09/22/2009

Thing 15: measure something other than satisfaction

By Tim McAlpine

September is 30 things I would implement or consider implementing at my credit union if I was a credit union leader.

Thing 15 of 30: measure something other than satisfaction

The credit union industry loves its member satisfaction surveys. Stats like "95% of our members are satisfied with our credit union" make for great pull quotes in the annual report, but they don't do much to propel your credit union forward. All you have to do is look at the plateaued member-growth numbers to see this fact.

At my fictitious credit union we would concentrate on measuring something else. But to be honest, I am still unsure of what! I am certainly not a research expert, so my first step would be to really explore alternatives to the standard annual long-form member satisfaction survey.

Looking beyond the satisfaction survey, there are two main options to consider.

1. Measure loyalty
   The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is growing in popularity. Denise Wymore has been an advocate of NPS and championed getting the Member Loyalty Group off the ground. From Denise's blog, "I am very passionate about loyalty. And many of you know that I’m a Kool-aid drinking Fred Reichheld NPS purist! That’s why it’s so important that credit unions develop a standard methodology for calculating their relationship Net Promoter Score. The Member Loyalty Group has done just that. The beautiful thing about NPS is its simplicity. Fred Reichheld intended the survey tool to be open source, meaning anyone can do it. You don’t have to hire a statistician to calculate the score. Simply ask a random sample of your members the ultimate question: 'How likely is it that you would recommend the credit union to a friend, family member or co-worker?' on a scale of 0–10. Those that score your credit union a 9 or a 10 are fiercely loyal promoters. They will do three things for you:
   
   1. Buy more from you
   2. Market for you
   3. Tell you how to improve their credit union
    
   Number 3 is done by asking the simple follow-up question 'Why did you answer the way you did?'"
    
2. Measure member advocacy
   Ron Shevlin, a senior research analyst from the Aite Group has this recommendation for credit unions, "Measure customer advocacy (not referral intention). It's a lot more important for credit unions to be perceived as doing what's right for their members than worrying about whether members intend to refer them to family and friends. Why? Because members that think their credit union is an advocate for them will refer them. And referral intention isn't nearly as important as referral behavior."

Denise and Ron are two of my favorite people who just happen to have very different opinions on what credit unions should be measuring. I have heard both arguments on a number of occasions and I do see the merit in both approaches. As a credit union leader, I would make a point of really understanding my options, deciding on the best fit for our credit union and then diligently stick to a standard measurement system over time.

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09/13/2009

Thing 13 of 30: drop products and services that members don't want

By Tim McAlpine

September is 30 things I would implement or consider implementing at my credit union if I was a credit union leader.

Thing 13: drop products and services that members don't want

Ever been to a restaurant with a seemingly unending menu? Pages and pages of choices with nothing that really stands out? It feels like the menu has never been edited. I much prefer a simple menu with a handful of awesome choices. I think financial institution clients do to. Think ING Direct.

I think credit union menus tend to grow and grow in an effort to keep up with banks and other competitors. If I were a credit union leader, I would review every product and service. If we had six different checking accounts, I would want to know why. I would edit and edit until we were left with only the essentials. This would require us to define our brand and figure out who our core members are and what they really want and need.

Vancity recently edited its services in two very big ways. The leadership team looked at the insurance division and realized that only a small percentage of its credit union members were buying insurance from Vancity. After careful consideration, Vancity sold its Insurance division to the Cooperators. Vancity also looked at its cross-Canada virtual offering, Citizen's Bank, and realized that the Canadian marketplace no longer had room for an entirely online bank and decided to go in a new direction.

Editing is not easy. Especially when your organization has been around for half a century or more. It's hard. It's painful. But ultimately, it's necessary and it's good.

P.S. I know, I know. There are a lot of Vancity examples in my 30 things blog series. Forgive me, Vancity just does a lot of things really well.

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09/05/2009

Thing 5 of 30: thank your members (often)

By Tim McAlpine

September is 30 things I would implement or consider implementing at my credit union if I was a credit union leader.

