and the drive-thru. But once things started easing up, a lot of folks came back in and that settle back down. However, each market dictates to us how many drive-thru lanes we can have. Our new locations have less foot traffic, with the exception of things like mortgage business. We’re still doing a lot of transactions, but they’ll never be at the level of some of our existing locations which have been around for a long time. “However, with the growth trajectory we had, and COVID was a precipitating factor, we have seen an increase in our mobile use. From 2018 to 2019, we saw a 20 percent increase year over year in adaption of our mobile platform. From 2019 to 2020 it was 30 percent, and we’re well over that from 2020 to now. We’ve been focusing on the development of our mobile technology, making it as seamless as possible. Consumers