In the just published Filene Research Study on Net Promoter Scores in credit unions, we had the opportunity, in partnership with Dr. Laura Brooks from Satmetrix, to explore the state of member/customer loyalty in financial institutions. In the credit union/bank loyalty face off, it was no contest. Credit unions outperformed banks hands down.
What was really interesting was the “deep dive” into the differences between the highest and the lower scoring credit unions. Among a number of differences, our research showed a large gap between high-performing and low-performing credit unions in “Ease of Conducting” business.
Life is crazy. People are busy. Members don’t want to call to renew a CD. They want home banking available whenever they are. They want their transactions processed quickly. And most importantly, they want instant communication and information about everything they do with you.
Members regularly use providers outside of the financial services industry as their point of reference for all of their service experiences. They buy a paperback from Amazon or order a movie from Netflix where they interact with a spiffy online interface and can receive emails that tell them where their stuff is at any moment in time. Not surprisingly, they are pretty disappointed to find out they have to wait weeks or months to “process” their mortgage loan and days to get a call back if they have questions.
High Net Promoter credit unions are addressing this reality and put a strong focus on trying to make their processes as friendly, responsive and thoughtful as their tellers. They spend resources on making doing business with them easy and consistent. The importance of this focus takes on long-term implications when you look at the credit union loyalty average by age.
Across all credit unions, there is a notable decrease in loyalty scores as age drops. An evaluation of the comments and supporting data show that the “ease of doing business” expectation gap is key factor in score difference.Maintaining and increasing member loyalty in 2010 and into the next decade will require keeping up with a high – and rapidly rising – service delivery bar.
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