Show Your Members Some Love
by Bo McDonald
Think back to your dating days. Wasn’t it nice every once in awhile to have flowers show up on your desk? How about as a newlywed when you found a surprise waiting for you when you came home from work? Then, as the years went on though, the flowers and little surprises probably slowly came to a halt. You became comfortable and there seemed to be no need to continue to court your mate.
Relationship expert Moushumi Ghose recently wrote that: “Most couples would agree that it’s the small things that make the long-term relationship special.”
That applies to your personal relationship with your spouse or significant other. But it also applies to your credit union members.
Remember that day they walked in the door and you were excited to open their account and do a loan for them? If your team was working at their best they sent a thank you note and stayed in touch for awhile, eager to assist. But somewhere along the line the love went away. The flame was snuffed and you moved on to new members. Meanwhile, other banks and credit unions are now readily courting those members with the rate du jour and snappy ad slicks.
“But we’re too busy” you may say. Consider this: A recent study by Flowtown pegged the cost of acquiring a new customer (or in our case a new member) up to seven times more than retaining existing customers. One of the most important things to note about this study—existing members are less sensitive to price increases. Price increases for credit unions equate to our published rates and fees charged to members.
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