Thing 5: thank your members (often)

How often do your staff members reach out and say thank you to your members? Not in mass-printed form like a newsletter, annual report or member satisfaction survey, I am talking about deliberate personal interactions just to say thanks for dealing with your credit union. This could be in the form of an e-mail, a phone call, a card or even in branch.

If your credit union is anything like the one I have been dealing with for the past decade, the answer would be never. This isn't the only reason I am right in the middle of moving my entire personal and business relationship to another credit union, but it did play a part in the decision.

I received a thank you card in the mail last week from the general manager of our new credit union. It made my day.

Maintaining a personal relationship with credit union members is only going to get harder. With the convenience of online banking and debit and credit cards, members rarely come into the branch anymore. If I was a credit union leader, I would head to the stationery store or the local printer and order a bunch of blank cards, give every staff member a big stack and encourage them to write at least one thank you note to a member every day.

Saying thank you is easy. Do it often.

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07/11/2009

Wrong your members and they'll tell two million friends!

By Tim McAlpine

1. United Airlines broke Dave Carroll's guitar
2. Dave reported it to United
3. United acknowledged that they broke the guitar but chose to do nothing
4. Dave told United he would write three songs and post them to the Internet
5. Dave's first video has been seen more than two million times in four days and has attracted more than 11,000 text comments

Lesson: In 2009, everyone has a voice and an audience. Act accordingly!

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04/21/2009

Human, humorous and helpful!

By Tim McAlpine

I am a member of Banktastic. It's a great financial-services-industry-resource-social-network-community thingy. The last couple of times I have logged in my dashboard says I have these two friend alerts from the same person. I have tried to accept them, but I get an error. Today, I decided to report the error and this is the message that I received back within about 15 minutes:

"From: Mark McSpadden
Subject: Alerts that I can't clear

Tim,

Here at Banktastic, we believe friendship is something that has become too flippant in this age of social networks. Friends are added without a second thought and honestly we find this trend disturbing.

Therefore, within Banktastic, we make you fight for your friendships. A friendship is worth more than a few clicks. To reinforce this, we've randomized some friendships to not be accepted until after the 100th click. We hope this will help our members realize the importance and seriousness of social network friendships.

OK, not really. It's a bug we've seen a few times in some of our early member profiles and friendships. I'll clear it out this evening and let you know when you can expect an alert-free Banktastic experience.

Thanks for letting us know about it! (And for being my creative outlet for the day!)

Mark McSpadden
xxx-xxx-xxxx"

I loved this response. In this canned-message-mechanical-contact-center era, it's nice to receive a human, helpful and mighty humorous response. Is it appropriate for Banktastic? You bet. Is it appropriate for your credit union? Maybe not, but I sure hope that your frontline staff are allowed to deviate from the script. This experience once again proved to me that a brand is so much more than just a logo and a set of standards!

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10/21/2008

Guest post: It's about the spinach, stupid. And the carts. And pretty much everything else

(Or what credit unions can learn from the mind of a disgruntled big box shopper.)

Dear SuperDuperBigMart [and credit union professionals],

When your new store [read: branch] opened near my house a few months back, I deliberately stayed away for a while. About three days to be exact. Finally the lure of cheap toilet paper [read: free chequing] became irresistible.

But the line. Oh sweet-mother-of-smiley-faces, the line. It. Could. Not. Have. Moved. Slower.

And the bag of spinach I picked up was already expired. Kind of weird since you just opened. [read: What? You’re out of envelopes at the ATM?]

Then there were the carts [read: brochures and other marketing paraphrenalia] scattered everywhere. Carts crying out for some sort of cart corral, if not a full-fledged cart jockey or two.

Today, I went back. Again, the parking lot was a mess. No one greeted me when I walked in the door [read: I thought it was about relationships?]. You didn’t have what I wanted [read: practical financial advice] and the items you did have, didn’t have any price on them [read: weren’t priced right].

When it was time to check out, you only had one cashier open [read: wicket]. No problem, I thought. I’ll use the self-checkout [read: profit-maximizing, expense-minimizing ATM]. But the technology worked against me. Finally, it stopped working altogether.

"Please wait for employee assistance!" it kept announcing in its loud, electronic voice. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. But no one came to help. They walked right by. I just stood there helpless with my juice boxes and my garbage bags [read: U.S. cheques and other transactions].

