It is no secret that user experience and member satisfaction go hand-in-hand. While many executives associate “member experience” with the digital banking channel, credit unions must understand there is a significant need for simple, intuitive user journeys across all points of presentment. Today’s account holders have drawn a line in the sand — you’re either delivering a true omni-channel experience, or you’re falling behind!
Let’s start here with a simple question: Are your current deposit solutions meeting today’s demands? It’s OK if you said “no” — many are in the same position.
How do we know? It’s no secret most institutions manage several solutions across various image acquisition channels. This was “the way things were done” and how platforms were sold — including ours. Pieced together over the years, the marriage of these disparate platforms often results in roadblocks and inefficiencies, such as internal data siloes, a lack of interoperability, and a slow time to market for new products and solutions.
In addition to internal setbacks, members suffer with disjointed user journeys and a lack of consistency in-branch and across remote channels. As new technology is brought to market, these installed platforms often struggle to keep up with demands, only increasing the divide and frustration.
While automating transactions is not a new concept, members now expect an increased level of convenience and familiarity from their trusted credit union, regardless of where they choose to transact. With fintechs and other institutions competing for their attention, its crucial to strike the best balance of personalization and omni-channel capabilities — but how can you do this if you’re relying on siloed solutions that don’t share a common data thread?
To start, your self-service capabilities must mimic the friendly services of your employees and swift responsiveness offered in-branch. Besides feeling familiar, your platforms must also deliver flexible, uniform, and frictionless experiences. Today’s member expectations include seamlessly switching from one channel to another without your institution losing track of their transaction. A core component of this ability is the real-time exchange of images and data across various line of business platforms as well as a common database. Regardless of where your members are in their journey, the experience follows consistently.
Other benefits of a consolidated approach include simplicity for your IT teams. Imagine the cost and time savings of deploying and managing just one codebase across your deposit channels. Efficiencies and benefits can be felt both internally and with members.
Achieving solution modernization might seem overwhelming, but tackling these efforts in phases will bring measurable results, quickly. If these goals and challenges sound familiar, it might be time to explore your existing payments ecosystem and ways to leverage all capabilities and technology for the best outcomes. Inclusive of new conveniences and a greater customized experience, a payment solutions refresh can help increase institutional loyalty and strengthen your reputation and trust with account holders.
Deliver greater transparency to employees for a clear “big picture” view cross-channel with a single, cloud-based platform, and offer access to an open banking ecosystem that leverages APIs for diversified service offerings. By keeping members in-solution and engaged with data-backed campaigns and personalized services, you’ll see tenfold the benefits to a streamlined, consistent user experience.
Unify, Alogent’s patent-pending, single deposit acquisition platform, leverages the same set of data and images in real-time, enabling a consistent user journey regardless of where your members transact. Its cloud-based, open banking platform leverages a single-API and common codebase for fast product deployments and simplicity across all lines of business. Further streamline deposits by eliminating the need for batch processing and file exchanges between solutions, reducing IT overhead and driving automation. See the difference with Unify and its true omni-channel approach, bringing all full- and self-service points of capture together under the same device-agnostic umbrella.
Don’t let poor user journeys be your downfall. Ask yourself these four questions to help determine if it’s time for a solution refresh.
To Learn more about the benefits of an open banking, single API solution for your credit union and members, visit Alogent’s website at https://www.alogent.com/payment-solutions/unify
Wendi Klein is the vice president of marketing and communication at Alogent.
