With floor traffic dropping at bank branches nationwide, FIs are losing some customer connection time that might be damaging relationships. For community banks and credit unions, losing touch with customers especially matters and some are hoping that social media helps fill the void.

“Our research is showing the bulk of consumers have stopped shopping in branches,” Kevin Travis, a partner at consultancy Novantas LLC, tells Bank Innovation.“One of the benefits of being a community banker, in theory, is you have direct contact with customers,”

And therein lays the problem. If fewer people are frequenting their banks, the opportunity to foster better relationships remains low for FIs. Recently, I spoke with the Zoot Enterprise team, who stressed how important it is for smaller institutions to maintain personal connections with their customers primarily because they rely on “relationship-based” interactions, says Tom Johnson, vice president of product and business development.

But with IT advances, even smaller institutions are losing out on some face time as consumers opt to take care of financial business digitally.

“Technology is making it less important to go into banks,” says David Fruhling, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at fintech vendor Fisco. “Connection between a bank and customer is going away.”

Fruhling, whose company offers FIs a rewards social media product, says social media can reignite the banking customer connection. How? Tweets and status updates give hints of personal consumer information. Perhaps a consumer is talking about getting married online. That very data point might imply he needs a loan and clues the bank into his needs, Fruhling posits.

Naturally, banks are still having issues finding their social voices in the web of regulatory rules and because there’s still a newish factor to the channels. Javelin Research explored this hangup in a January report with focusing on bigger banks’ social media strategies and declared the digital tools will continue to help maintain the quality of FI customer service.

“Social media is the next frontier for the FI and consumer relationship,” said Javelin President James Van Dyke in a statement.

We agree. Social media can help with fill in the void, especially when it comes to addressing customer service issues. Though we doubt that status updates will be enough to keep relationships meaningful, they will help foster community — which is of utmost important on the community banking and credit union level.