Gesa Creates Omnichannel Member View for Sales & Service Team

For the $1.95 billion Richland, Wash.-based Gesa Credit Union creating an omnichannel member experience is not complete without creating a 360-degree member view for employees who support and sell to them.

When Gesa tackled the problem of developing an effective digital sales and service platform capable on any channel and device, they turned to Fremont, Calif-based Terafina, which offered a SaaS-based omnichannel solution that could leverage one platform for both.

CIO Raj Bandaru of Gesa Credit Union acknowledged the challenge for many financial institutions, is employees jumping between several systems during the sales and service process. This is laborious and often frustrating for both employee and members. In addition, cross-sell opportunities are often lost and too much time must focus on training employees on several systems for basic functions.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s our credit union or any credit union in general, you are training them on multiple systems,” Bandaru said. Personal-financial or member-service representatives, for example, must learn about core banking tasks such as opening deposit accounts, a loan origination platform for financing options; and in some cases, different methods for business customers such as commercial deposits and loans.

In addition, the credit union reps are at a disadvantage. The member these days is already exploring a product, rate shopping, already doing all their research before they come in, Bandaru pointed out. Sometimes members have more information at their disposal than PFRs or MSRs

Gesa turned for help to Terafina, which provides an omnichannel sales platform that supports the shared branching philosophy and highly personalized service for which credit unions like Gesa want. “Gesa had a strategy in place,” Meheriar Hasan, CEO/Founder for Terafina, said. The credit union provided a very clear set of objectives for the employee experience in terms of sales and servicing. Terafina is taking on the sales perspective of digitization involving all branch and call center capabilities into one unified platform.

Bandaru explained Gesa’s strategic initiative was to provide their frontline staff with a more holistic view of their members by creating a skin over these multiple systems. “What Gesa has done is very unique,” Hasan held, explaining the credit union is using their existing CRM system as a common reservoir for of all sales and service related activity for member facing channels.

Bandaru added a unified sales, service and customer relationship management functionality gets Gesa closer to a universal employee and omnichannel experience.

Currently Gesa’s is rolling out the consumer sales and CRM system is in pilot mode at one location and they expect a full-scale rollout to the remaining branches soon. Phase two, which will be completed by end of the year or during the first quarter of 2019, will include commercial deposits and loans, mortgages and a servicing component for all accounts.

Read more about Gesa’s new sales and service system in the August 22 issue of CU Times.