Finally, I left my cheap toilet paper [read: free chequing account] in the cart and high tailed it out of there—‘cause seriously, I don’t have time to be ignored, no matter how low your prices are [read: don’t you want my money?!].

But then I thought maybe I should tell someone about my terrible, no-good, very bad day(s), so I logged onto your website. I used all 150 allowed words to tell you my story and then you sent me this—or rather, your computer did:

PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS E-MAIL
Please be advised that your email has been sent to the Customer Relations Department. You will receive a response in the shortest possible time. We thank you for visiting www.SuperDuperBigMart.com. We look forward to serving you on your next visit. Thank you.

Pardon me? The shortest possible time? By whose assessment? Not mine, obviously, or you would have responded by now. How about an actual service promise?

Making matters worse, I also read this on your website:

SuperDuperBigMart is committed to giving Canadians the best shopping experience in the marketplace by delivering everyday low prices, exceptional customer service, top-quality merchandise, and extensive community involvement, philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. SuperDuperBigMart has repeatedly listed among the 50 Best Companies to Work for in Canada, as published in Report on Business Magazine.

You know. I’ve always wondered what makes people go postal [read: bank?]. And now I know. Thank you, SuperDuperBigMart, for reminding me there’s more to being super than just having 'SuperDuper' in your name.

Oh, and if you’re thinking of calling me today, please note I’ll be out re-buying all the things I tried to buy at your store yesterday, this time with my three-year-old in tow. [read: Where is Mount Lehman Credit Union anyway?]

Signed,

Some crazy lady in Surrey

About our guest blogger: Colleen Pepper is a freelance writer and editor specializing in the credit union industry since 2001.

Colleen writes radio spots, campaign collateral and more serious things like annual reports, brochures and newsletters. This week a client asked her to write a letter telling members their account manager died, demonstrating that she can do funny and funerals—although whether a letter is the right choice for the latter is a blog in itself.

Colleen has a B.A. in Communications and History from Trinity Western University. In her spare time, she is a mom and aspiring mystery shopper. She’s recently discovered how much she hates SuperDuperBigMart—or at least the sparkly, brand new one by her house.

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09/16/2008

Good e-commerce beats great local service every time

 By Tim McAlpine

A recent chain of events reminded me that dealing with a good self-service, e-commerce website can be so much better than dealing with good-hearted, human beings that offer great customer service. Let me tell you my little story.

On July 28, I went to turn on our TV and heard the lamp pop. Our TV is a Samsung DLP rear projection unit purchased about five years ago. At the time, a plasma screen was north of five grand and out of our budget. My first instinct was to jump in the car and go to Costco or Best Buy and replace the TV, but my wife (the more practical one) convinced me to just replace the lamp.

First stop, the electronics store where I purchased the TV. "Sorry sir, we no longer carry that style of TV and we can't order the lamps either." I went home, did a quick search online, found compatible lamps on eBay and other sources. But my former Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce President voice in the back of head said, "You should try to shop local." A call to another locally owned electronics store yielded success, or so I thought.

On August 10, after returning from our summer vacation, I checked in with the store. The good hearted, polite clerk checked his records, but couldn't find any record of the order. "Call back tomorrow, 'Mike' will be back."

I went back and forth for a month. All the while being given friendly, prompt attention. Great customer service but lacking a great product.

"Sorry, the lamp is backordered."

"Sorry Mr. McAlpine, we've tried another supplier and they are looking at another source."

All with a smile and a good heart.

After missing the Olympics, I decided I wasn't going to miss the premier episodes of a few of my favourite shows, so I went online again five days ago, clicked on the top link, got a trustworthy looking website, entered the product code, entered my credit card info and my TV is now working. I called the local shop, got my credit card deposit back and now have an extra $100 in my pocket.

Questions raised relevant to credit unions

• Are credit unions kidding themselves with the local, actual people, better service myth?
• If the perceived switching inconvenience factor was removed, would your credit union members hang around?
• Once there is no need for branch visits for things like signature cards and forms, why should members care about the local credit union?
• Is your credit union's e-commerce up to snuff?
• What is your credit union doing so much better than the other options out there that your members would never consider moving?
• How are you raising your products and services above commodity level and building member loyalty?

