Posted by Lisa Hochgraf with lots of help from Mary Arnold and Christopher Stevenson
If you want to set yourself apart, identify members' pain points, and remedy them.
I got to thinking about pain relief because of a wonderful experience I had recently at one of Rochester's much-loved Wegman's grocery stores. The pain-relief dialog I might have had with the grocer goes something like this:
Me, the frustrated corn eater: "The corn silk makes a mess, whether I husk it in my kitchen or on my deck. What a pain!"
Helpful Wegman's grocer: "Okay, Lisa and your silk-hating friends, here's a place you can shuck your corn and leave your mess with us, the kindly grocery store."
Needless to say, several other Wegman's lovers and I stood around in the produce section Sunday, happily husking corn, leaving the mess behind, and talking about how great this was.
I was so excited about this (who knew?!), I asked both Mary Arnold and Christopher Stevenson at CUES what they would see as parallel customer experiences in CU land.
Mary suggested credit unions could welcome children's coin deposits. That pain-relieving dialog might go something like this:
Frustrated parent: "I want my kid to learn about money, but the bank spurns him bringing in his piggy bank."
Helpful CU: "Your child can come to our branch and use our free, character-branded coin counters to convert coins to the equivalent of an ATM ticket. Your little one can take the ticket to a teller station and make a deposit."
Talk about easing the pain! Mary's article about Commerce Bank doing just this also describes how ING has set itself apart by focusing (and I really do mean focusing--they don't do a ton of other things) on helping people get around the pain of saving.
Here's Christopher's CU pain-relief dialog. And his has an interesting twist. He describes a way CUs are already relieving members' pain. The problem is, of course, that not enough members know CUs can help them this way. But first, the dialog:
Frustrated CU customer: "This is awful. I'm moving to a new town and either have to close out all my accounts and re-open them at a new bank or credit union in my new town or use that online banking stuff (but I like to go to the branch and get face to face service)."
Helpful CU: "No you don't, frustrated CU member. Just use our shared branching network and you can take advantage of all the services you've grown accustomed to here with a face-to-face transaction."
OK, so providing pain-relief to members is nothing new to credit unions. Keep on keeping on ... and be sure to blow your own horn about it.
