New in 2015: Experience counts

Welcome to a new year! We’re kicking off our 2015 coverage with “then and now” comparisons on hot topics for credit unions. First up: Member experience.

If you scroll back to last January, you’ll see that the industry was abuzz about member experience in early 2014. What’s changed for 2015? If anything, credit unions are even more sanguine on the subject. That’s with good reason:

• In Ernst & Young’s 2014 Global Consumer Banking Survey, 32,000 customers worldwide selected “the way I am treated” as the second most important reason for trusting their financial institution. Only “financial stability” ranked higher.

• Customer experience was the most common reason for opening and closing accounts – more so than fees, rates, locations and convenience – according to Ernst & Young.

• In a recent Gartner survey on marketing and customer experience, 89 percent of companies expected to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience by 2016, versus 36 percent four years ago.