Michelle Bloedorn, CEO of Member Loyalty Group said, “The findings really validate what we in the credit union industry have seen time and time again, that members are significantly more loyal to their credit unions than bank customers are to their banks – and that translates to considerable, tangible business benefits.”

Read the full press release here: MLG Benchmark Press Release August 2011

Loyalty Live in Las Vegas will be the first-ever credit union Net Promoter Score conference!

Imagine this:

• Two days at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas
• Four amazing speakers, including: Satmetrix CEO Richard Owen, Zappos Insights Product Manager Richard Richman, NACUSO CEO Jack Antonini and author of Winning the Toughest Customer Delia Passi
• A tour of  NPS stand-out Zappos.com, who boasts a 91% NPS
• Hands-on member experience design workshop with CUANM’s Denise Wymore
• Net Promoter Program best-practices from seasoned practicioners at SF Fire Credit Union and BECU
• Learn about the six key steps of the Net Promoter discipline from six credit union practicioners, facilitated by C. Meyers Corporation President John Meyers
• Amazing networking opportunities with credit union professionals that sponsor, manage and build Net Promoter Programs

One experience can’t afford to miss!

Visit the conference site to learn more.

I jokingly refer to this as the $4,000 slide. It was so simple and yet so brilliant. And because everyone in that room had flown from somewhere in the world to become certified Deb used the airline experience as her model.

So, to break it down, the Customer Corridor illustrates a service experience (step by step) from the customer’s viewpoint. It’s the ground truth of the delivery. And it’s not always pretty.

She made us think about each and every step we took – from researching airlines and airfares to booking, ticketing, TSA (yikes), queuing up, boarding, in-flight, landing (hopefully), and finally baggage claim.

Everyone had to relive their experience. Some folks had bad experiences – delayed flights, lost baggage. Others had an uneventful experience, with is usually met with relief. But no one in the room really had a great experience. And that was her point.

Even if the airline did everything correctly - was it enough to create a promoter?  It is hard to create promoters.

The next step was to get into groups and talk about choreographing a WOW experience for an airline. My group came up with an interesting idea. A cry room – just like they have in church – for parents traveling with small children. The back of the plane could literally be sound proofed with a glass wall so that kids could not be heard by the rest of the passengers. The parents in our group were not offended in the least. They’ve all been there – when THEIR child is the one crying and everyone is tense and thinking “Oh please get your kid to stop crying.” As a parent, it’s my worst nightmare.

Yesterday on a Southwest flight from Dallas to Albuquerque a frustrated mom reportedly slapped her 13 month old child who wouldn’t stop crying and the flight attendant took the baby from the parent. Police were waiting when the plane landed. Not a wow experience for anyone. Made me think about the beauty of the customer corridor and anticipating needs to create promoters.

I think our cry room idea just might fly now……..

The best-in-class credit unions run as true cooperatives, where members are co-owners and are responsible for the makeup of boards that see it as their role and responsibility to ensure that member needs are recognized and understood.

In theory this sounds simple. In practice this is where best-in-class moved from just doing the survey and calculating the score, to creating a discipline in the organization.

While these credit unions differ in a number of ways as a business, each best-in-class credit union used an operational approach using a tool called the Net Promoter Operating Model.

There are six elements of the model:

1. The first element at the core of any program is emphasis on member-centric culture, or DNA within the organization.
2. Next create a well-thought-out-plan – an enterprise road map for your program to continuously evolve.
3. Building trustworthy data is the keystone of NPS and the basis on which strategic business dec isions can be made.
4. To improve your score, you must identify root causes of promotion and detraction, as well as drivers of loyalty.
5. Taking action and holding your organization accountable shows members that their feedback matters, and will enable operational and structural improvements.
6. These elements can drive innovation and transformation across products, employee engagement, business processes, and the member experience to name a few.

 NPS becomes the organization’s microscope so they better focus on what really matters to members.

“Leaders would never tolerate a large gap between forecast and actual financial performance, but seem to look the other way when service gaps exist,” said Diana Dykstra, CEO of SF Fire CU. “Exceptional member experience won’t work unless it is a priority of management and touches work processes, systems and structure.”

That’s how you become best-in-class. Class dismissed.

The Member Loyalty Group (MLG) is celebrating our second anniversary this month. In just two years, we have been fortunate enough to work with over 20 credit unions and have put Fred’s findings to work. The Filene Research Institute released Exploring Ongoing Member Loyalty: Net Promoter in Credit Unions last month. Authored by our own CEO, Michelle Bloedorn and Dr. Laura Brooks, Vice President, Research and Business Consulting at Satmetrix and coauthor of Answering the Ultimate Question.

So let’s look at member loyalty, by the numbers. The economics of loyalty comes in many forms:

1. Repeat business. On average it costs 5X more to bring in a new member than it does to serve an existing member. Fiercely loyal members will be less price sensitive and place value on their relationship.
2. Retention. Reichheld discovered that retention and loyalty are not necessarily the same thing. Retention is one benefit of building loyalty, but some members may be trapped in a bad relationship and leave. SF Fire Credit Union has a 98% retention rate and a five star rating on Yelp.com, so it’s easy to conclude that their retention rate implies loyalty.
3. Promotion. Some members may be fiercely loyal but are not buying from you because they don’t need your product – yet. That’s one of the problems with calculating household profitability. It’s a snapshot in time, and the components that go into calculating that profitability vary with life stage. Is it okay to have an unprofitable promoter? Reichheld would say yes, because they are still marketing (recommending) for you.

Reichheld said “Fewer than half the employees in a typical American firm think their company deserves their loyalty. If that’s true, customers would be nuts to put more faith in the company than the employees do.”

