8 minutes
Three foundational building blocks need to be optimized to consistently deliver engaging member experiences over the phone: people, processes and leadership.
Our journey of nine articles will cover each in detail. Part one discussed hiring top performers and performance management. Part two covered processes. This is the eighth article overall and the first on leadership.
Like many credit union executives, you might already assume that your credit union is member driven because it provides excellent service. After all, your member-centric metrics, such as member satisfaction, Net Promoter Score and member effort scores, align with your service level assumptions, since they show members as being “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with your brand. Many of these members may even recommend your institution to others.
Unfortunately, regardless of what these metrics say, your credit union may not be a member centric organization.
My argument, in this particular example, is that these scores don’t tell you that many of these same members also like your competitors just as much (or more). Consequently, I’d bet you’re likely losing out on several sales opportunities. I’ll also add, based on various research, that these same “satisfied” or “very satisfied” members are, more times than not, members who end up moving to competitors.
Here are a few strategies (five to be exact) you should be implementing to begin building a member centric organization.
Strategy #1: It’s not always about what members say. It’s about what they do.
Contrary to the previous paragraphs, I do believe member satisfaction ratings, Net Promoter Scores and member effort grades are valuable tools to help gain insights into the member experience. However, these tools won’t tell you their impact to the bottom line. Consequently, it becomes more difficult prioritizing and allocating resources for member experience related initiatives.
By creating a member experience scorecard, you can gain better insights because you’re looking at what members actually did vs. translating what they say they might do via survey results.
A member experience scorecard will vary by organization, especially since some organizations are more data driven and have access to more sophisticated data mining tools than others. However, regardless of the data available to you, you can get started, knowing your scorecard will evolve over time. Here are some specifics to consider:
- Identify the quantity and dollar value of new members who joined within the last x months.
- Identify the quantity and dollar value of members who left within the last x months.
- Find out why they left and call a random sample of these members to gain further insights without being salesy.
- Identify how much your members are spending elsewhere, with competitors, within the last x months. For example, it is possible, with the help of a third-party service, to identify the volume and total dollar value of loans your members closed elsewhere. These represent opportunities your credit union missed.
- Segment each data point by key demographic segments.
Once you have this data, you’ll be better prepared to start having more strategic internal conversations as to why the numbers are such. And while the numbers can be impacted by many variables, such as pricing, the member experience (especially the impact of processes) will surely be part of any conversation.
Strategy #2: Pull a Picasso.
For those of you who don’t know, Pablo Picasso was regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists in the 20th century. While I’m not asking you to start sculpting or create the next great collage, I am suggesting you get pencil in hand and start mapping out existing processes – or more specifically, journey mapping.
Journey maps are a visual representation (mapped out in various forms, such as flowcharts or infographics) of the desired employee and member experience for a particular transaction (e.g. balance inquiry).
In a call center environment, a typical map would cover everything from call opening through post-transaction. Most importantly, you would capture key moments of truth (points during an interaction that give the member an opportunity to change their opinion of your credit union) that, if planned out correctly, will better position your agents to consistently deliver emotional experiences and, over time, help build member loyalty.
Going through this process will also better assist new hires improve time-to-productivity, thereby bringing down the expenses of learning the job.
Read more about the journey mapping process, in one of my previous posts.
Strategy #3: Get off the sidelines.
Another effective idea is to get out of your office and actually experience specific transactions (especially ones that are known issues) and/or listen to live calls. This, called experiential learning (basically learn by doing), is very common for senior people at highly regarded customer-oriented companies.
Take, for example, the Holiday Helper Program at online retailer Zappos. With the exception of the fulfillment department, every employee (even the CEO) is required to spend a minimum of 10 hours on the phone during the holiday season. This serves many purposes. For starters, it helps them maintain their service levels during a peak volume period. It also eliminates the need for Zappos to hire and train temporary staff. An ancillary benefit is that support staff and senior leaders can get first-hand insights into some of the challenges the organization is facing and be quick to act upon them.
When he was CEO of ING Direct, Arkadi Kuhlmann, almost always committed time during the week to answer customer calls and even temporarily relocated his office from the executive floor to the call center. This not only showed how passionate he was about customer service, but listening to customers gave him better insights into their issues, needs and wants.
Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, would actually call customers and ask about their on-flight experience. His passion sent a message to employees that customer experience is critical to the success of the organization and, being that he was in a leadership position, he was able to address issues much more quickly.
Bottom line is that you need to get first hand insights on what your members are currently experiencing and not just rely on feedback from your staff.
Strategy #4: Let members do the talking.
Once you’ve made various changes to processes, you need to ensure your execution is flawless. If not, you’ll need to find out what’s wrong and take immediate action. The most effective way to do this is through feedback.
Credit union initiated feedback, such as surveys and follow-up calls are a good start. However, gathering, analyzing and taking action on member-initiated feedback is much more effective. Examples of member-initiated feedback include inbound phone calls (typically complaints), member shopper programs and even comments on social media. Another important source of feedback is your agents – they are a gold mine for identifying your credit union’s existing issues.
Regardless of your source, your feedback needs to be actionable. So next time your recurring issue pops up (like plastic renewals being mailed late every month) one idea is to pull several recorded calls and create a library of them. Then share them with others to help create a sense of urgency.
Strategy #5: Heed the advice of The Miracles.
The Miracles, a successful R&B group founded in 1965 by Smoky Robinson and a few others, had several great hits, including “Shop Around” – and that’s what you should do for strategy #5.
Although you may not like to admit it, most employees, including your senior team, likely have financial accounts elsewhere (don’t worry, that’s actually a good thing!). What we’re asking is that you experience how particular transactions are done elsewhere and also ask others about their experiences on specific issues. Then share your findings.
For example, let’s assume a pain point in your credit union is the credit card fraud process. That’s because you require members to complete several forms and get them notarized before the credit union takes much action and gives the member added peace of mind. You should first think about your own experiences elsewhere and then ask other employees about similar experiences they’ve had outside the credit union. Then compile results and share with others (just make sure they understand what the existing process is like).
I hope this article helped you come up with new ideas on building a member driven organization. Be sure to stay tuned for next month’s article, No. 9 and final (I will miss you too!) in this series, on how to drive employee engagement.
Prior to starting his new company, Bill Stavros spent over 13 years of his professional career in the credit union industry, most recently as VP/marketing & member experience at $513 million Proponent Federal Credit Union, Nutley, N.J. While at Proponent, Stavros was responsible for conceptualizing and deploying a new vision for delivering customer service for Proponent FCU’s inbound call center, based on his learnings from highly regarded service oriented companies such as Zappos, Ritz-Carlton, Disney & REI. Now with Blueprint Interactions, his goal is to help other credit unions achieve similar results. His company also offers services in the areas of sales, marketing and member experience. Stavros, a certified customer experience professional, can be reached at bill@bpinteractions.com, by calling 888.757.8338 or www.bpinteractions.com.
