BarCampBankSeattle: What I learned in session 1

Like I said in yesterday's post, I attended day one of BarCampBankSeattle. In retrospect, this gathering makes all of the one-way, sit-in-the-audience listen-to-the-smart-person-on-the-stage sessions that I have attended seem so positively old-school. Did I mention the event only cost $35 and included four meals! It has definitely struck a cord—all the bloggers that attended are feverishly posting their thoughts about what a positive event it was.

Before it all mushes together in my head I will attempt to summarize my learnings from day 1. There is a Wiki being put together at the BarCampBankSeattle website that will capture everyone's take on all of the sessions.

Session 1 was a discussion on loyalty economics and the net promoter score led by Denise Wymore. Based on the theories put forth in the Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld, Denise believes strongly that the traditional annual member satisfaction survey used by most credit unions are worthless and are actually working against the credit union movement. Credit unions are very proud of their 80% to 90% satisfaction rates yet wonder why their member numbers are stagnant. Without real information to impact real change, credit unions don't improve with this information.

She proposes a new monthly survey with two questions: 1) On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to recommend the credit union to a friend or family member? and 2) Why?

Here's the scale

• Customers rating 9–10 are called promoters
• Customers rating 7–8 are called neutral
• Customer rating 0–6 are called detractors

The difference between the percentage of a company's promoters and detractors is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). For example, if 50% of a company's customers respond with a 9 or 10, and 30% respond 0–6, the company's NPS would be 20%.

To put it in perspective, Harley Davidson has a NPS of 81%, whereas the average credit union is at 50%.

Denise's big question to the group was can software be developed to sift through and analyze and make sense of a massive database of why answers? There are huge enterprise solutions out there, but nothing for the small credit union. Sounds like a great opportunity for a software company to contact Denise and get the ball rolling!

To sum up:

• Marketing is dead (her opinion not mine!)
• Word of mouth is it
• We are in the experience business but we don't talk about it
• What your organization measures is what it values

I was very impressed with Denise. If your credit union is looking for a culture consultant who gets it, check out her website.

I'll continue to make sense of my notes and memory over the next couple of days!

Tim