2 minutes
Chief Experience Officers bring experience across delivery channels, including mobile.
Many credit unions with assets of $500 million or more (and especially those with more than $1 billion) have hired a chief experience officer, or CXO.
The CXO is tasked directly with optimizing the member experience across the credit union’s delivery channels, including the physical branch network, to ensure the credit union is living up to its mission and brand promise regardless of how a member chooses to engage. The CXO’s focus is largely on sales, member acquisition and deepening relationships with existing members. The focus these executives have on the member experience across the credit union’s delivery channels, especially mobile banking, is refreshing.
The CXO role in its purest form is about increasing conversion rates on loans and accounts. The CXO will likely work with the head of lending as often as with the digital channel manager. Within digital banking, the CXO focuses on addressing integration pain points; simplifying workflows; increasing the percentage of auto-decisioned applications; minimizing data entry by members and rekeying of data by employees; and attempting to fully leverage the software the credit union already owns.
The challenge for credit unions is finding an individual who possesses business analysis and project management skills, a high emotional IQ, quasi-technical know-how and experience in financial services.
Historically, credit unions have relied on the age-old wisdom: “We differentiate through member service.” This age-old level of service has focused on personal, face-to-face exchanges. Now that members can purchase accounts anywhere, it is time for credit unions to start thinking about what happens if the member never walks into a branch or chooses not to call. It’s time for credit unions to define how they live up to their service ideal outside of the branch or contact center. It is time for credit unions to realize that what members are actually buying is the experience.
Tim Daley is a director with Cornerstone Advisors Inc., a CUES Supplier member and strategic provider based in Scottsdale, Ariz.
This is bonus from “Getting the Most from Mobile” in the November 2015 issue of Credit Union Management magazine.
