RYE, N.Y. — USAlliance FCU has become the first North American financial institution to adopt the European in-branch Customer Relation Management (CRM) kiosk solution, HappyOrNot.
"We are always looking for different, innovative technology solutions," said USAlliance FCU's Vice President of Electronic Systems, Kevin Randall. "It seemed like a really effective way to measure our member services at the retail level."
At the end of May, the $900 million credit union supporting 70,000 members in 19 branches finished a two month HappyOrNot trial. Randall explained that two kiosks were deployed at different branches. The questions — roughly five to start — are straight forward. For example: Based on today's experience would you recommend us to a friend?
"It allows us to uncover the reason behind occasional service issues and correct them. For instance, one of our branches had a scheduled replenishment time every week where members had to use another entrance," said Randall. "We identified the pattern, changed our process and brought down the level of unhappy responses down to zero for that time period."
Happy Or Not?
To date, the kiosks have only been used in U.S. car rental agencies, pharmacies and similar retail locations, noted Ed Gundrum, CEO of DoublePort, an authorized reseller and systems integrator of HappyOrNot in North America.
"Part of our business model is to help European technologies grow here in North America," said Gundrum. "The company was founded in Finland, but has grown across Europe and now they have opened an office in Palm Beach, Florida."
The concept is simple by design. Members walk up to the white kiosk that offers a question. They are presented with four colorful buttons to push: green smiley face, green semi-smiley face, red semi-frown or red frown, noted Gundrum who added that setting up the system is a breeze.
"After interviewing USAlliance FCU, we preconfigured the devices before they were manufactured and shipped," said Gundrum. "Essentially all Kevin had to do was to take it out of the box, assemble, which take about three minutes, activate the battery and they had an instant CRM machine."
Member responses are anonymous and are recorded along with a date and time signature, which is then uploaded nightly via GPRS to a central server. From there, a credit union can generate reports designed to isolate specific days/times of dissatisfaction.
Gundrum explained that if a credit union operating 50 hours per week purchased 10 units, the cost per first year would equal $.39 per operational hour (equipment purchase and reporting fees). And the cost for subsequent years would equal $.20 per hour (reporting fees).
Since the solution is new, Randall said it was difficult to offer statistics on in-branch use of the solution, but estimates that 50% to 75% of members leaving the branch push one of the buttons. "When you compare this to direct response surveys, 4% return is considered good."
Being Happy Is Not Just For Members
After the first weeks of use, Randall explained that corporate managers were able to track the results generated at each branch location to establish a base line of performance. This was followed by branch managers receiving daily HappyOrNot reports for both their branch and the other participating branches.
"Within a week of receiving the daily reports, the branch managers had identified and resolved any anomalies and customer satisfaction ratings increased to near perfect levels," said Randall.
While Randall conceded that in the beginning of the trial the credit union received "some bad marks," as of July, HappyOrNot reports have further enabled c-level executives and branch managers alike to enhance the member experience.
"Because of monitoring and small tweaks, we have brought our percentage of 'extremely happy' responses up from 94% to 97% on average throughout the branch network," said Randall, adding that the "question" is rotated every month.
Determining which questions to ask remains a learning curve for USAlliance FCU. However, Randall said that the initial feedback has created operational "wins," which could mean more kiosks — and more pointed questions — down the line.
"I think once we have a good handle on how [best] to use them, I can see much wider use and publicize the reports even more internally to create a challenge to staff to keep our percentages in the high 90s," said Randall.
In recent months, Gundrum noted that he has been in contact with other credit unions looking at the solution and anticipates more industry adoption. "I have reached out to some of the major credit unions and shared our story, so I think we are on their radar screens now."
Moving forward, Randall said there is also talk of using the kiosk for employees. "While this would be a more narrow use, it would be an effective tool to understand how our staff feels about certain issues."
