Do Your Members Understand A Credit Union Is Not a Bank? – The Credit Union Exchange http://bit.ly/2fYYsEQ

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Why don’t airlines hear us?

Why don’t they pay attention to us?

Customer experience management firm Clarabridge recently set out to explore those questions in the context of the airline industry and the results – found in a  10 pp. report – are chilling.

Clarabridge explained its goal this way: “Clarabridge conducted an international study intended to uncover consumers’ true behaviors and expectations around air travel so that airlines can identify actionable takeaways for improving the customer experience.”

The method:  Survey more than 1200 in the US and UK. Respondents were 18 to 60. Clarabridge also analyzed 750,000 online comments, harvested at Facebook, Trip Advisor, et. al.

A starting point: 69% of US consumers have never submitted a complaint or feedback to an airline. The number climbs to 73% in the UK. Why? Because we don’t think the carriers listen More than one third of us say we don’t submit comments because airlines don’t listen. And 46% of US consumers say that when they have submitted complaints or feedback they haven’t gotten a response.

Read that last bit again. Half of us insist that when we’ve offered feedback all we’ve gotten in response is the sound of silence.

Wow. Why bother?

Next question: what matters more in booking a flight, price or staff attitude?  Attitude wins out according to Clarabridge. “38% of American travelers, and 41% of British travelers are in agreement that staff attitude is most important.” Just 35% say price is most important.

Clarabridge added: “85% of American travelers who would recommend a particular airline cite staff attitude as the number one reason why.”

This is fascinating. I have traveled for 40+ years and I have witnessed a steady deterioration in airline staff attitude. The overtly anti passenger gestures that recently have won so much press notice are, on the one hand, anomalous but on the other hand they really are not surprising.

Often passengers, at least in coach, seem to be viewed by airline staff as nuisances and burdens.

You just don’t see such rampant rudeness even in fast food restaurants.

Flashback to the mid 1970s when I began to fly with regularity and staff was genial, helpful, pleasant.

And it went downhill from there.

Honestly, however, I have to say that front cabin staff are substantially more genial even today. I don’t recall seeing the indifferent hostility that often seems common in coach. And that means good customer service can still happen on airplanes. That’s underlined in the Clarabridge research. “67% of American travelers say that they detect that crew members treat first class travelers better than other passengers, and nearly ¾ of UK consumers (72%) detect the same,” said Clarabridge.

I’ve personally flown both classes of carriage and can say that, definitely, everything is better up front.

I’d also acknowledge that airline management treat employees at airport desks and flight attendants terrible, and it’s the passengers who pay the price for this.

But when blame is to be heaped on people, shovel it on the bosses in corporate headquarters.

Clarabridge’s third observation is that carriers need to dramatically improve their digital feedback channels. Here’s why: “Of the customers who do frequently provide feedback, 42% and 46% (in the US and UK respectively) do so via email, and 13% and 11% by social media. Across both regions, more than half of all customers utilize digital tools in some way to comment on their travel experiences,” said Clarabridge.

Make it easier for us to offer feedback and we just may – and that feedback may be a goldmine of data for airlines as they seek to improve their competitiveness.

Airlines have much to gain if they can hear these research findings. That’s because Clarabridge reported: “A large portion of American travelers (31%) are agnostic when it comes to airline brand allegiance, and a quarter of consumers in the UK also report no specific airline loyalty.”

Clarabridge pointed out: “This presents a huge opportunity for airlines to stand out from competitors by truly listening to the Voice of the Customer. Airlines can get an edge on competition if they understand exactly what consumers want from their air travel experiences.”

Indeed.

Carrers need to hear us. And respond to us. They also need to treat their own employees better and encourage them to treat us better.

None of this is hard. None of this wasn’t commonplace on airplanes 40 years ago.

It’s easy. Carriers just have to acknowledge that the have a problem. And they need to know they can fix it.

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Just maybe the fast track to greater credit union success is staring just about every credit union in the face and that’s the cooperative next door.

Mark your calendar. October is National Cooperative Month and, by some counts, there are around 40,000 cooperatives nationally that are joining in the celebration.

What are you doing to celebrate?

Core advice is get busy putting together cooperative events with other co-ops to celebrate your community, also your cooperative essence.

Do your members know you are a cooperative?  This month is the time to remind them, and to help them recognize that in lots of ways America’s economic success has roots in the cooperative movement. Lot of ideas are at the National Cooperative Business Association. Here are plenty of suggestions for co-op month activities.  

But what I want you to mull is a stretch goal: How about making every month a Cooperative Month in which you look for ways to celebrate the cooperative difference and how cooperatives benefit their communities.

It’s about ownership by members, not shareholders, and the foundation of every cooperative is putting people before profits. That’s a message that resonates especially loudly today and it’s a message that is ideally suited to Millennials. Millennials, the pollsters tell us, want to do business with people they trust and 40% say they want to buy locally.

How does that not say now is an ideal time to be a credit union? How does it not say that when Millennials understand what credit unions are about – local, member ownership, people before profits – they will want to become members?

And other cooperatives will help you get that message out loudly and persuasively.  In many cases you just have to ask for help.

Know this: Cooperatives are a key part of the American economic fabric – and by accentuating the cooperative backbone of every credit union, a savvy credit union can leverage that DNA to build better relationships that stimulate growth.

Who to partner up with? Look at the National Cooperative Bank’s annual list of the top 100 cooperatives.  You’ll know a few names.  Navy Federal places 9th on the list.  State Employees Credit Union in North Carolina ranks 37th. Pentagon Federal is 65.  BECU is 88.  

That means most of the nation’s biggest cooperatives are not in fact credit unions.  What many are is agriculture cooperatives (Sunkist, Cabot Cheese, Land o’Lakes and Blue Diamond are among the better known).  Many are in retail – think Ace and True Value.  There are numerous electric coops, which remain essential in electrifying huge swaths of rural America.  

What’s important – and exciting – about these cooperatives is that they are succeeding and they are rooted in cooperative principles.  

And many just might want to join with you in celebrating what makes cooperatives special.

Paul Stull, CEO of the Credit Union Association of New Mexico, told me: “Credit unions have access to the power of the cooperative.  They can share ideas, technology, employees.  They can enjoy great value through cooperation.”

Indeed.

Another suggestion: look for cooperative partners where you already shop and spend money.  If you are a customer of REI, ask the store manager.  If you buy your nuts and bolts at ACE, ask the local owner.

How can other cooperatives help you out? The big agricultural cooperatives are well known for a willingness to provide product samples at some meetings.  Ask and you may receive a bounty. That’s just one for instance.  Think creatively and there are plenty of ways for a cooperative to help another.

The real point: it is too easy for a consumer to see a credit union as a kind of one-off, eccentric and small bank – but hit home the message that a credit union, as a cooperative, is part of a large movement that aims to put more power in the hands of consumers and also in many cases workers, many in the public will applaud the idea.

What had seemed small and eccentric instead is seen as something that is part of a big movement that empowers those who get involved.

Want another starting point? Put on a quick workshop for employees that reminds them that the credit union is in fact a cooperative and that puts it in a tradition that traces back to the Rochdale farmers and their struggle for a better life in the 1840s.  

And urge employees that where appropriate – in new member onboarding for instance – that they get across the message that a credit union, definitionally, is part of something big and glorious.

Don’t assume they know all about this. Many probably don’t. So building a stronger cooperative movement can start with a little employee education.

And just keep building one cooperator at a time.