We know that credit unions beat retail banks on issues like trust, overall value and quality of service. In fact, the average NPS for credit unions is 56.6% while retail bank providers have slipped to just 11.0% What’s interesting is how they are able to do this.

The Filene study took a two pronged approach in their research asking:

• How well do credit unions command loyalty?
• How can they do better?

The credit unions with best-in-class scores, are, in alphabetical order:

• America First Credit Union
• BECU
• DuPont Community Credit Union
• Educators Credit Union
• SF Fire Credit Union
• Wright-Patt Credit Union

These credit unions are the leaders because they focused on four areas of performance where other credit unions typically struggle:

Prompt service. Remember, banking is an errand, and the faster a member can run their errand the better.

Inquiry and problem resolution. Mistakes happen, but when you make a mistake with someone’s money it needs to be handled in a way that brings back confidence. The best in class “over deliver” when it comes to problem resolution. It’s not just enough to fix it, you need to fix the relationship as well.

Timely access to new accounts. When someone opens up a new checking account, we often forget that what they’re actually doing is MOVING an existing account. It’s a major undertaking today with bill pay, ACH, direct deposit, etc. These credit unions looked for ways to make this as pain free as possible, which in turn has created new members that are promoters from day one.

Next: How credit unions are taking loyalty economics to the next level……

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.

If you are not a member of Filene Research, you can buy a copy of this report by clicking here.  If you are already a member, your copy has been sent to you.

Wright-Patt Credit Union wanted to see how close they were coming to their goal of being the best financial institution their members had ever experienced and the best place their employees had ever worked, by asking just these sorts of questions. So, they embarked on their Net Promoter® journey.

In this webinar, What’s the Story Once They’ve Gone?, Amanda Minehart, Service Quality Manager at Wright-Patt Credit Union, will share how their Net Promoter® Program is resulting in a culture change that is moving them closer to their goals and reminding them that they have not one, but two jobs: serving their members, and serving their partner employees who serve their members.

You’ll learn the steps that Wright-Patt took to implement their program and communicate its importance across their organization. Plus, hear how dashboards, internal score reporting, member center monthly updates, and “Walls of Fame” all serve to keep employees onboard with the program and enthused about their contributions.

Net Promoter, NPS and Net Promoter Score® are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.

This webinar was recorded on February 17, 2010.

This is a tough question (and basically the reason for the existence of our company). When faced with a tough question, I find that it’s helpful to create a picture or tell a story to better define the problem I’m trying to solve. In this case, I ask myself “If we want to create more loyal members than what would they look like? What does a loyal member look like?” Of course, the first thing that pops in my head are images of members that look something like the late-great Bea Arthur or the currently great Ed Asner. Then realizing that I’m being terribly ageist, decide that loyal members are not defined by their demographics…but by their experiences.

So, real member stories might help me better answer this question. Today, I stumbled upon Educators Credit Union’s Facebook page and read an amazing story of member loyalty:

To Connie, and All of the Employees of Educators Credit Union, specifically the members of the Loans Dept and Member Services,

I am currently a US Army Engineer Sergeant deployed to the Philippines; however, when I began my journey with Educators Credit Union, I was a skinny 17 year old trying to go to college. Admittedly, I am by nature not good with money. Some of us in society, no matter our intentions, always have trouble walking the straight and narrow.

When I started college at age 17, my first banking experience was with Wells Fargo. It consisted of overdrawn accounts, bouncing checks, and denied credit applications. That year contained some hard lessons for me, and brought me back home to Union Grove, Wisconsin where I decided to go to Carroll College. It was a few weeks before school started when I found out that my actions freshman year basically took me out of the running for financial aid.

That is when I came to ECU. My father was sitting next to me, nervous as I’ve ever seen him, trying his best to get his son into college. Educators pulled up my credit history, sat with me and my father and listened while I explained each entry. In the end, I received a loan without even needing my father for a cosigner. My credit was not a mathematical product of numbers, but a product of character. It was very much like having an extended member of the family forgive my past, and trust me when I said I was going to do better. And better I did.

From then on I was no saint by any means. It has been almost 6 years since the day I joined the ECU family. From when I joined to when I left college my GPA doubled. Since joining the service I have progressed to the rank of Staff Sergeant, earned the Green Beret, and plan on serving my country not only as a soldier, but as a teacher once I get out. During that time I have had rough times, bought cars, a motorcycle, made late payments, missed payments, and had to bank from Iraq, Philippines, Nepal, Thailand, and Canada.

Through everything, when I called ECU, it was not just a bank I was calling, it was calling home. Someone was always there IN PERSON to tell me what the situation was, believe me when I said that I needed help or wanted to fix it, and listen when I said I needed financial advice.

Maybe I am just an inexperienced banker. A 23 year old who has a lot to learn. Maybe every Credit Union is like this, or maybe I am just lucky. It doesn’t really matter. Just like Connie was to me today, Educators Credit Union has always been there for me with sound financial support, and a friendly neighbor on the other end of the line to wish me a Happy Holidays, and thank me for being a customer.

So Thank You Educators Credit Union. And may you have a wonderful Holiday Season!!

Craig M.

Reading this amazing story makes it clear what the credit union did in order to earn his loyalty. Educators:

• Treated him with respect and understanding.
• Offered advice and guidance any time he needed it.
• Helped him out in a time of need.
• Were friendly and treated him like a loved member of their family.
• AND…drumroll…they did all of this consistently throughout many different interactions.

This may not be the key to developing a loyal relationship with EVERY member, but it sure sounds like a great place to start. What stories do your loyal members tell about your credit union?

PS – REAL Solutions has some amazing member stories posted here and here.