Insights From The Outside: Erling Amundson

Before coming aboard Langley Federal Credit Union ($5.6B, Newport News, VA), Erling Amundson knew the organization only as a longtime member. But his professional background and leadership insights made him a perfect fit for his new role as the cooperative’s first member experience specialist.

Amundson spent more than 30 years working in user experience, digital strategy, and social business intelligence. His resume includes leadership roles at UnitedHealth Group, Symantec, and Metavante, where he built teams, drove digital innovation, and helped modernize how people interact with financial services.

He brought that outsider experience to Langley FCU when he joined the team in 2019. In 2023, he took the role of vice president of member experience and now leads initiatives across CRM, feedback, AI, and service design.

Today, Amundson helps to reframe the member journey using lessons from tech, healthcare, and banking. His focus is not solely on solving problems but also on building systems that listen, learn, and evolve.

Here, he reflects on what it means to bring an outsider’s eye to a member-owned cooperative — and how he’s helping Langley deliver the kind of experience today’s members expect.

What brought you to Langley FCU?

Erling Amundson: I’ve enjoyed creating things throughout my career and I’ve had the chance to build teams at several organizations. My mission is to make things better.

I’ve been a member of Langley for many years. When an opportunity to join the organization as its first member experience professional emerged, it seemed like a chance to make an impact and create something good.

What did you bring from previous roles into the member experience role at the credit union?

EA: Research. Design. Process. Understanding. Creating.

One role early in my career was as a designer at M&I Data Services/Metavante where I worked to design banking software. This provided a great foundation for the role at Langley.

In your prior roles, how did you foster innovation, risk‐taking, or experimentation? Have you brought any of those methods into Langley?

EA: Part of my job is to encourage the use of design thinking practices. Use of research to gain understanding and then collaborating using tools like journey mapping helps us generate innovative product and service improvements. Being agile and iterating on ideas helps enable innovation. We seek to apply data and insights to make continuous improvements, which enables bigger changes over time while reducing risk.

What were your priorities when you first stepped into the role? Have they shifted in the past five years?

EA: I was tasked with member feedback, CRM, and implementing a design approach. Those are still at the core, but I’ve also added AI, knowledge management, and contact center leadership. Now I lead a fantastic team.

What’s one thing you’ve learned about member expectations that you think the industry still hasn’t fully caught up to?

EA: People have interactions with a wide variety of organizations. Their expectations are shaped as they shop online or use a fast-food drive-thru. Be alert to emerging trends, compare yourself to experience leaders, and be ready to quickly adopt new best practices.

What is a common belief or practice within credit unions that you challenged based on your prior industry experience?

EA: Like many credit unions, we aren’t able to develop all of the technology needed to deliver experiences to our members. However, we work hard to understand what is possible and work with our vendor partners to optimize the technology. As someone who used to design products, I was always eager to see products I created being used. I value vendor partners who appreciate working with us to configure the product effectively and to co-design new capabilities.

Talk about the impact a recent member experience initiative has had.

EA: We work continuously to improve our member experience, and Langley has implemented numerous improvements this year. I can’t list all of them, but I’ll highlight that we have improved our checking account offerings, enabled digital issuance of cards, and implemented some features in our IVR and chatbots that enable them to provide more direct responses to member questions.

Many improvement ideas come from listening to our members. Each of those initiatives started with feedback. We then worked collaboratively toward delivering solutions that help our members. Repeating that process over time enables us to continuously improve experiences.

How has your thinking around member experience changed over time? What advice would you give to others who are working to build a more member-centric culture?

EA: The main advice I would give is to get started. Actively listen to your members. Measure things. And work collaboratively toward making improvements.

There have been a lot of changes to working in member experience over time. I have seen the emergence of multiple specialized MX disciplines. Identify the challenges you face and tap into that expertise.

But you should also recognize the expertise found in people throughout the credit union. Set a vision for the type of experience your members will appreciate and then work together to make that vision a reality.

How do you define success in your role?

EA: I work every day toward making things just a bit better. I can measure that success when we hear from our members that they had a great experience.

I can see it in service metrics such as how quickly we can complete a member request while ensuring that they feel their request has been resolved.

If we’ve been successful at improving experiences, that will show success as more people deepen their relationship with us.

What is coming up in the months ahead that you are excited about?

EA: Earlier this year we implemented a new phone technology that’s integrated with our CRM. It enables a more streamlined experience for our representatives that helps them provide a better voice experience for our members. I’m looking forward to continuing to build and improve these technologies toward delivering significantly improved member experiences via phone.

This interview has been edited and condensed.