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The CU2.0 Podcast
This podcast explores contemporary, critical thinking and issues impacting the nation's credit unions. What do they need to be doing to not just survive but prosper?
The CU2.0 Podcast
CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 386 Sogolytics' Melissa Krut on the Generation Barrier Between Credit Unions and Younger Potential Members
The Credit Union Generation Barrier.
On the show today is Melissa Krut, VP of Success at Sogolytics, a Herndon Virginia based firm that focuses on data driven analytics that answer questions such as how satisfied are a credit union’s employees, how satisfied are members, and more.
Krut is here to discuss Sogolytics data driven approach and also to elaborate on a recent Sogolytics report that documents the disconnect between younger Millennials and Gen Z and credit unions.
That’s a disconnect that couldn’t happen at a worse time for credit unions as their Baby Boomer base erodes in numbers.
Here’s one finding: “Nearly half (49%) of Gen Z say they've heard of credit unions but don't understand how they work. Perceptions of being outdated persist: 17% view credit unions as "for older people," while another 17% believe they are "not modern enough."”
Ouch
There’s lots of data in the report but, Krut stresses, the data also open doors to better communicating to Millennials and Gen Z.
By no means is this a battle lost.
And Sogolytics offers plenty of pointers about what a credit union can do to better appeal to younger potential members.
Listen up.
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Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, and welcome to the CU2.0 podcast with big new ideas about credit unions and conversations about innovative technology with credit union and fintech leaders. This podcast is brought to you by Quillo, the real-time loan syndication network for credit unions, and by your host, longtime credit union and financial technology journalist Robert McGarvey. And now the CU 2.0 podcast with Robert McGarvey.
SPEAKER_02:On the show today is Melissa Critt, VPS Exoolytics, a earned in Virginia-based firm that focuses on data-driven analytics. Answer questions such as how satisfy their credit union employees with their jobs, how satisfy their members, and a lot more. Crit is here to discuss Solytics' data-driven approach and also to elaborate on the recent Solytics report that documents the disconnect between younger millennials and Gen Z and credit unions. That's a disconnect that couldn't happen at a worse time for credit unions, as their baby boomer base erodes in numbers. Here's one finding and I quote Nearly half 49% of Gen Z say they've heard of credit unions but don't understand how they work. Perceptions of being outdated persists. 17% view credit unions as for older people, while another 17% believe they are not modern enough. Oh there's a lot of data in the report. The data also opens doors to better communicating to Millennials and Gen Z. By no means is this a battle lost. There's bad news here.
SPEAKER_01:Listen, my title is already VP of Success. Like you've seen that.
SPEAKER_02:No, I I I was I was actually planning to make fun of you for that, but I'll just do it.
SPEAKER_01:You're very welcome. I'm I'm totally ready for it. That's I made it up myself, right? So you're very welcome.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's it's I titles I I'm an old guy. I remember when titles were straightforward, you know, VP public affairs, VP finance, yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01:It said what you did, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They're much more imaginative now. And um, and what who am I to stand in the way of this generational thing? And that's partly what I want to talk to you about is the credit union generation barrier. I was reading over this document this morning, and this is kind of like a doomsday report for credit unions.
SPEAKER_01:Oh laughing.
SPEAKER_02:Oh no, but I'm laughing. Whoa, wow, guys. Yeah, boomer isn't a boomer. Boomers are boomers are dying. Oh, so it's a CTA. Okay, good.
SPEAKER_01:Does that sound better? A rallying cry, if you will. Uh that's what we'll say, right? Because there's no, you know, if it if it was a done deal, if we all the bets were, you know, settled and everything like that, then it would be a different message. But the message is there's a lot of things that can be improved, and there's a lot to learn, and that's why we collect feedback so we can make those good decisions and improve things, right? If it was like the end, it would be a much shorter report.
SPEAKER_02:So summarize the essence of the report. As I read it, the report is saying that A, baby boomers are dying. Okay, that's a statistical fact. B, the receptivity of younger millennials and Gen Z to credit unions is not terribly good. And Gen Z seems particularly uninterested in credit unions as I read the report. Am I reading it more or less accurately?
SPEAKER_01:I would say that's a starting point. I would say that one of the highlights there is really that there's a paradox, a values paradox of some kind. So we have this idea that millennials and Gen Z are really into the kind of stuff that credit unions actually stand for, like the cooperative principles. You know, people are learning from each other, people are working together. That's the stuff we want to see, equity, we want to see accountability across the board. That's the kind of great stuff that we always hear, you know, Gen Z and millennials are really into. And yeah, the reality is they're not suddenly flocking to credit unions. So that's the question. It's not that look, it's all over. The question is, why is that? Why is that their gap? Because they have an awareness uh that credit unions exist, like 50% more or less, said, yep, they're there. I kind of kind of get them, I see what's going on, but they aren't, you know, rallying in that direction. So what's the challenge? Their behavior doesn't reflect what we perceive their beliefs to indicate, right?
