Members: The real “core” of your business

“Sales 101, know your customer,” I overheard a colleague say several times last week at a training event. As cliché as it may sound on the surface, knowing your member may be the single most important thing for today’s financial institutions.

Technology is changing consumers’ expectations. Today, they expect the latest up-to-date information anywhere – in their personal, professional and financial lives. This, along with an increase in non-traditional banking options, has put consumers in the driving seat to force change in financial institutions. To stay relevant – and increase loyalty – credit unions need to focus on meeting their members’ needs.

Be member conscious

Technology, such as enterprise content management (ECM), supports today’s crucial member-centric banking strategies. With electronic documents and information saved in a secure, central ECM system, employees are able to access member information and documents directly through the core banking platform or line of business interface without having to switch screens or applications. That means they can answer member inquiries with a simple mouse-click.

It also means they’re focusing on members, not looking for information.

Providing fast, accurate answers as soon as a member needs help is vital. It’s the “core” of your business. This is not only a great time to make a lasting impact on your members, but also capture sales information, generate leads, make offers or create new sales.

However, without an infrastructure designed to support this strategy, accomplishing any of these tasks is virtually impossible—not to mention expensive. With numerous information repositories within every single institution, it’s no wonder it can be a time-intensive and costly task to answer member questions.

That’s why ECM is so important. It centralizes your information, so member service representatives have one place to look for the answers they need.

Utilize 360-degree insights

Financial institutions promote products and services to stand out from the crowd and attract new members. But how can they continue to differentiate themselves once they have members in the door? Obtaining and leveraging the 360-degree member view is the key to forming deeper relationships and increasing revenue.

Information silos hinder the attainment of this highly valued holistic member view. Many credit union employees are required to switch between multiple systems to get information about their members – from deposit accounts, loans, brokerage accounts, online banking and more. Meanwhile, branches that cannot collaborate and instantly share information create a disjointed member experience.

Making members wait while you figure things out is not the experience you want to be known for, right? Meanwhile, your credit union is missing out on additional revenue opportunities.

With ECM, you have the ability to track every interaction with members as well as integrate with core banking systems, CRMs and other crucial LOB systems. By providing a secure, organized way to access entire member profiles from a single interface, your credit union is able to collect and generate large amounts of documentation in order to ensure you’re providing the best possible services to members.

Enhanced member experiences translate to additional revenue. By utilizing ECM, you gain a single point of access for all business critical documents and connect all the documents and data that are relevant to managing a member relationship. This gives you a continuous 360-degree view of your member, helping you grow the relationship – ultimately driving new business, products and services.

Superior service and longevity: That’s what you want to be known for.