ST. PAUL, Minn. -
The Member Advocacy Pathways program teaches credit union front-line-staffers to develop and utilize effective communications skills so they can help members navigate through significant life events such as marriage, divorce or birth of a child–in essence, advocating for the member while promoting tailored business products to meet the members’ needs.
MAP was forged from a partnership between the Minnesota Credit Union Network (MnCUN) and Strategic Solutions, a Minnesota firm that trains organizations in how to pursue and maintain sustainable culture-based growth strategies.
“I try to relate it with my own experiences like graduation or when I got married,” said Neil Christy, MnCUN VP of education & credit union development. “Right off the bat, I didn’t know exactly what I needed, but I did need an advocate. Some members are like that, they don’t know right off what they need.”
The current graduating class was part of a pilot program that was created to provide live training for member-contact staff from CUs too small to have their own training and to pilot the model to other credit union leagues for implementation in their own state, according to Jeanne Murphy, Strategic Solutions president.
The program was initially rolled out locally to keep logistical demands at a minimum and to provide better post-training follow up.
“The initial credit unions we started with were local within a one-and-a-half-to two-hour drive,” Murphy said. “I wanted to demonstrate the program here first since I already had a long relationship with MnCUN.”
The primary tenets driving MAP training are learning how to ask questions, stating benefits, gaining commitment and then responding to member concerns. The initial response to the program so far has been enthusiastic.
“In discussions I’ve had with some of the students, they said after three to four classes, they were better able to identify and have better understanding with the situations that members find themselves in,” Christy said.
A First-Person Account
One graduate of the MAP program, Karen Frisleth, City & County VP member services, described how the $318-million credit union immediately put lessons learned to good use.
“In one conversation, we discovered that a member’s child was leaving for college and the member hadn’t addressed how she was going to pay for her child’s day-to-day expenses while in college. Our member and her child made an appointment to visit with a member service consultant to review their upcoming financial matters.”
Although MAP places a heavy emphasis on the people-helping-people approach that credit unions were founded upon, it is every bit as much developed to support credit union business lines by boosting product sales.
“Staff’s lack of personal experience with many of the life events causes lost opportunities to recognize and provide appropriate solutions that really make a difference,” Murphy said. “An enormous amount of potential business is lost, affecting the credit union’s bottom line, its competitive brand and member retention.”
The real bonanza for the credit union is that employees who are more comfortable with the credit union’s business line will drive up business, according to Christy. Christy said he believes that when the service representative comes back, they are usually more confident and better able to sell credit union products.
“It’s definitely more subjective and hard to tie member loans/cards to the training but managers should expect that the MAP training would boost overall service at the credit union,” he concluded.