SPEAKER_02:And I I don't fault them for that because I think credit unions are actually fairly hard to understand from outside. And I say that because when I was first asked to write a story by a New York Times editor about credit unions, I I was delighted for the the assignment, but then I hung up and said, What the hell's a credit union?
SPEAKER_01:It's a good starting point.
SPEAKER_02:Money, money's good. What's a credit union?
SPEAKER_01:I think I really do.
SPEAKER_02:I'd written a fair amount about cooperatives and actually knew a ton about cooperatives. So I think that's why they asked me. There was a logic there. Assuming, oh, he must have known something about credit unions. I didn't know a thing about credit unions.
SPEAKER_01:My I will say my dad worked for a Royal Electric Cooperative for many years. And so that's that concept was really strong with me as well. Too that idea of sort of public-mindedness, public service, sort of like we're here to help. I started my career as a teacher. And the first credit union that I've joined, and spoiler, there's there's more than one over the years, but the first credit union I joined was exactly that. It was to help teachers. And it was solving a problem that I had at the time, which is, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have my first full, you know, real job, my first uh full-time employment, but I'm only gonna get paid 10 months a year. Okay, so fairly new to grown-up budgeting, I met this folks from this credit union who were like, you know what, we actually have this program to help you to be able to summer pay, right? It's a helpful balance, and it solved a problem that I had. And I was like, all right, this is what credit unions are for. They're really here to help me in this very specific use case, which is targeted exactly for me. So luckily I worked for that looks real.
SPEAKER_02:That's very cool. That's uh, I mean, it is a special case, and yeah, you could do a little math yourself saying, okay, I gotta make 10 months stretched to 12. So uh, but that would take more that would take discipline and doing a little math.
SPEAKER_01:So right, correct.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm not faulting you, I probably put it off myself. So uh until until August came around, I had no money.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was starting as an English teacher, you know what? I wanted to stick to what I knew best and you know, rely on some people who seemed very helpful and trustworthy. And indeed they did. It worked out very well for me.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. But I I do think if if you walk around, you say you go to any place in Washington, DC, where there are young people, say, hey, can you tell me about credit unions? They'll flee the room.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's I think that's fair. It seems um, like you said, we have this sort of idea that, like, okay, I don't want to go back to like a hippie era specifically, but like this sort of community good works kind of stuff, public service. Yeah, that's all well and good, but it's my money. And I think the shift is that, yeah, conceptually, I like the idea of being good for the community. I love the idea of belonging. Belonging is like a big keyword that we hear about, right? All the time that people want to be, you know, VEI conversations aside. I think it's a branding problem. It's not a problem that like people don't know that credit unions are out there. It's what are they about? What are they for, and what do they have to do with me? And I think that's a big, big challenge is to be able to say, actually, you are a member of our community already. We'd love to have you here. We're seeing all of these, like we get flyers, emails, all of this stuff. It's from big banks, it's from fintechs, et cetera. We all get, I don't want to call it junk mail, I want to be respectful, but we all get offers from time to time that say, you may already be qualified, kind of flashy stuff. And the credit union movement really has the opportunity to say, look, you live, work, worship in this community, or you serve in this capacity in this community, right? And then you are already a member of this community. What can we do for you? What can we do to help you? And I think that's a chance that a lot of other institutions don't have. The digital presence, I mean, fintechs are the real competitors, right? A lot of times over the many years that I've been to, credit meaning events, conferences, et cetera, sometimes it's that they banks, you know, who are the bad guys. But right now, a lot of times I'm there talking to people, and the conversation is really about it's the fintechs who are the other people. It's not that they're the bad guys, it's that there's something to learn from them. What are they able to accomplish? What are they getting away with? What are the cool tricks that they're using? And how can we uh use from them, uh learn from them as well? And I think that that's a good shift in the conversation is that it's not us versus them. It's where are our opportunities to modernize?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I know CUNA for some years now, America's credit union, if I remember the name change.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. That's correct.
