How It Started; How It Ended

Don't forget to reflect on what the year 2020 taught you. Then, feel free to give it the finger.

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Congratulations everyone – you made it to the end of 2020! Have you perfected your bread-baking skills? Is your quarantine puppy no longer a puppy? How many cloth face masks are currently hanging to dry in your laundry room?

These three questions probably make sense to you today, but just imagine how strange they would have sounded if you were asked them 12 months ago. Last December, many were reflecting on the technological advances of the past decade, worrying about things like data privacy, making predictions about how much artificial intelligence would take over our lives, and setting personal and professional goals, including taking international trips. We literally had no idea what was about to hit us.

A meme has been floating around the internet called “how it started, how it ended,” in which two side-by-side photos are posted, one captioned “how it started” and the other “how it ended” (or in another variation, “how it’s going”) to visually tell a story of how a person’s journey has progressed. Example: In a “how it started” photo, a couple poses with a puppy in front of a Christmas tree; in the “how it ended” photo, the girl from the couple poses in front of a different Christmas tree alone with the same puppy, now grown, implying they broke up and the girl took custody of the dog.

Everyone has at least one “how it started, how it ended” story to tell about what their lives looked like in early 2020 versus now. Here are a few of mine:

At CU Times, there were also plans and ideas we had in January and February that would soon be upended. For instance, on March 6, our David Baumann broke a story about an NCUA Inspector General report that claimed former agency General Counsel Michael McKenna and his former deputy, Lara Daly-Sims, visited strip clubs, drank alcohol and used marijuana during working hours, and I was certain it would be the story of the year. Let’s just say that if the subjects of that scandal were hoping another big story would swoop in to bury theirs, they had the best luck in the world.

We also, like many businesses, faced some necessary cuts to resources this year due to the economic crisis. When the year began, we couldn’t have imagined we’d be required to do more with less. But like many, we surprised ourselves by adapting to our new circumstances and finding a way to make them work. Like many, when just a portion of the resources we had lost were returned to us, we were extremely grateful. The bar for our expectations – of anything good happening in general – had dropped to its lowest level ever.

I recently moderated a panel of two credit union executives during a virtual conference hosted by software company Lightico, and their reflections on shifting member and employee behaviors confirmed how unexpected so many aspects of business in the industry were this year. Here are some key takeaways from what they shared:

Marketing campaign plans made in early 2020 were thrown out the window. Both panelists – Jay Tkachuk, SVP of digital services for the $10 billion Security Service Federal Credit Union in San Antonio and Ryan Zilker, chief marketing officer for the $2.1 billion Sound Credit Union in Tacoma, Wash. – said when the pandemic hit, their marketing departments swiftly rolled out new campaigns focused on empathy for struggling members. The circumstances also opened up new content opportunities. Zilker said Sound created a campaign featuring “the juggler” – a mom juggling teaching kids, maintaining the home and working from home – and how Sound could help make her life easier.

2020 emphasized the need for flexibility and understanding. Zilker discussed how Sound employees working remotely have been allowed modified hours to attend to caregiving duties, and how grace is given if an employee’s child, dog or cat appears on camera during a Zoom call. Tkachuk added the credit union industry’s attitude toward members became more empathetic as well, noting that Bank of America, for example, took longer to close its branches. “Credit unions’ message of empathy was stronger than that of the big banks’,” he said. “The perception [of BofA] was that it was more about business than people.”

Some members had a difficult time adjusting to the new ways financial services have been offered during the pandemic. Zilker said his credit union experienced very poor adoption of newly-rolled-out video appointments early in the pandemic, and was inundated with service calls from members who were used to visiting a branch. Tkachuk noted that members who were uncomfortable with mobile banking pre-pandemic continued to stay away from it.

Long-term behavioral changes may differ based on a credit union’s region and the nature of its employees and membership. Tkachuk, whose credit union serves members in Texas, Colorado and Utah, said while members will turn to self-service channels more for simple transactions, he expects both members and employees to return to the level of in-person interactions they held pre-pandemic when the crisis is over. Zilker of the Pacific Northwest-based Sound took a slightly different viewpoint: “We’re seeing a decline in branch transactions that will be long-term if not permanent, which will lead us to reevaluate our branch model,” he said, adding that he expects to see a hybrid onsite/remote work solution for employees in the future.

This year has changed everyone in some way. We’ve been living through not only a pandemic, but a period of reckoning for racial justice, a highly contentious election, and devastating wildfires and hurricanes. People have had to make adjustments to their professional roles, like the teachers who held class outdoors or reconfigured their classrooms for social distancing, and, as Zilker noted, the masked frontline credit union workers who had to learn how to connect with members from behind plexiglass using only their eyes to express emotion.

While 2020 will be remembered as a horrible year, don’t forget to reflect on what it taught you – and to congratulate yourself on the ways in which you stepped up to the unexpected challenges it brought.

Then feel free to give it the finger.

Natasha Chilingerian

Natasha Chilingerian is executive editor for CU Times. She can be reached at nchilingerian@cutimes.com.

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