The service work that survives a counter closure

A branch-closure proposal can look convincing before anyone has examined what customers do there. The rent is visible, the address can be removed and the digital channel already exists. It is easy to imagine the activity moving with little additional cost. I have learnt to pause at that point. A customer may visit because a process is unclear, a document has not reached its owner or a payment has been allocated differently from what the customer expected. Closing the counter does not remove those questions. It changes where they arrive and which colleague must answer them.

Start with the reason for the visit

When two counters in one regional catchment were proposed for closure, I asked operations to classify the work behind the visits. The purpose was not to preserve every existing activity or defend a property decision through anecdote. We needed to distinguish routine requests from cases requiring explanation, evidence or a decision elsewhere in the company. Some activities could be completed remotely with little difficulty. Others depended on a colleague understanding the history of a lending relationship. The classification gave us a more useful starting point than a simple count of visitors, because two visits could represent very different demands on the business.

I was particularly interested in unresolved conditions. A customer who needs to understand why an amount cannot yet be drawn is not necessarily asking for a transaction at a counter. They may need someone to identify the missing evidence, explain its purpose and connect them with the responsible decision-maker. A digital upload function can help move the document. It cannot, by itself, resolve uncertainty about what the document is meant to establish. If the operating process remains unclear, moving the customer online may distribute the same problem across several messages instead of one conversation. The service cost can rise even while the property cost falls.

The existing team also held knowledge that was difficult to see in a location budget. Six colleagues understood recurring customer questions and the handovers between branch and central staff. I did not assume that all of that knowledge was indispensable or could never be documented. I asked what it would take to transfer it responsibly. A plan that assumes immediate replacement of relationship knowledge should include the learning period and the people who will answer questions during it. Otherwise the business treats a capability as free while it exists and discovers its cost only after the people providing it have gone.

Put the receiving team into the budget

The first replacement proposal allocated ₹45 lakh annually to central support against an existing combined operating budget of ₹1.18 crore. That produced a headline saving of ₹73 lakh. The central team could perform processing, but it did not have spare capacity for all the explanation and follow-up work. When we put that team into the discussion, the estimate changed. This was not evidence that centralisation was inherently wrong. It showed that the first proposal had not fully priced the work it intended to transfer. A receiving function needs to be part of the decision before a saving is attributed to it.

Our revised plan retained the six service colleagues at an annual cost of ₹54 lakh, provided a smaller shared office and scheduled meeting space for ₹12 lakh, and allocated ₹16 lakh to central processing. The total was ₹82 lakh, leaving a planned annual saving of ₹36 lakh. We gave up ₹37 lakh of the first proposal's claimed saving. That arithmetic mattered because the revised decision was not the same business case with a softer explanation. It was a materially different operating design. The board needed to understand both the smaller saving and the service capability it would retain.

I kept transition costs separate from the recurring comparison. Lease exits, moving arrangements and temporary overlap could affect cash in the first year without changing the steady annual budget. Mixing those items can make a proposal look either better or worse depending on which period is chosen. I asked finance to show the recurring costs, the one-off requirements and the timing of cash separately. The company could then decide whether it could afford the transition and whether the ongoing arrangement was worthwhile. A single payback figure would have been less useful if it concealed the work still needed to make the new service operate.

The customer explanation followed the operating design. We gave each relationship a named service contact and described how scheduled meetings and central processing would work. I did not want the communication to imply that every service had become faster or simpler merely because it used a different channel. Some customers would need to change their habits; some might find the revised arrangement less convenient. Those consequences belonged in the review. An honest transition can acknowledge a trade-off while still being the right decision for the business. Claiming universal improvement would have made it harder to hear where the new arrangement needed adjustment.

A smaller saving can be a more credible plan

After closure, the useful evidence concerned unresolved requests, handover failures and the capacity of the retained team. We needed to know whether work had accumulated elsewhere or whether colleagues were completing it through unrecorded extra effort. A service can appear efficient for a period because experienced people absorb the difference between the plan and reality. I regard that as a reason to examine the operating model, not a sustainable source of savings. Managers should be able to describe the workload and the resources supporting it without relying on the assumption that committed staff will always find a way.

The decision also changed how I review other location proposals. I now ask which activities stop, which move and which change form. The answer should identify an owner and a budget for each material transfer of work. It should also show what evidence would lead us to reconsider the design. This approach does not require retaining a physical office in every case. It requires a business to establish what the office was doing before claiming that another arrangement can replace it. The result may be a larger saving than expected, a smaller one or a decision to defer the change.

For a board, the central question is whether the proposal accounts for the operating consequences of the property choice. Directors should not design the service roster or decide which colleague answers a particular query. They should expect management to demonstrate that the claimed saving includes the cost of work that remains necessary. In our case, the ₹36 lakh recurring saving was less impressive than the original ₹73 lakh figure. It was also supported by a more complete plan. I would rather defend that smaller number with a clear account of what the business must still do than pursue a larger one whose missing costs arrive later in another team's budget.