SPEAKER_02:Uh uh has been trying to convince the public that you know credit unions are here, and there's always a where whatever your state in life, there's a credit union you can join. And you actually A, there are a lot of credit unions you can't join. There will be one you can, but there are a lot you can't join. And B people get confused somewhere along the line. So wait, I have to I have to work at Disney to join that credit union, but I can join this other one even though I don't work at Disney. Yeah, okay, I guess makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Sort of the charter system, yeah, it's a little bit complicated. I would agree. Like I said, that one that I the first one that I joined was because I worked in this county school system in Maryland. Another one was because I lived in this town, and another one that I uh belong to now is fairly digital, and that's a top priority for them. And the accessibility from anywhere and a number of their specific services is one of the things that attracted me to them. And when I was like, how can I join them? I realized they have, oh, they do have a charitable cause. Or if you were a contributor to our specific cause, for example, like so many credit unions have foundations, then you qualify as a member of our community. It's like, okay, I can do that. I support that cause as well, too, not a problem. But really, that was an afterthought. For me, it was foregrounding what are the services that are most important to me, looking for somewhere that had that. And yeah, because I'm already a pretty big proponent of the credit union movement, I definitely looked in that area intentionally. And in many cases, I'm the exception, right? Because I've got a lot of exposure to cooperative service credit unions from my own job as well, too. Um, but I think that this report shows that that's clearly not the case for everyone. And folks who are shopping around are looking for a very, maybe not digital only, but often digital first experience. And that's a shift.
SPEAKER_02:A lot of credit unions have backdoors, as I call them. That's how I got into the print my principal credit unions. I knew the CEO and he said, Why aren't you a member? And I said, Well, I'm not in one of your select employee groups. He said, Yeah, just give ten dollars to this charity and you're in. Boom, done. So I did it, and it's I've been with them for many years now. Perfectly I'm happy. But that credit union, like most of the others, did not really flagrantly put on the front page, the landing page. Backdoors to entry.
SPEAKER_01:Strange, strange homepage messaging. I would totally agree. I think uh in some of them too, right? Like I was talking about that teachers one. That was a main indicator, that was a main point of invitation. Um, but we see a lot of credit unions that we work with as well, too. One of the biggest things that they're coming to talk to us about is we have gone through some changes. We have to say, well, yeah, who hasn't, right? But a lot of times those changes that we see in the credit union movement are smaller credit unions merging, acquiring each other, coming together, we'll say, into these bigger amalgamations, or even just rebranding themselves to be more relevant or to be more inclusive of the full community. We see people who have, you know, this used to be people who work in this company, but now it's bigger. So we need to rename. This used to be people who work in this specific department, for example, a police department or a firefighter's credit agent originally, now has renamed two or three times. And some of that sense of like, what are those values? What are the goals that we had here originally? They have to be totally reevaluated too, because they have a broader community. And so maybe their charter has changed a little bit, maybe their mission, their vision, their values, all of those things have changed a little bit. And it becomes a little bit like, well, what's the difference then between some fintech that I've never heard of or seen in person, a big bank, or a credit union, and the visibility of what are those values can be lost in the mix, I would totally say.
SPEAKER_02:There's also um a fundamental problem, which is that credit unions will say a key difference with us. And I'm I'm a big fan of credit unions, but it's nonetheless I'm a realist. The difference between us and chase is this fintech is you own it. You're a member, member owned. I I think that's interesting. You know, I own stock in some big companies, and every year or so I get like a ballot to vote from members of the board. Have I ever gotten that from you? No, I haven't. Uh I've never gotten a ballot. I didn't even know you had elections. I I knew you had to, but I don't know when they are or where. So I'm an owner. That's it. I'm I'm a really passive owner, let me tell you.
SPEAKER_01:No action required. That kind of that kind of ownership, right? Yeah, I agree. There are some, like I said, the rural electric cooperative movement, for example. Like I grew up going to annual meetings every year that were like Oh, cool. This is everybody in the community, right? They have, you know, if they have capital gains, they give checks to their members. Like that's a very, you know, cool model. But I think some of it a little bit is resting on those laurels of the past, a little bit, which is like, we've got such a great idea. It's like 100% you've got such a great idea. Like this guy's an owner, I'm an owner, everybody's an owner. It's a cool concept, but like, what does that actually mean? Like, I'm not interested in being an owner. I'm interested in convenience. Like, I'm interested in my life being easier, easier. So you can keep my boat, that's fine. But what's in it for me? Like, what's going to make my life so much better? Because right now I have, you know, especially since the pandemic, like convenience is the biggest metric for so many of the organizations that we work with, credit unions and beyond as well. Like that customer effort score, member effort score, whatever we're calling it, that convenience factor is so high that people are over like willing to overlook, yeah, I don't have a personal relationship with my banker or my teller or anyone who works there, which used to be a huge driver in the past, right? I know the guy down the street, he always takes care of me, we're in good stead. But now it's how much easier can my life be? Oh my gosh, two-day delivery. I can't wait for that. I need one day delivery, right? I don't know how often you see that, but uh yeah, how much faster can delivery be? It has to be overnight, actually. That's the new thing. So I think that's Amazon.
