Top-Level Takeaways
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In mid-2017, Clearview FCU held a three-day executive planning session dedicated to the member experience. As a follow up, the credit union collected input from staff for ways to delight members and remove friction from member interactions.
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Today, the credit union divides the member experience into four separate engagement areas, together addressing more than 50 interaction touch points.
Members who use the virtual teller machines at any of Clearview Federal Credit Union’s ($1.2B, Moon Township, PA) 16 branches in southwestern Pennsylvania are liable to have a close encounter with a leprechaun or an elf. On St. Patrick’s Day, a member is likely to meet an on-screen associate decked out as a leprechaun and sporting green garb and shamrocks. Around the winter holiday season, they might well interact on-screen with a helpful elf.
“We have a strong team that is creative and loves the camera” says Renee Lucas, senior vice president of member experience at Clearview. “We designed our member experience strategy to create a sense of excitement and to shine a light on the role experiences play across all channels in the member journey. It is a top business initiative, a disruption of the norm, and a key competitive differentiator for us far beyond just delivering great service and commodity financial services and technology.”
A Never-Ending Journey
The strategy kicked off in mid-2017 after a three-day executive planning session dedicated to the member experience.
After the planning session, the credit union hosted a series of workshops to educate member-facing retail staff on the difference between member service and the member experience. The sessions collected input about what staff members could do differently to delight members and identified new processes and workflows to remove friction from member interactions.
Today, Clearview divides the member experience into four separate, interrelated engagement areas: Member, Employee, Digital, and Community. These four pillars address more than 50 interaction touch points. Internal champions head each of the pillars and drive the cultural shift in their part of the member experience.
Engagement Touch Points
Clearview divides the member experience into four pillars that together address more than 50 interaction touch points. Here are a few.
- Member: Branches, virtual teller machines, call center, lending solutions, account opening, servicing, and collections.
- Employee: Training, benefits, perks, flexible scheduling, tuition reimbursement, and opportunities to engage and energize staff.
- Digital: Website, social media, online banking and payments, biometrics and card controls, online membership, and remote deposit capture.
- Community: Community affairs, relationship development, business lending, events and scholarships.
Clearview’s dedicated Member Experience team includes nearly a dozen employees from departments across the credit union, including the Care Center, Retail Financial Centers, Real Estate Lending, Information Technology, Audit, Consumer Lending, Collections, and Project Management.
According to Lucas, every employee no matter their role has a voice in shaping the credit union’s approach to its member experience strategy.
“Every employee is empowered to move our vision, Helping People to Enjoy a Better Life,’ from words to reality” Lucas says. “This strategy requires continuous creative work from every unit to surprise and delight others. Unlike other strategies a credit union might pursue, this one has no specific end date. This strategy will live, breathe, and evolve. It is that important.”
All In On MX
The credit union’s new experience strategy places a strong emphasis on new member onboarding because of the importance of first impressions.
“We look to our marketing and brand elements to create the biggest impact with the member experience” Lucas says. “Little things from redesigning our business cards to more complex tactics such as using data analytics and psychographics to create more predictive, actionable, proactive profiles about the needs and behaviors of our members.”
In this new framework, employee onboarding is also important, and the credit union has transformed its new employee orientation period into a participative and educational experience.
“We conducted independent research with companies and collaborated with several other credit unions to reimagine how we brought on new employees” Lucas says.
Clearview’s new employee experience begins with a welcome letter that also asks new hires to complete some work prior to reporting on the job.
“The objective is to give them an understanding of Clearview so things make sense when they go through training” Lucas says. “All of the pre-work we assign drives them to our website.”
Additionally, the credit union updated its core values to better reflect the building blocks of member and employee engagement: Friendly, Adaptable, Caring, Trustworthy, and Secure.
“We wanted something that was easy to remember, so the values form an acronym, FACTS” Lucas says. “We are developing a FACTS video with employees that demonstrates the values in action. We’ll use it for new hire orientation and refresher training.”
For more tenured employees, luncheons with the CEO and member experience champions offer a way for staff members spread across five regions to learn about the success of the strategy and everyone’s role in that success. According to Lucas, the credit union’s member experience strategy is all about continual feedback and the search for fresh ideas, such as walking members outside, holding umbrellas when it rains, and serving coffee to members rather than directing them to a coffee station.
“The regional CEO visits provide a forum to sit down with employees in a casual, intimate environment, exchange ideas, and hear about their experiences” Lucas says. “We focus the conversation on what we’re doing differently and what is in the queue.”
3 Ways To Make A Memorable Moment
The little things matter when it comes to member experience. So, Clearview has embraced the role of a good host with the following actions:
- Employees walk members out the door and even hold the umbrella when it rains.
- Branch staffers serve coffee to members rather than directing them to a DIY coffee station.
- The credit union sends thinking of you cards and makes birthday phone calls to members.
One example of what the credit union is doing differently lies in role titles, which Clearview has tweaked to highlight a more positive, action-oriented bent. For example, tellers are now member experience representatives, collections specialists are now member resolutions specialists, and fraud representatives are fraud resolutions specialists. Lucas’ title itself is a relatively new creation in the industry that reflects a focus on reducing friction in member interactions in favor of generating memorable and captivating experiences that build loyalty.
It has also redesigned its branch questionnaires and call center surveys to include a member
experience component. Another survey tool, which will debut in June, will gather Net Promoter Score and Member Effort Scores.
“We want to put the correct focus on the parts of the member journey that most directly impact the member relationship” Lucas says.
Finally, no member experience strategy is complete if it doesn’t address complaint resolution, which is all too often memorable for the wrong reasons. Clearview is re-engineering its issue resolution processes to minimize hand-offs and call-backs and work toward single-call settlement. Along those lines, it refreshed its auto-attendant and menu to enable members to more quickly reach a member advocate.
The Next Step
Communication underpins the success of a strategy that involves so many moving parts, people, and processes. In that vein, executives and pillar champions at Clearview are diligent about informing the staff on progress and future plans.
They provide weekly updates as well share messages from the CEO or other members of senior management via the credit union’s Member Experience intranet home page. And they encourage all departments to incorporate the strategy’s objectives into every project and meeting.
On the horizon is research to identify a knowledge-based system to help staff overcome the challenges of learning the technical, product, and the process knowledge required to provide a frictionless operation.
“We want to improve the business account opening process” Lucas says. “A new website design also is in the works, and we are looking at various employee engagement changes such as volunteer programs and monthly surprise and delight moments.”
All of this plus Clearview is opening a new financial center in Moon Township this July. Anything in the name of next-level member experience.