4 minutes
Listening to your members and acting on their feedback is the best way to show you care.
Credit unions know that focusing on member experience is an essential element of growth. But in the rapidly evolving financial services industry, developing a unified member experience strategy can be a challenge.
Member experience programs must be carefully designed to ensure that credit unions are hearing and taking care of members. A unified member experience needs a clear, compelling, persuasive vision. To help start the process, I have compiled a list of the eight essentials of credit union member experience. These are based on conversations with numerous CU professionals who agree that delighting customers is the key to success.
1. Challenge the status quo. Just because things are done a certain way doesn’t mean that is the best way forward. Every once in a while, take a step back and contemplate why processes or policies are shaped the way they are. See if there is a path to make things more efficient for your members.
2. Feedback mechanisms are key. To truly understand your members, you must regularly interact with them and examine the impact those interactions have on your relationship. Customer experience platforms that track interactions across multiple channels (online, mobile, tablet, etc.) can help give a solid view of every step of your members’ journey with your brand.
3. Culture eats strategy for lunch. A credit union with a great culture and a mediocre strategy is more likely to be successful than a credit union with mediocre culture and a great strategy. You can implement all the strategies from every management book you’ve read, but culture is what binds an organization together. Everyone in the organization—from executives to front-line staff—needs to understand how to deliver a delightful member experience. Map out your ideal member journey and develop an inspiring vision for your credit union, then offer training to get everyone on board.
4. It’s better to do something than nothing. Every step you take to make member experience hassle-free and delightful is a straight path towards growth. Even if you have to start simple—for example, a short member branch survey—just do it; at least you’ve started the process. From there on, build slowly and consistently. You can always learn and make changes for the better. Remember that the end goal is to earn member loyalty.
5. Use the credit union philosophy to drive engagement. The entire staff needs to know where to prioritize their efforts, as determined by your CU’s member experience strategy. Credit unions exist to help people, so encourage your staff to exceed members’ expectations. Happy members are great motivation: Often, when employees start working towards building member engagement, it sparks healthy competition as they strive to outdo each other and even themselves at delighting members. This begins an upward spiral of member engagement and satisfaction.
6. Detractors (and their feedback) provide the most value. Be sure to have a thorough follow-up sequence in place for every negative comment you receive. These negative comments are actually a treasure trove of information. You can find out exactly what upsets your members and work your way through those pain points. Address these issues and you’ll gain back their trust. A detractor-promoter flip is worth much more than a dozen passives.
7. Vibe attracts tribe. Keeping your employees motivated and inspired to do better has multiple benefits. When employees are happy at your organization, they’ll spread the word, attracting additional talent to your credit union. The better the talent, the better your brand—meaning members will have a more pleasant and enjoyable experience.
8. Score is your speedometer but surveys are your GPS. The Net Promoter Score is an index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company's products or services to others. It is used as a proxy for gauging overall customer satisfaction with the company's product or service and loyalty to the brand. This is useful information, but to know where you are heading, you need to dig deep into your surveys and pay attention to the obstacles your credit union has encountered. Your CU could be going miles in the wrong direction, but you’d have no idea without analyzing your survey results. Progress is going in the right direction at a good speed.
Investing in a solid member experience platform and strategy can be a vital differentiator in bringing your credit union closer to your members. This should include a digital presence that enables you to connect and interact with members across different channels and touchpoints and—most importantly—track these issues through the point of resolution.
Listen to your members and act. There is no better way to show your members that you genuinely care about them and their experiences.
Vinod Muthukrishnan is CEO of CloudCherry, a company that tracks and improves customer delight.