SPEAKER_02:Amazon actually believes that the winning formula is same-day delivery. And they're delivering if you're in a major metro area where there are big Amazon warehouses, three-quarters of the stuff you buy if it's over a certain price point, which I think is 25 bucks or something, will come the same day. And they're not doing this, they're not doing this because they really sit there saying, well, they need the damn paper towels today.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Yeah. Make or break stuff here. Yeah. I think that that's the that's the lesson. That's one of the things to take away. And it's not just for credit unions, it's for everybody to think about as a consumer, you know, it's great to set sit as an organization and say, we are mission-driven, we are member driven, we are member-owned. But what are you doing for your members right now that really helps them? It's not necessarily, you know, those cooperative principles that people see day to day. It's how it impacts my daily life. And yeah, it sounds a little bit selfish, but from a consumer perspective, we're all going through that. Like we work with a lot of uh employee experience as well, too. Like so creatine employees get that same treatment. And the feeling is, how can we help make things better for our employees? So they stick around, so they give good experiences for our members, but it's that same idea of we're all consumers of something. And how are you attracting me with your special perks or fast delivery or an amazing app, right? And when you deliver on those promises, if you can get me same-day delivery, whatever it is, I'm building up trust, right? Like over time, I'm saying, like, you said you would do this and then you did this. Awesome, match. You said you would do this, you did it, match. Whereas the reaction that sometimes we see from either outdated technology or per technology that's perceived as outdated, you know, we have a good number of stats about that in the uh in the report as well, too. But like that perception that, oh, that's for older people. 17% said, Gen Z, credit unions aren't modern enough. Like, what does that mean? Well, I I remember long ago when I was looking for colleges, okay, many, many years ago, if they didn't have a website, I wasn't interested. Boy, can you imagine that being your criteria now? Like if you don't have a good idea.
SPEAKER_02:Well, what what what what year was that?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I yeah, I graduated from high school in 1998.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so so the web basically became the web in 94-95.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So it's like getting started. Most most institutions should have had something that looked like a website. Most of them are already online, believe it or not. They they had like their library card catalogs online, going way back to like 1980, 1975.
SPEAKER_01:It's uh librarians are ahead of the game. There's no question. My mom's a librarian, so whenever she listens to this, a shout out to her. But um, yeah, librarians are always ahead of the game. It's the rest of them, you know, marketing, all respect to everybody on the teams. But yeah, you got to show up in the places where people are looking in the way that they expect.
SPEAKER_02:Now, one thing the report points out to you that I've been preaching about for some time, and you you agree with me, is that the uh member onboarding experience is often slow, sluggish, and unpleasant with a credit union. You didn't put it quite that way.
SPEAKER_01:Um I hope it was slightly differently where it worded yes.
SPEAKER_02:It's it's yeah, well, I'm telling the truth. So now, why do you say that? And what needs to change?
SPEAKER_01:I think I mean the digital aspect is something that I couldn't couldn't say enough about. We already talked a little bit about that. Um, eligibility for joining, we know that's a big thing. How do I do I even get in the door? Is this okay? Um, that feels a little bit closed to sometimes people, like, oh, is there a barrier? Like you said, even it's your friend and you say, Hey, I can't be a member, says I'll show you through the back door. That seems a little bit like, I don't know, clickish in some way. So that feeling that it is inclusive is a conversation that needs to change, right? And that's even before you start into onboarding um as well, too. And I think figuring out what is the role, like what are the real goals that people have in onboarding, right? Like, is it that they want to be educated, they want to have financial literacy as part of their bread and butter, or is that really an outcome later down the road? And many credit unions that I've been working with over the years and events that I've been to, many credit unions see it as their mission to make sure that people have sound financial practices. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But sometimes the timing of that conversation may not make as much sense. I don't want somebody to preach at me, look, this is what you should be doing. I want somebody to understand me, to learn from me, to hear from me, um, and then be able to help me craft like the right journey, the right experience that I have. Because it might not be my top priority to save right away. This might be a secondary account, and maybe you need to be okay with that. Um, being able to say, like, let's build that relationship based on what people are looking for, um, and not what we assume that they should be looking for. Because that's a very paternalistic kind of way of looking at things sometimes. Like, look, this is what we know that you need, even though we believe very strongly in all of these financial principles, just getting to understand what is it, what are you doing here in the first place? And I think that um, I don't want to call it a lack of understanding, but that lack of personalization, lack of adaptability sometimes can be one of those concerns I think that leads to um I don't say sluggish, but a little rough, sort of onboarding to make sure that we're getting the right messaging to folks who are going to be receptive to it. I think that's a big, that's a big piece.
