4 minutes
Here’s how credit unions can cost-effectively offer truly modern, differentiated member services.
Credit unions have long thrived by offering personalized services that build strong community bonds. Now the charter has evolved, extending those community bonds by offering the financial services and the kinds of experiences members want in the digital world.
What is Fintech and CX?
With thousands of options for consumers, fintech is short for “financial technology.”
From the financial or “fin” perspective, it includes every kind of financial transaction imaginable—from mortgage lending and retirement investing to car insurance and health savings accounts.
And from the technology or “tech” perspective, it’s equally broad and includes many types of technologies that power those transactions. For example, it spans mobile banking platforms; investment apps; buy now, pay later platforms like Affirm; and even cryptocurrency.
Meanwhile, customer or member experience is how people feel about your brand as they interact with you at any touchpoint, whether it’s in-building, via mobile, on the web or on social.
Thus, to ensure a consistent, high-quality member experience for all members, credit unions also rely on technology. So now, to compete, credit unions must offer the right mix of fintech with the right level of high quality of service—to all members.
The Diverse Generational Financial Service and Member Experience Needs
Your credit union now serves five generations, and here’s what they expect from your credit union:
1. The Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1945, expect face-to-face interactions with tellers, loan officers and financial advisors.
2. Born between 1946 to 1964, Baby Boomers expect live, human interaction to issues or inquiries—either on the phone or in person. They’re comfortable with the Internet, smartphones and online banking, often preferring email to text or social media interactions. While they bank online, they are less likely to use mobile apps, while still expecting seamless member experiences.
3. Entering the world between 1965 and 1976, members of Gen X want a convenient member experience and don’t shy away from using multiple communications channels—sometimes mobile or web and other times, email or face-to-face—to get information or service they need. They eagerly embrace a diverse range of financial information websites but are not as likely to use mobile apps as younger consumers.
4. Tech-savvy millennials were born from 1977 to 1995. Boasting a population some 83 million strong, they expect lightning-fast, personalized experiences via mobile phones, preferring texts to voice calls. They actively use mobile wallets and payment apps, as well as a fragmented range of financial apps for mortgages, insurance and investing.
5. Lastly, Generation Z was born during and after the late 90s. Very accustomed to resolving issues with as little human interaction as possible, they’ve never known a world without mobility, the Internet and tight integration between the two. They were born for personalized self-service, a mobile app for everything and the occasional need for tech support—which they prefer via text, reserving voice for only when necessary.
Against this background, credit unions must increasingly meet diverse needs—those of consumers with different ways of interacting with both technology and humans, as well as consumers who demand a growing array of fintech-driven services.
Thus, it’s essential to consider customer and member experience as part of your fintech strategy.
Member Experience Underpins Differentiated Fintech Offerings
Right now, fintech is a fragmented ecosystem with many apps that resolve specific pain points or fulfill a narrow financial service need. Bringing a comprehensive set of services to members requires building a fintech stack of third-party apps each with their own way of doing things.
The downstream risk is a disorganized member experience. To mitigate it, credit unions need a few things. They need to:
1. Create customer journey maps for different types of members and consider how these groups interact with your credit union and services
2. Use an omnichannel cloud contact center provider with the ability to serve all communications channels in a single platform. It helps because your interactions data is stored in one place, giving you accurate, real-time reporting, which allows your credit union supervisors to make member experience workflow changes on the fly and offer a high level of member service.
3. Take advantage of artificial intelligence in your contact center. This way, supervisors can direct members to self-service options for high volume but simple inquiries. Self-service options can be through interactive voice response, texts or chatbots directing a member to a given website section containing the needed information.
4. Go for an all-in-one cloud contact center solution that is highly customizable. By going this route, the cloud contact center solution contains 80% of the features, functions, and capabilities you need in a single, easy-to-manage platform. Most importantly, it also is easily integrated with any fintech apps and platforms you use—giving your credit union the ability to cost-effectively offer truly modern, differentiated member services to all types of consumers.
If your outdated contact center is preventing your credit union from delivering on the promise of fintech, while still allowing you to serve all five generations of members, it’s time to transform and modernize your member experience.
After all, only the right combination of fintech and CX technology can successfully propel your credit union into the new digital era.
Andrew Casson is a longtime network engineer and telecommunications and contact center architect. He’s currently a VP for CUESolutions provider Content Guru, Campbell, California, maker of the highly-acclaimed storm®, an all-in-one contact center-as-a-service solution with industry-leading functionality, performance, reliability and flexibility.
