The Great Resignation: Seizing Opportunities Vs. Facing Threats

As the Great Resignation persists and turnover rates continue to climb, credit unions are challenged to retain and attract top talent. While raising salaries and improving benefits is the kneejerk reaction, that’s not feasible for everyone – and, it’s often only a part of the fundamental employee retention dilemma. It’s time to shine a light on the employee experience, something that has traditionally been overlooked.

Employees should be served with the same vigor that members are. While some believe that putting employees first causes a notable financial burden, it’s actually far more expensive to lose staff than to make the effort to keep them. A study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that employers spend the equivalent of six to nine months of an employee’s salary in order to find and train their replacement.

A common reason for attrition is that many credit union employees are still being forced to conduct their jobs with dated technologies and philosophies. Plus, ongoing staffing shortages are putting employees under enormous strain, exacerbating the issue at hand. To circumvent this threat, it’s critical for credit unions to provide the tools and support necessary to help make employees’ jobs more efficient and rewarding.

Digitizing the credit union’s service and support strategy is a strong first step. This means freeing employees from the restraints and frustrations of legacy phone-centric support systems in favor of a more efficient, collaborative digital service approach. Such a transition can boost morale, improve productivity and help keep top talent happy.

Empowering Employees With the Right Tools

Limiting service options to phone-centric support when the majority of members prefer digital communications creates daily friction. Consider the member service representatives who often endure tense conversations around overdraft fees, collections or potentially fraudulent account activity. These interactions are inherently fraught with anxiety or frustration, which is only made worse when members have to disengage from the digital domain to dial into a clunky phone experience, re-authenticate, and then attempt to explain the situation at hand to the representative, who has no direct visibility into the member’s situation or screen. According to a recent Salesforce poll, 65% of respondents expressed dissatisfaction when having to repeat or re-explain the issue to multiple reps. Talk about a headache for all involved.

To create a better experience for both members and employees, it’s time for credit unions to shift away from antiquated, phone-first engagement models to a digital-first approach to member service and support. Being able to engage with members inside the digital domain at their moment of need via digital communication channels such as chat, voice or video makes member interactions significantly more productive and enjoyable. And by enabling collaboration features, such as screen sharing and co-browsing, employees can quite literally be on the same page as members, eliminating any potential for miscommunication and expediting time to resolution.

Such a digital approach enables representatives to conduct their jobs with more speed and productivity, supporting more members in the same amount of time. This makes the employee’s job more seamless, while also increasing efficiencies and improving the credit union’s bottom line.

From Representative to Teacher

When credit union service representatives are able to deliver digitally optimized service and support, not only are member interactions more pleasant, but they also become more rewarding. By being able to digitally engage with and view the same screen as the member, the employee can give step-by-step instructions on how to solve the problem at hand, teaching the member how to resolve the issue next time themselves. The employee becomes less like a member service representative and more like a teacher. In fact, many credit unions embracing this approach have actually hired former teachers with strong success.

Digitizing and modernizing member service and support allows credit unions to maintain their differentiators within the digital domain, resulting in a better experience for employees and members alike. This not only helps strengthen credit unions’ competitive advantage, but helps them weather the Great Resignation, which continues to impact organizations across the country. The credit unions that prioritize digital customer service have been proven to increase efficiencies, boost employee satisfaction and more effectively attract top talent.

Dan Michaeli is the CEO and co-founder of Glia, a New York, N.Y.-based provider of digital customer service solutions.