Is It Time for Credit Unions to Rethink Their Digital Member Experience Strategy?

Credit unions have spent heavily on digital banking and mobile banking technology over the past few years, more than doubling their investments in 2022 from 2021 alone. Despite this increase in spending on digital transformation, the experience offered by credit unions often fails to meet the expectations of members who are used to the convenient and personalized services offered by Amazon, Netflix and other digitally savvy companies.

Many credit unions believe that because they offer their members multiple digital channels such as chat, SMS and email, they are meeting member experience expectations. But that narrow view of the digital experience – along with an historical tendency of credit unions to invest in “best of breed” solutions – has led too many credit unions to adopt a capability-based approach and invest in point solutions for chatbots, live chat, SMS and email, and other channels or functions. This multi-vendor approach often results in fragmented and frustrating member experiences and siloed data.

As an example, think of the frustration a member experiences when, after interacting with a chatbot, they pick up the phone and call the contact center because the chatbot was not able to handle their issue. The member then has to repeat everything they already shared because the contact center agent has no visibility into the interaction the member had with the chatbot. These blind spots in member journeys result in lack of adoption, and erosion of member trust and loyalty over time. This approach also is a reason why the investment in digital and AI has not paid off for a number of credit unions, with executives now questioning whether the investment actually was worth it. Such a flawed strategy needs to be replaced by implementation of a platform that includes all the capabilities needed to deliver the best member experience.

Provide a Unified Experience

A seamless, secure and personalized multichannel member journey requires a number of technology capabilities to come together. In an ideal scenario, a member interaction can start in any channel, go through multiple channel switches, and even toggle between a bot and a human – yet for the member, it all should feel connected.

For their part, agents should have visibility into the entire member journey at their fingertips. Even from an operations perspective, the full member journey should be available for analysis and reporting. Imagine a member logging into their credit union’s mobile application to check their account balance. The member is surprised to see transactions they don’t recall making and realize they have been hit by fraud. Suddenly anxious, the member sees the chat bubble hovering in front of them and immediately reaches out to their credit union.

They are greeted by the smart digital assistant. The bot recognizes the member immediately as they are logged into the app. The bot also understands the issue quickly because it is trained to handle such scenarios. Immediately assuring the member that it can help, the bot then immediately cancels the card and issues the member a new one. It also allows the member to mark transactions as fraudulent and open a dispute case for them.

After quickly resolving the issue, the bot suggests the member activate transaction alerts on their account. The member is unsure of how to do it, so the bot offers to bring in an agent to help them set it up. The agent already has the transcript of the entire conversation on their computer screen and is able to pick up the conversation right from where the bot left it. Then the agent offers a co-browse session with the member and sets up the alerts for them. The member walks away from this experience assured and satisfied that their credit union has their back.

This experience is almost impossible to accomplish in a fragmented and siloed technology ecosystem. The way credit unions can achieve this is to take a platform strategy and invest in platforms that offer all of these capabilities.

Invest in the Right Technology

Modern contact center platforms can help credit unions achieve the right balance between digital and human assistance. While evaluating technologies, credit unions should focus on determining whether a specific platform:

• Offers all the desired channels, allowing members the ability to engage with the credit union in their channels of choice. More importantly, the platform should support a switch of the conversation from one channel to the other. This should feel seamless for the member but also give agents the visibility they need to continue the conversation.
• Integrates with digital and mobile banking platforms. As the member adoption for digital rises, we can expect more and more member interactions to initiate in the authenticated channels. Therefore, it is critical to enable members to easily initiate an interaction in their preferred channel.
• Aggregates data from all member interaction touch points and makes it readily available for analysis. The future of member service is going to be led by AI. The effectiveness of AI depends on the data and knowledge it has access to.
• Enables a digital self-service experience to address the most common banking issues, such as password resets, FAQs, activating a card and stopping payments on checks. Chatbots have earned a bad reputation with credit union members, but with generative AI and advancements in natural language processing (NLP)/natural language understanding (NLU) technology, along with strong user experience design, credit unions are now in a position to make this experience much better for their members.
• Offers a continuous learning model for AI that allows AI to scale and be more effective over time. In addition, the platform also should have proper human guardrails in place to monitor and measure the performance of AI.

A contact center powered by AI, machine learning and automation can “wow” credit union members with personalized experiences, while empowering contact center agents with the data, guidance and tools to provide members a superior, customized service.

Over the past five to 10 years, credit unions have invested heavily in technology to transform the member experience. Unfortunately, many of these organizations lacked a strategic, cohesive vision as they reflexively added point solutions in response to the changing expectations of members and the need to remain competitive. As a result, credit union technology ecosystems have become cluttered, siloed, and incapable of scaling to meet member experience expectations.

It is time to rethink this ineffective approach to member service. Credit unions would be far more successful if they approached digital transformation not as a collection of disparate tools, but as a canvas on which the member experience – and a contextualized, personalized member journey – can be seamlessly orchestrated regardless of the channel (or channels) an interaction goes through. To craft a frictionless, end-to-end experience for members, credit unions need a unified customer support platform that supports mobile-first and AI capabilities.

Rahul Kumar is the Vice President and General Manager for Financial Services for the San Francisco-based call center software company Talkdesk.