SPEAKER_02:And you're you're making an interesting point, which I hadn't thought about before, which is yeah, credit unions often are pretty paternalistic, if you will, about wanting to help the member do budgeting, whether the member wants to help or not. And I think that may go back to when uh credit unions had a SEG, the SEG was often a factory. Who in the factory knew anything about budgeting? Almost nobody. Uh so they I whether they wanted help or not, they could profit from a little help here and there. Whereas as credit unions have more diverse membership, some of the people say, I already own it. Don't bore me, man. Uh, you know, uh, yeah, I know I I know I'm going broke, but I could fix it if I wanted to, and I don't care. So it's uh so yeah, there's there's still that element of paternalism about, oh, let let let me teach you how to do budgeting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think if you opt into that path, I think that's a challenge too. And we saw that that's one 85% said uh they would opt into a sort of youth-oriented account that was designed for Gen Z or millennials. And if you choose that path and you want to you want to say, like, look, here are my goals. Like every time you sign up for basically any tool that you use, um, whether it's SaaS or something else or any service that you use, you're answering a question which is basically, what are you doing here? Like, how can we help you? What project or what success, what goals, what measures are you looking to achieve? And if I start on your onboarding and you say, Okay, Melissa, let's talk more about you. Well, I have plenty to say about you know sort of hyper-personalization starts there. And we see willingness of people who are engaged in a conversation about themselves, a willingness to share more than they have in the past. This is another weird paradox, right? Where people say, I'm very protective of my data security. And yet, you get on with a chatbot, you get on an onboarding, and if people keep asking you questions about yourself, you're very likely to share that information in order to have a more personalized, customized experience. Security, data sharing, right? People are very interested in that personalization. So I think that that idea, if you say, look, I'm just here to drop in some money and pick it up again really soon. What are the things that are the top priorities? Like I just want low fees. I don't want to have to uh I want to have fee forgiveness sometimes every once in a while, all of those kinds of things that people are looking for, um finding that stuff out sooner rather than later and having accounts that are really targeted for them. I think onboarding in general sometimes means if there's friction in the onboarding, it's because they're on the wrong path. Either they've started with the wrong products or services, or at some point down the way, they've taken a turn, whether it was intentionally on their part and they need a little bit of nudging back, or the system that they're using for onboarding isn't allowing that level of flexibility, isn't giving the options. If you say, All right, do you are you here for A or B? And I'm actually here for C, that's disengaging. You know, it's kind of the work that we do here a lot of times is designing questions to help people have better conversations. And the reality is if you're not giving me my toes and answer option, I'm not really interested in talking to you anymore. Sorry. How about that relationship we have with technology?
SPEAKER_02:Let's switch gears a bit. And this is in the sweet spot of this the company you work for. A lot of credit unions talk about well, we beat the big banks, blah, blah, blah, on member experience. And I've always asked, well, how do you know you beat the big banks on member experience? They don't know. They just believe it. They don't have any benchmarking of how Chase members and customers have viewed Chase, nor do they have any useful data about how their own members, but they just believe that we beat them because everyone likes to talk to teller Amy on Fridays. Okay, I haven't been in the branch of my credit union ever. Uh I don't do that. It's online. It's uh so I I don't know, Amy. So, but you are your company's about the data of measuring member experience, right?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. That's a huge part of what we do.
SPEAKER_02:So tell me, tell me, A, about how you do it for credit unions, and B, how credit unions score.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Like it's a great question. So that idea of uh, I love your example of Amy because that is again the perception when I go to credit union events, I meet a lot of AMEs. They are very likable people, right? I meet a lot of people who are really proud of the people behind uh the credit union, the people on the front line, the people who are out in the community doing the cool things. And that is a huge plus. And there's there's certainly nothing to discount the AMEs of the world and the great work that they're doing.
