WASHINGTON, D.C.–The corner has been officially turned.

As the credit crisis gripped financial services a couple of years ago, cutting costs was the call to action at banks worldwide, and especially in the U.S. That meant a relentless pursuit of greater efficiency and a deeper understanding of where are the excess expenses and processes in the banking system.

The attention has officially turned to revenue generation, as evidenced at this week’s BAI Retail Delivery conference here.

There is evidence of this shift in many places at the conference, one of the industry’s largest of the year. But I was particularly struck by one company’s shifting approach: Verint.

Verint provides four broad types of optimization software and tools: sales effectiveness; customer satisfaction, operational efficiency; and compliance.

Where is the growth at Verint? Not in operational efficiency, or software that helps banks better maximize their resources.

In a meeting with Simon Angrove, who runs Verint’s financial services unit, explained, banks have largely fixed their efficiency ratios. Rather, the growth is coming in tools for sales effectiveness, with a CFPB-sparked interest in compliance performance added to the mix.

“Bankers have realized they made a lot of cuts, but they can’t just focus on cuts,” Angrove told FinAi News.

Angrove thinks this is a “permanent” shift to a revenue focus. He argues that the banking customer base has grown more comfortable doing business online, and that means branches are “taking on a different role” — “more like a concierge,” he said.

Will the shift be “permanent”? I tend to doubt it, but this revenue focus is leading to a new wave of customer-centric innovations that, I expect, will continue to be a boon for banking consumers. Or, put another way, credit crisis.