CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — One of the best ways for a credit union to measure a member's experience is by surveying all points of contact — from online and mobile banking to call center interactions and in-branch visits.
But for many credit unions, developing in-house surveys that deliver real-time, actionable intelligence often proves time-consuming, costly and cumbersome.
"We found that in order to improve our net promoter score, we needed more feedback," said David Walsh, vice president of member services at MIT Federal Credit Union. "We needed specifics and we needed to ask more pointed questions."
MIT FCU's approach was to develop random surveys, which were distributed annually, then semi-annually and finally three times a year. While the response rates were considered good, Walsh conceded that scores weren't the greatest.
"We got to the point where we found that the reports weren't intuitive," he said. "And while we got responses back, we weren't getting the information as to how we could do better. We used DocuMatix to gather the data, send the emails and do the measurements, and then we did the calculations ourselves — it was time consuming."
Finding the Right Fit
After completing market research, MIT adopted Allegiance's Fast Track. Chris Cottle, executive vice president of marketing and products for Allegiance explained that the solution measures and manages overall member relationships, contact center experiences, website, branch and loan experiences, among other things.
"Fast Track is designed to get small, mid-sized or large credit unions up and running fast without months of heavy time investment or the dollar investment of hiring a market research firm, which were traditionally tied together," Cottle said.
The solution includes pre-configurations such as relationship and interaction surveys, dashboards and reports, action alerts (by department) and data integration. And in the same way Allegiance develops surveys for credit unions, it also surveys its client base to continually ensure that the best possible products are offered.
"We take a multi-tiered approach. We like to say they we eat our own cooking,' and we've found that credit union leadership wants to see what the end result will be," said Cottle. "When it comes to software, we can build many different things for many different reasons. That's not necessarily a good thing. In this space, we are trying to make the consumerization of our product easier."
Adoption and Customization
Once the solution is adopted, a CU can begin distributing out-of-the-box surveys in about three weeks, Cottle explained. In many cases, however, a customized survey could take up to four months or longer to develop. While MIT FCU adopted the solution earlier this year, it didn't roll out the first Allegiance survey until May.
Part of the reason for the delay was due to the $350 million credit union's IT department getting up to speed.
"We had to write feed file reports. Allegiance provided us with what the files needed to look like — it can contain as little or as much as you want," said Walsh. "It took upfront programming time because when you get that member's response back, you have their complete profile in front of you."
While Allegiance provided MIT FCU with a template containing roughly 50 questions, Walsh said that one survey doesn't fit all. "They gave us guidelines as to what questions to ask. We picked what we wanted to keep and deleted what we didn't want and added the questions we wanted."
This survey process, which includes oversight from four trained employees, eventually resulted in 30 standard questions. However, Walsh said a great feature of the solution is that depending on the rating or response there could be sub questions. As a result, the length of the survey is subjective.
"The survey would take the member a little over five minutes to complete," said Walsh. And while that might seem like a short period of time, it isn't. "What we learned is that it is too long. For future surveys, we are thinking shaving it down to 15 questions with five possible follow up questions."
MIT FCU has 31,000 members. For the first survey, approximately 9,000 were contacted with a 3.4% return rate. There is a two-week deadline. If a response is not received after the first week, a reminder is sent out. Additionally, since the solution is in real time, Walsh and his team can see when responses come in and perhaps more importantly where a member stops or abandons the survey.
"If a member has to spend even a few minutes or more of their time it becomes cumbersome," said Walsh. "We now think that two to three minutes to complete a survey is tolerable."
Those members who do respond are automatically opted out of all surveys for a period of six months, said Walsh. Those who didn't respond or abandoned the survey are placed back in the hopper.
A secondary survey that focused on the credit unions e-branch offerings had a more favorable turnout, in part because the questions were better qualified. "We had a 6.7% return, but it was much shorter and more direct. That tells us to include only pertinent questions — only the things you really want to know."
All Encompassing View
While member feedback is critical to the success of a credit union, measuring and analyzing employee approaches and experiences is considered equally important, which was the case for Mountain America Credit Union.
"We have been with Allegiance for over eight years focusing on employee engagement and satisfaction," said Dennis Bromley, senior vice president of member development and engagement at MACU. "Over the last two years, there has been a lot of buzz in the industry about net promoter scores, so we wanted to have a more robust solution for our members."
Like MIT FCU, the $3.9 billion Mountain America CU took the necessary time — eight months — to develop detailed feed file reports to better serve its 461,000 members. "All of our transactional surveys are through Allegiance, including our service center, our call center, branches, online and mobile teams and our outboard service center," said Bromley.
Member survey feedback has turned into actionable intelligence. For example, members asked to have lobbies opened on Saturdays, and additional hours added at the call center.
With 76 branches, Bromley explained that only 18 or 19 Mountain America CU branches stayed open on Saturdays and this was determined by survey respondents' respective locations. "This has helped us bring in new loans and open new accounts and create a better experience for our members."
Additionally, MACU has used Allegiance's Engage software. As a result, the number of MACU products per household has increased by approximately 16%, which has resulted in a 4% increase in share of wallet for loans, noted Bromley. He added that on average the credit union is adding 20,000 new members each year.
Moving forward, both credit unions plan to fine tune and administer surveys on a regular basis. MIT FCU, for example, has one scheduled for June and another one in the fall.
"We now have a wealth of information, but it's what you do with it. We now have the vehicle in place that collects the information, so the leg work has been taken away," said Walsh. "Now we have the opportunity to share the information and take action on it."