SPEAKER_02:I used to get a paycheck every two weeks. You'd stand in a long line branch. But everybody would have their favorite teller. So you kind of jostle a little bit. I mean, I I remember those days. Yeah, I'm not saying there was no I'm not saying there was no logic to it. But those days, that was a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01:I agree. That was a long time ago. I was thinking about this in prepping for this conversation too. It's like, when is the last time that I interacted in person with? We do a lot of feedback surveys and various kinds of experience management programs for our clients. And I think one of the biggest changes that we've seen in those measures over the past, I've been here for over a dozen years, and we've really focused on credit unions uh for I would say about half of that time. It's been a big segment for us, big um focus area. And what we've seen in that time is that shift from that like once a year check-in. How's it going? How's everything? Anything that you wanted to tell us, it's like going to the dentist and you have to remember which tooth hurt sometime earlier in the year. You can't always remember that stuff off the top of the head, but at least once a year you're doing that outreach, you show that you're listening. Satisfaction, that's great. Once a year, maybe that's a satisfaction question, maybe it's NPS. Uh, we want to see net promoter score, sure. But the switch that we've seen over time and how do we measure member experience is that we recognize member experience just doesn't happen once a year. It happens every day, every minute. Hey, I ordered that new debit card and it didn't come. Nobody's gonna send me a survey to say, by the way, did your debit card not come? Nobody's gonna call me up and be like, hey, just checking in, right? On any given day when any number of things could be happening. So what we've found is that people are more likely to be receptive to ongoing, kind of always listening, omni-channel type feedback so that yes, you can reach out to me and say, hey, how was that transaction? Did you get everything that you needed? Right? That can happen. I can go in for maybe someday I will go in and make a deposit, right? Or maybe it's something that I did through a call set of having a problem and being able to check that out. So lots and lots of different kinds of touch points are coming in. I want to be able to hear from people at each of those moments and ask the question. I don't always want to ask an NPS, even though it's a controversial thing I'm gonna say here, but net promoter score is not the only metric that matters. I'm sorry if that's gonna be offensive to people, but it's a really important consideration because we have people who say, I need an NPS survey at this moment, at this moment, and this moment. And the reality is it's not always an appropriate moment to say, and by the way, how likely are you to recommend us? Right? It doesn't make sense in onboarding necessarily on your first day. That's greedy, like that's needy, right? That's what we're seeing, um, you know, too soon, the wrong conversation in an onboarding flow. Um, but once you've been with us for a little while, then I do want to start asking you hey, you had that conversation with the Loan officer, how helpful was that for you? Was it useful for you? So we see a pretty good range in um sort of expansion of the metrics that people are using at each of those touch points and also bringing it together into journey mapping. I think journey mapping is very cool and it helps us understand it's not that those metrics are going up and down in isolation, they're going up and down in response to something specific that's happening. So if you have that big trend chart that says, here's our member satisfaction for the year, up and down, hooray, that's not a good, you know, if it's going up, everyone's. But if it's going down, we need to know why it is going down. And so we need to be able to say, what are the drivers behind it? What are the variables? Um, and at what moment in the member journey is that experience suffering? We need to be able to identify is this during onboarding or is this during what we hope was a retention renewal type conversation? And it turned out to be an exit. So I think there's a lot more granularity, and it's because, okay, I'm not going to toot our horn too much, but there are a lot of cool tools out there that people can use to collect that data in a more, I'll also say, modern way than they have in the past. There's nothing wrong with collecting feedback, you know, in a little pad or, you know, dropping a piece of paper uh in the comment box outside. Like that's still fair, that's useful for a lot of people, but it's not as useful as a dynamic type dashboard that you can see and you can share with other people on your team. So there's that, I think that shift very significantly to always on feedback. It's always fair game for members to have an experience of some sort, good or bad. And it's always fair game for us to collect that feedback as well over time. So I think that's sort of a big, big trend, a big change over time with member experience. How do credit unions compare in experience with other organizations? I think credit unions hold their own pretty well. And I think that's one of the most interesting things that we saw in this report, too, that folks who are already members of credit unions are having pretty good experiences. Um they have pretty good ratings, they are satisfied with the digital experience, and all of these things that we wonder about. It's really, as you said earlier, it's really kind of the outsiders, the people who are outside looking in saying, What the what do you got going on over there? They don't see the inside of experience, they never meet Mary or they never meet Amy, they never meet anybody on the inside. And they have this perception of like, yeah, that's not for me. I'm not part of that, I'm not part of that community as well. So I think once you're on the inside, you're good.
SPEAKER_02:You're missing a cohort there though, which is my sense, and I think this is statistically supported, that one bad incident, you could be a member of a credit union chase customer for 20 years. One sufficiently bad incident, you're out the door. You're not gonna you're not gonna stick around to give a bad, bad member experience report. You're gone. You know, you know, to talk talk to me about Wells Fargo. I love him. I I I don't have an account with Wells.
SPEAKER_01:That's true. That's true.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's true. So that whole group, the angry people, and I think this is particularly true in banking, which uh uh include credit unions under that umbrella. Well, I because I had one bad experience with Chase, and that was it. I was gone. Even though the branch manager did her damnedest man that she tried for me. And uh I mean she's a great soldier. I really I felt bad about uh closing the account, but it had to be done. It was a moral principle. Yeah, you get one chance, you blow it, and boy God. So but uh it so when a credit union gets a report, are they uh particularly the first time, are they surprised? Do they say, geez, we thought we'd do better or we thought we'd do worse? And what do they say?
