Unitus Community Credit Union Implements Integrated Sales & Service Referral Solution

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1 Unitus Community Credit Union Implements Integrated Sales & Service Referral Solution Unitus Community Credit Union s Custom Integrated Member Advocate Referral Application The Hub for the 2015 CUNA Technology Council Sales Management / Marketing Automation Award submission Gary Coates, Business Applications Manager Unitus Community Credit Union gcoates@unitusccu.com Unitus Community Credit Union ($963 million and 88,000 members) is headquartered in Portland, Oregon with a community charter covering most of Oregon and Washington. Unitus is dedicated to the financial well-being of our membership. Since our founding over 75 years ago, the Unitus team has had a mission of going above and beyond for our member owners. Uncommon courtesy is commonplace at our eight branches and through our live, local member service. We strive to empower our members to successfully manage their finances by providing access to tools and resources. The need for a Member Advocate Referral Management Solution For Unitus front-line staff, tracking referrals for products and services was a time-consuming and error-prone task. Conversations held with a member were documented in individual Excel spreadsheets, without any sharing of information between staff members who were servicing the same member. Staff members paper tick sheets were manually compiled into a branch spreadsheet and submitted weekly to his or her manager, who often didn t have time to validate the results properly. When validation was conducted, it was a time consuming activity; each account needed to be opened in the host system (Symitar/Episys) and have its products compared to the referrals provided. Prescreens were also a manual process. The credit services department provided a prescreen list for loans such as Visa or auto-loan preapprovals as another Excel spreadsheet. If the staff member had time, he or she would attempt to look up a member to see if the member was listed in the spreadsheet, while the member was standing in front of them, waiting. Often, the opportunity to present the offer was missed. The processes of making referrals, validating referrals, and tracking referrals were manual, error-prone, and inefficient. It was limiting the quality of service Unitus was able to provide to its members. Conversations were disjointed and we were failing to let our members know of key opportunities. We needed to fix this problem. How it works Our goal, in designing a new system, was to make this a seamless tool for the front-line staff. We wanted to present the necessary information within the host system, and not as a separate window or screen. We wanted to provide useful information regarding referrals and prescreens in order to improve the interaction between members and staff while not creating delays for the transaction or other barriers to the member service experience. In October of 2013, Unitus implemented a pilot of the new automated referral tool, which it called The Hub. It is a dashboard of important member information that is presented immediately upon entering a member number and accessing their account within the Episys host system. The web site is built and maintained outside of Episys but appears to the user as though it is part of the Episys system. Having it integrated within the host transaction processing system was key to getting full adoption from the staff, including tellers, member advocates, and managers.

2 Below is a screen shot of the Hub: The Offers section at the top of the page includes prescreen loan offers and other marketing offers sent to members with buttons to record the actions after the conversation with the member. Every response is recorded in the database, capturing a rich array of information that is now available for reporting purposes to be utilized by tellers, branch managers and vice presidents. The At-a-glance section in the middle contains key information regarding the products and services currently owned by the member. On the left-hand side is listed the products tracked for our cross-services ratio as well as an Other FI s link which shows the number of loan payments the member is paying from their checking account to other financial institutions. Existing shares and loans with balance show in the middle and the type of membership, open date, associated branch and related accounts on the right. Related accounts are show as links. Clicking the related account link pulls up the related account information with a single click. The tellers and member advocates previously reported they had to search within Episys to access this information which is now provided at their fingertips in one single screen. The bottom section includes the primary and joint member s name record information that can be used for verification purposes. The Secret Sauce

3 Critical to any new system is its adoption by its users. The Hub is not any different. The information available on what conversations have been held with which members is only as good as the information entered. Luckily, adoption of The Hub has not been an issue. It has been embraced enthusiastically by the staff. One reason for this is the validation engine. Each day, all the referrals entered into the system are checked against the host system to see if the product has been booked. This information is then available in reports to the front-line staff so they can track the success of their conversations and follow up where needed. It has also proved to be invaluable for managers as a coaching tool for their front line staff. Each staff member is able to pull up individual pages that show them information on their conversations. Summary data: Detailed data The time consuming work of validating each referral is now automated and done daily, providing a tight feedback loop to staff regarding their daily work with the members. With the available workflow and ability to hand-off referrals to other team members, front line staff have confidence that service and product sales opportunities won t fall through the cracks and members won t be left hanging.

4 The Architecture As mentioned before, The Hub is a browser based application built outside of the host system and presented within the system for easy access. Because of this, additional content outside the core system can be custom built that leverage all the same components. One example is a calling campaign. When a preapproval is put together, the offer is loaded into The Hub. The staff can see the offer in the dashboard that displays when logging into the member account in the host system. Additionally, a webpage allows access to all preapproved members in one succinct list, facilitating calling of the members specifically to ensure they are aware of the offer. Within this custom page, the same dashboard component can be accessed providing the staff member summary information for the member. Of course, all the conversations recorded in either environment are all available no matter where the information is displayed. Referral Growth and Results As a result of the new custom built automated sales and service referral and management solution, Unitus has seen a 131% overall increase across the entire organization in qualified referrals during 2014 (1/1/14 12/31/14) over the previous manual processes used in ,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,

5 Three keys to success Unitus integrated solution has contributed to our growth and success in three key ways: better member experience, increased staff efficiency, and improved reporting and metrics results tracking. Better member experience has been achieved by increased referral visibility between departments, branches and the contact center, recording of interactions and better follow-through on conversations with members. The Hub is integrated with marketing campaigns through our custom built secure messaging service within our online banking system. When a member views the secure message and/or clicks an action item within the message (i.e., Apply Now button, for example) the teller can see this in The Hub and follow-up with the member to work towards closing the sale. Decreasing the hours spent manually tracking referrals has increased staff efficiency. The automated validation of sales tracking and improved member specific information has resulted in a more consistent member experience across all member-facing departments. Finally, better reporting and results tracking allows management to see what s happening, what s working and what s not. Reports can be run by member, campaign, employee, and branch. This helps to improve performance by highlighting potential training opportunities while providing valuable business decision information to senior leadership for enhanced decision making. Unitus Community Credit Union has improved our sales and service performance via this enhanced automated referral and reporting process. The embedded automation and resulting staff efficiency improvements have resulted in full adoption and an ongoing list of current and future enhancements. The resulting improvements to member service have contributed to our outstanding Net Promoter Score of over 62% and increased various product penetrations, all of which are supporting a very healthy and growing bottom line.