Inside Marketing: Don’t forget your members are human!

Technology is not a substitute for understanding.

Picture this: You pull in for your morning coffee fix only to find the friendly barista has been replaced by a robot! Think Rosie from the Jetsons. The robot doesn’t care that you’re a loyal customer of five years, that you are lactose intolerant and that you take an extra shot for medicinal purposes, especially on Mondays! Nope. Rosie does two things and that’s it: makes coffee and takes money.

Where is the morning smile, where is the morning chat and where is that little bit of human interaction that along with a kick of caffeine sets you up for the day? It’s not nice. Right? Yet more and more companies are evolving this way and no more so than the financial services industry.

Due to advances in technology, marketing and businesses are becoming mere representations of data and revenue—the numbers. These numbers are important. However, the credit union industry has always recognized that our members are not numbers. And they certainly are not robots! Credit unions and their members should hold dearly their human relationship. In marketing, we have B2B and B2C; for credit union marketing, let’s coin a new term: H2H—human to human.

 

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