Granted, my TV story might not be the best example of great customer service, but it did get me thinking.

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08/04/2008

When front-line gold goes away

By Nala Henkel

In all the mystery shopping I've done at various credit unions and banks, if I was going to put a percentage on the number of good tellers/reps vs. the number of brilliant tellers/reps, I'd say it was 8 to 1.

One thing that I think is wrong, wrong, wrong is that these brilliant people get promoted AWAY from the members. Before you freak out, let me explain.

Yes, these fantastic people need to stay within the organization. Yes, these fantastic people need to be rewarded for their fantastic-ness. But the answer is not to jump pluck them off the front line and plant them higher up. Here are some of my ideas:

• Sit down and have a heart-to-heart chat about how valuable this brilliant person is to your credit union, and discuss a long-term career path for him/her
• Have the brilliant person take a personality profile so you can zero in on finding the next brilliant person (don't just automatically promote up the ranks unless you know you've got another brilliant person waiting their chance to shine)
• On the way to their new path, include the brilliant person in your replacement plan. This means there's a two-month job sharing that will happen with brilliant person and brilliant person-to-be to transfer the brilliant skills

My last comment is this: brilliant front-line people are gold. Pay them (cash) and reward them (benefits) accordingly.

Disagree or have a different perspective? Share it with me!

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07/03/2008

"If you want a relationship, have it with a dog."

By Tim McAlpine

In the CUES Experience Podcast 03, Arkadi Kuhlman said:

"ING Direct earns the respect of our customers through repeated transactions, not by having kids run through wheat fields and by telling everyone we are into relationships. If you want a relationship, have it with a dog. Why you would want a relationship with a financial institution is beyond me."

Arkadi Kuhlman is the Chairman, CEO and President of ING Direct USA. He said these words very matter-of-factly during his keynote presentation. He also scoffed at the notion of having a CRM system, segmenting customers and analyzing customer profitability.

Arkadi is the self-professed bad-boy of banking. He is controversial and outspoken. His presentation was bold and opinionated and hard to ignore. He obviously knows a thing or two about building a new bank—ING Direct USA is only seven years old and has $80 billion in assets and 7,000,000 customers. All of this with only a website, a call centre, consistent marketing and a simple value proposition.

If you make a fuss or want special treatment, ING Direct closes your account. In fact, ING Direct close 5,000 of the 100,000 new accounts it opens every month. Despite these hard-nose tactics, ING Direct has a 96% satisfaction rating and a 60% Net Promoter Score.

What gives? This idea of not building relationships with customers is the exact opposite of what most credit unions have based their business strategy on. ING Direct's numbers don't lie—$1 billion of new money goes into it's simple one-rate savings accounts every month.

Meanwhile, credit unions attempt to build deep relationships with everyone by offering a broad menu of products and services.

Are credit unions wrong or is there room for both business models to work?

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06/28/2008

TD Online Banking - A Critique

By Nala Henkel

I discovered a neat thing today when I checked out my sad little balance at the TD. For those of you who've forgotten, I opened accounts at Canada's 5 major banks to do mystery shopping for this blog.

Anywho, I logged in and found this:

Here's my critique:

1. Too much copy.
2. Haven't we gotten beyond the ALL CAPS full name thing in (de-) personalizing our offers??
3. Use it sparingly, not every time I log in.
4. It's brilliant.

Now, I already know that you're thinking two things.

First, you're worried that my boss, Tim, will tear me a new one for spending 3/7 of my time (check out the tabs) on non-work-related internet surfing. Thanks for the concern, but he actually encourages us to use social media, as it will play a big role in the future of marketing.

The second thing you're thinking is, "How can she have 75% of her criticism be negative and yet say it's brilliant? Is she taking Will Ferrell's crazy pills?"

Here's why it's brilliant:

1. I took the time to read it.

Do you know how hard it is to get people to read your marketing messages? Very hard. I will clarify, though - the IDEA is brilliant. The execution sucks.

Are you "helpfully interrupting" your members online?

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