Self-serve Is Essential, But Credit Unions Can Enhance Member Experience Through Employee Empowerment
We live in a world of instant gratification. Consumers are exposed to great digital customer experiences from many other organizations, such as Amazon, Apple, Netflix that address their immediate needs – and they fully expect to receive an equivalent experience from their credit union.
It is now taken for granted that an online request or action results in an instant response or reaction. So much so, that a delayed response from a business lead to dissatisfaction, causing friction in the customer experience that can escalate to the loss of a member or prospect.
So, let’s look at how credit unions can provide a great member experience in line with current consumer expectations…
Talk to members where they are
Everyone has a personal preference as to how they engage with their financial services providers. Some prefer traditional methods of interaction, such as face-to-face branch meetings or telephone calls. Others have embraced online and digital channels and are happy to be served through a portal or mobile app.
Whatever the member’s channel preference, the important thing is to offer is choice.
Credit unions need to ensure their members get the response they need, immediately and on the platform or channel of their own choosing. This requires providing them with a choice of channels, and then empowering employees to interact with members on their selected channel/s.
Self-serve is essential, but members still want and need assistance
One of the consequences of the pandemic was the rapid shift away from in-branch to digital interactions. A lasting effect of this is that customers want to self-serve for transactional type requirements, but still want to speak to a person when they get stuck.
Credit union members are no different; they want to be self-reliant for certain tasks, but still want to get advice, information, or assistance from a human when they need it.
Credit unions that have not enhanced their self-service options risk losing prospects due to them dropping off during a customer journey, such as a mortgage application or onboarding.
Empower employees to provide fast and efficient service
No matter how easy it is to self-serve, having access to personal attention from a staff member will always be required and appreciated. Credit unions must empower employees to serve customers faster and more efficiently, by providing the right information, on hand, when they need it.
This is essential, not only during a live customer interaction but also so that employees can support members as they go through an online or digital process. For example, employees need to help members complete applications, collect missing data, as well as provide product details.
Helping members go through online or digital processes contributes towards strong relationship building. But it is also in the credit union’s interest to ensure the process is completed. To illustrate this, consider a potential mortgage customer busy completing an application, but they get stuck on something that is unclear or confusing and thus abandon the process.
If employees do not have easy access to information about the abandoned application, getting the process to the finish line involves a lot of manual work.
Credit unions need a customer engagement solution that enables a human to quickly identify an abandoned online application and communicate efficiently with the prospective member to assist them in completing the process.
Credit unions can provide a great member experience by giving employees access to the complete conversation history and the ability to pick up the conversation where it was left off. If members switch from interacting over text or email to visiting the branch in person or calling in, there must be complete oversight into that conversation.
How Doxim’s New Customer Engagement Management Platform Release Enhances Member Experience through Employee Empowerment
Designed specifically for financial service institutions like credit unions, Doxim CEM delivers a suite of integrated solutions that span the customer lifecycle to create an engaging, modern customer experience.
The Spring Doxim CEM platform release includes key features that help credit union staff serve customers faster and more efficiently, as well as several usability enhancements that reduce friction points for users and introduce operational efficiencies.
