For more than a year, businesses and citizens have been wading through a world that has all but killed the casual conversation and public gatherings. We are more acutely aware of even the most fleeting of interactions and relationships. And that’s why personalization is becoming more important in everyday communications and transactions.
Credit unions have continued to position themselves as the local, community-first banking option in towns and cities all over the country. To keep that reputation, credit union leaders are conducting studies and implementing new policies to analyze and highlight the crucial role personalization plays in the member experience.
The Importance of Personalization
A recent episode of the CUNA News Podcast, a panel of credit union leaders got together to discuss the importance of personalization in the member experience.
Personalization is a marketing strategy that can help increase customer satisfaction and engagement in businesses of all sizes, but it’s even more important for credit unions. Credit unions are the friendly, community-oriented banking option in many cities and towns. This means the personal touch is even more essential.
By creating a personal atmosphere that is optimized to create feelings of community and trustworthiness, credit unions can increase membership numbers and showcase what a positive presence they bring to the area business landscape.
“Personalization takes a lot of different shapes and forms. It can be empathy, it can be needs-based selling, it can be people helping people…All of those contain a great deal of personalization,” says Paul Robert, CEO of FI Strategies.
How to Personalize Member Interactions
There are so many ways to personalize the experience of your members. This can be spurred by brainstorming activities or having team huddles about the conversations that members seem to be having with credit union employees, to start. And the central question here should be “What are we going to do for our members?”
Can you engage with your members at a higher level? What does that look and sound like? How do we train or guide our employees to start generating more meaningful and helpful conversations with customers?
Many places from restaurants to doctors’ offices even keep notes in their database systems to add a more personal touch – these notes can include anything from their financial questions to the number of children they have, and other small or everyday details that can help your member to be recognizable by your staff.
Personalization Promotes Loyalty
We know, based on a variety of marketing and industry studies, that adding personalization elements to marketing emails is very beneficial.
Email analytic metrics show things like 31-67% decrease in bounce-back rates, affinity and interest segments perform 28-62% better for credit unions.
Adding personalization elements to all interactions, both digital and face-to-face, increases performance and is also more memorable in the minds of your members. Remember to personalize more than just the name in your email subject line. Now more than ever, people want to be seen as individuals and treated as valued customers.
Employee Team Building Also Plays a Part
Creating a community-oriented, personalized atmosphere starts with your credit union team. Fostering collaboration and creativity in your team can open the door for some great brainstorming sessions that could lead to a business-wide approach for personalizing the member experience.
Leave the Backups to Us
Just like you want personalization to be at the forefront of your member experience, IMS wants to tailor its data and security services to better protect your credit union and its data assets.
IMS has virtual private cloud services and solutions like core hosting, virtual desktop, disaster recovery, and more for your credit union. Contact us today for more information.