SPEAKER_01:I think that's a it's a great question because yeah, there are people who are opting out, right? Like they're not happy, they're so dissatisfied, they're gonna leave. Like, you know, that's that's something that we understand. I think, you know, we see that in employee exit, we see that in customer exit. There's any number of reasons that people leave. And one bad incident with your money is, you know, one of the worst, I mean, the only worst thing I can think of is with your health, right? There's some there's some things that we're extremely sensitive to and we're not willing to, you know, my genes don't fit, that's not a problem, but you mess around with my money and we're gonna have, right? So there's some sensitive, some sensitive areas there, and correctly so. I think when we um I think one of the challenges for credit unions um especially is to be able to recognize that, yeah, people aren't always gonna be happy. And even though we take our mission very seriously, for example, we need to be able to recognize that there are people who are ready to have a different conversation, who aren't satisfied, who need a follow-up, who need something different. So whether it's a different flavor of onboarding or whether it's different resources, whether it's less communication, more communication, understanding that kind of stuff, knowing that it's a bad report in some way, but being able to find out why, that's an opportunity. We always see this kind of thing come up that, you know, you can give me good experiences over and over again, it may or may not be loyal. But if you recover well from a difficult incident, all kinds of studies show you there's the opportunity to build that relationship stronger than it was. And so I think that not just waiting to see that report, I think sometimes that's the old style of like, you know what, let's wait till the end of the quarter and see where we start. But what we want to be able to do is see that information come in in real time. It's Tuesday afternoon, it's 2:30, and I see an alert come in from one of my members or my customers and saying, Hey, I just had a tough conversation. I don't really know why that person was so rude to me, whatever it is that happened to them that upset them in some way. If I find out sooner, I can act sooner. And that's a tech opportunity, right? Yeah, people are always trying to help, but the tech opportunity is enabled by that instant trigger. Then I find out right away that there's something going on, and then I have the opportunity to act. And that's where that chance is to come in and say, let's build a relationship. I noticed that this happened. Yep, you were interacting with this app, something weird happened, you weren't able to process that payment, you're not sure if it went through. Let's talk it out. There's human opportunities, I would say, in these digital journeys. And I think that solving the problems or addressing like those detractors is a real opportunity that's very tech enabled, but human-inspired, I should say.
SPEAKER_02:So when a credit union contracts with you to do member experience surveys, is it one and done? Is it done quarterly on a schedule? You know, what what's what's the usual relationship?
SPEAKER_01:I think the I and we just kicked off a new relationship with the credit union earlier, uh, earlier this week. And they are not ready for one and done. They are ready for let's go. And a lot of the clients that we do work with manage their own projects, which is really, really exciting. So maybe myself, who's a member of the account management team, somebody is working with them to get them set up, to understand their priorities and their strategies, to be able to make a game plan, plan of engagement, if you will, um, to be able to say, what are our top priorities? What can we roll out? And then what needs to happen later in the year, and how are we gonna come back and understand that? So you can work with us and we manage some of those projects for you. It can be an ongoing project, but most of our most successful clients are ones who say, you know what, you helped me get set up, I'm gonna run with this. We've got those dynamic dashboards, those ongoing touch point surveys, some automation is already happening, it's pushing into the customer journey maps. When we see members having those great experiences over time, awesome. We know what we need to do. Aha, something's come up, we need to make a change, then they'll reach out to us. So we have a number of different options. Uh, the way we work with folks is really based on, again, getting them on the right onboarding path. If somebody says, Melissa, I just need everything set up, and then I promise we can handle it. Like that's awesome. We can do that kind of an implementation for people and having them take ownership of their own data. Um, it's unfortunate as sometimes we work with folks who said, I've never had access to our own data. I've always had to wait till the end of the month or the end of the quarter, because for whatever reason, some of this is off site or outsourced somewhere else. Um, and so they don't actually get to see what's going on in real time. And so when they work with us, a lot of times they're like surprised, like, I can see a result as soon as it comes in. It's like, yeah, what was it before? Sorry that your expectations were so low. Um, but yeah, for people to have control over their own data to be able to ask the questions that they need to, sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's different groups of members they need to segment in and say, first I thought we were just going to do a transaction study, for example. Every time someone has a transaction, I want to be able to reach out to them. And then they realize, you know what, in branch, mobile, call center, those are all different types of transactions. So we can have that conversation and be able to uh adopt their feedback to ask the right questions to people at the right time, refill information so we don't have to say, Well, Robert, thanks so much for coming in. And what was your name again? The worst, right? It's stuff that's so impersonal. Um, so I think that that's that's my favorite. It's when I see that folks are taking ownership of their own um processes, they have control over it and they can make those uh adaptations as they need to, because we want them to have that good digital experience too, that they realize this isn't in someone else's hands. This is now, this is task. You have the control, and so you can do what you want with it.
SPEAKER_02:Do you also do? I think you do uh employee experience surveys too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And tell me about that for credit union. I think most credit union executives, and I talk with a lot of very senior executives, think all the employees love them. I can't believe that's true, but perhaps it is.
