Had go to go a branch a couple times in the last year at a local credit union. Largely seems like tellers are getting busy work. There are not a lot of tellers present, and they appear to be doing other things on their workstation. So they get up to go to the teller window and help me out with my request, which usually involves them playing around with some archaic bank app on the teller machine and fiddling with the copier for a bit. A supervisor is always around who knows more of the business use cases and always seems to get involved either out of boredom or because they're the only ones who know how to do something.
replyThey are handling in-person transactions, usually deposits (many who deposit checks manually still don't know how to use the app to do so, or if the branch has an ATM that does deposits).
replyThey are the only way to get non-20 cash in many areas; the ATMs that can dispense other bills are quite rare. And if you want $100 in ones you're going inside.
They're basically bank receptionists for old people who will type details into the same system that the general public has access to. They also handle cash for small businesses (I worked in a cafe during university and we'd regularly have to do runs into town to deposit rolls of bills and get more change to float the till)
replyIf that's all you think tellers are then you're missing out on a lot of opportunities.
replyThey are the first line of human-to-human contact with customers. They are able to sell new services or upsell existing services to customers, especially with the customer's data right in front of them. A new pleasant conversation plus "Oh by the way, did you know that you could get service ABC that would help you?" is something that an LLM or ATM can't do reliably.
There's a tremendous amount of opportunity available with well-trained tellers.