To Improve the Member Experience, Invest in the Employee Experience

Credit unions are intensely focused on member experience, and rightly so. This is understandable because one of the principal advantages credit unions have over banks is their ability to offer more personalized member service and a level of familiarity of their financial needs that can’t be matched by larger financial institutions.

However, this emphasis on member experience has caused credit unions to overlook the foundation upon which it rests: The employee experience.

Employees who are happy, well-trained, well-equipped and highly motivated tend to provide exceptional service in every member interaction. Harried, ill-equipped and disengaged workers, in stark contrast, are unable to deliver the service your members expect. Without empowered and enabled employees, credit unions simply can’t offer the level of member service that gives them a competitive edge.

While this always has been true, the value of the employee experience has been brought into sharper focus by the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent Great Resignation and managing the expectations of a younger workforce. Like many other employers, credit unions find themselves scrambling to recruit, train and retain high-quality member service representatives. The industry faces multiple obstacles in accomplishing these staffing goals:

1. Being a member service agent at a credit union and supporting banking scenarios is hard work. Any job that requires interacting with customers is tough; solving complex issues related to money injects more emotion and higher stakes into interactions. This contributes significantly to employee stress and burnout, and contributes to high attrition rates.

2. Credit union service agents must not only master the art of delivering the best member experience but often need to work with multiple banking platforms and applications to do their jobs effectively. This significantly adds to the time they can get productive and start handling member interactions. And even after they’ve learned the multiple platforms, agents have to switch back and forth between them during a single member interaction in order to perform effectively. The fragmented technology ecosystem and lengthy training cycles lead to poor employee experience.

3. Credit unions typically lack resources to offer competitive compensation as they fight with banks and fintech companies for talent. Yes, they are built around the noble mission of helping members rather than making a profit, but that in and of itself isn’t sufficient to attract new hires. And many new hires discover the job is not for them and move on after a short period of time; then, the expensive hiring and training cycle begins again.

That increases recruitment costs and contributes to high attrition rates. Apart from the cost, employee attrition is bad for business. The average U.S. credit union employs only 17 people, according to IBISWorld. A high rate of turnover in small workplaces is not easily absorbed; it means everyone needs to do more with less and raises the likelihood that member service will suffer as staff struggle to cope with expectations.

And a resignation can have a domino effect on coworkers. A recent Vizier Insights report found that when a voluntary resignation occurs, employees on the same team are 9.1% more likely to leave. And this “turnover contagion” is a greater risk on smaller teams, like those found in credit unions: Employees who work on teams of two are 25.1% more likely to resign after a member quits, while those who work on teams of three to five are 12.1% more likely to quit.

For all these reasons, credit unions need to start making employee experience and engagement a key investment priority. Pay and benefits play a big role in this, but so do intangibles like workplace morale, recognition, communication, good management skills, advancement opportunities and an environment of mutual respect.

Modern Digital Tools Enable Exceptional Employee Experiences

Enabling employees with the right digital tools, contextual guidance and easy access to information is crucial to ensuring quality member service. Even highly motivated and well-trained workers will become frustrated if they aren’t given the proper technology to do their jobs efficiently. Inadequate tools not only frustrate employees, they also make it hard to provide superior member service. As mentioned above, member service at credit unions involves multiple disparate back-end platforms and fragmented data, which makes it very hard for agents to be productive while trying to manage the member interaction at the same time.

It is time for credit unions to invest in modern contact center platforms that can help orchestrate delightful self-service and assisted service interactions. Below are some examples of how credit unions can enable a better employee experience:

● “Single pane of glass”: Reduce the number of systems and interfaces into which agents have to navigate by aggregating the information and presenting on a single interface. This improves the experience, reduces training time and lowers handle time.

● Contextual artificial intelligence guidance: Utilize AI to provide assistance and guidance to agents while they are navigating a live member interaction. This helps new and experienced agents handle complex member issues, significantly reducing training cycles and the need for internal call transfers.

● Workflow automation: Utilize AI to reduce the manual work that agents need to complete as well as difficult-to-complete processes, such as reporting fraud, managing disputes and making wire transfers. Make it easy for your agents and ultimately, your members.

● Real-time coaching and gamification: Provide proactive coaching in real time, especially to new and inexperienced agents, which will help them navigate through their onboarding and learning the banking business. Performance management innovation via gamification has proven to be a big motivator, and incorporating it into the contact center can help drive positive employee engagement.

In a challenging economic environment and competitive talent race, investing in the experience and engagement of employees today will help credit unions future-proof member experience and ensure their long-term success.

And as credit unions struggle to recruit and retain top service talent, their members continue to demand a more personalized and convenient service. By providing employees with digital tools, contextual guidance and automation support, empowering them to provide a superior service experience for members, credit unions can make employees happier, motivated and more productive in their jobs while ensuring member satisfaction and loyalty.

Rahul Kumar is the senior director of industry strategy for financial services at Talkdesk, a San Francisco-based call center software provider.