SPEAKER_01:I I think that's a it's an interesting insight, right? Where I sit in the office determines my perspective on you know everyone else and their perceptions, but you don't know if you don't ask. It's the same true as true of member experience. I think people are happy, like you said. If they're not happy, they'll leave. And if I haven't heard from them, maybe no news is good news. Uh with employees, the same conversation sometimes happens, but the reality is that people who are employees are also consumers. They're consumers of your company as a product in some ways, just the way that your members are. And I think that that's a really interesting one. It is a place where we do see employee journey mapping. We do see HR leaders come in and say, you know what? I need to do 360 study, so I get feedback from everyone. Um, and maybe at the manager management level, I need to do a benefit study, I need to do employee engagement. That's fine. Those are all deep things. We also have folks who say, I'm not sure where to start. So I just want to have a monthly pulse check so people know that we're listening. Wherever you start, if you're not ready to do employee journey mapping, that's okay, but start somewhere because if you use that same model saying, Once a year, I want to know what employees think, you find yourself sending reminders that say, look, you have a week left to tell us what you think, or else we have to say on the last day. But this is the last day. If you have nothing to say, we have nothing to hear. So wrap it up. Uh so that message, let's say for clarity, the messaging is really, really important. Um, but uh for us, the work that we do, again, sometimes it's the employee employers doing the work themselves. That is a case where we'll uh more often get involved from a managed project type view where we'll do the research, where we will reach out to your employees on your behalf. So instead of telling my manager what I think I'm telling this researcher, this team. Like so tell Melissa instead of telling your boss. Um, and that's really been helpful for especially starting off those conversations for folks who are not ready to do something on an ongoing basis yet. They want to show that they're making the effort. They want to be ideally not just show they're making the effort, but really demonstrating that we're trying to build a culture of listening internally. You can't have a culture of listening only to your customers or only to your members and not be listening to your employees. Like that's a recipe for disaster. We're past the era of the customer is always right. But we're not necessarily in an era where the employee is always right either. There's a balance across the board there, too. So I love doing those employee projects. It really surprises folks, as you said too. Like we're sometimes surprised by the results. It wasn't a credit union, but it's a common experience. I was presenting to a board once, and they were very surprised by how low their ENPS, that's employee net promoter score, which is how likely are you to recommend this employer to a friend, family, colleague? And this board was very shocked by how low that number was. And I had to ask them, so by the way, would you all recommend working here to people in your network? They were like, oh, that's different. That's not different, I'm sorry to say. That's the same question you're asking everybody else. Um, and so I think making sure you have the right metrics. I'm not a huge fan of ENPS, but employee satisfaction, employee engagement, for example, those are metrics that stand on their own and can be really useful when you're learning from people, especially over time and not just once a year.
SPEAKER_02:Well, my experience, which goes back a long time ago, is the only time the employer asks you about your experience was in the exit interview, which was a funny time to do that. And I don't remember ever being asked at any other time.
SPEAKER_01:And yet, you no doubt had opinions of your experiences all the way along, right?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, and I would I would express them too. Not really a problem there.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's a funny one. And that the you bring up a really good point that I really think is super interesting about exit. It's the same for member exit and employee exit as well. By the time you're saying, hey, although it's too late, what could we have done differently? Why are you not having those? You know, sometimes we have these exit interviews. It's a really valuable conversation to have a stay interview. We see this in every sector, right? With credit union members, we see this with parents who are opting their children out of a school district. We see it with employees who are ready to leave. Being able to say earlier in that conversation, hey, you've been with us for two years, actually. Why? Not to sound skeptical about their reasoning, but being able to say, what is it that keeps you sticking around? Is it just inertia? You haven't thought to look anywhere else, or are you really enjoying your experience? Because when we learn from those folks who are having those good experiences, those credit union members who are already there and having a good experience, maybe we learn something that we can help retain. Uh retain has got to be a top, right? Acquire is hard, but retain has got to be a big thing. We've already said baby boomers are uh heading down the road, let's say, right? And we need a lot more millennials to come in and credit unions and a lot of other uh places as well, too, to be able to fill that gap and meet those ambitious revenue goals and also sometimes survival goals that a lot of organizations have.
SPEAKER_02:Before we go, think hard about how you can help support this podcast so we can do more interviews with more thoughtful leaders in the credit union world. What we're trying to figure out here in these podcasts is what's next for credit unions. What can they do to really, really, really make a difference in the financial scene? Can't all be mega banks, can it? It's my hope it won't all be mega banks, but there'll always be a place for credit unions. That's what we're discussing here. To figure out how you can help, get in touch with me. This is rjmcarvey at gmail.com. Robert McGarvey again. That's rjmcarvey at gmail.com. Figure out a way that you can help. We need your support. We want your support. We thank you for your support.