Opening up the ol' Credit Union (hate)mailbag
Posted by Trey Reeme on January 4th, 2007
I was about to head out for the day when I found this open letter to a credit union. I couldn’t resist sharing it.
The post reads, in part:
When I was 19, you gave me the run around for a couple weeks, treating me like a stranger when I asked for a loan to buy my first car. You made me get a co-signer and locked in their assets. When I was in my early 20s I paid off the entire $21,000 and you treated me like a stranger yet again. When I was 24 I wanted to get a new car, and you were no help.
Your telephone help desk operators were always rude, you made me jump through 20 hoops just to prove myself worthy of your business, and you continue to surcharge me $5.95/month on an account I haven’t used since 2004. Better yet, you will not “allow” me to close said account. I especially like how you used to hold every one of my ATM transactions/deposits and put 10 day holds on all my cheques. That was always really helpful.
For an institution that I have dealt with for over 20 years, you sure have a funny way of showing any kind of appreciation or at least giving me the common courtesy of pleasant and helpful customer service.
I’m going to repeat some advice I gave to a credit union months ago when they were given the title “worst bank ever.”
- If you have a contact at this credit union, clue him/her in on what’s going on so they can help themselves.
- For said credit union, publicly (through comments) explain yourselves to the blogger who wrote the post. They’d probably amend the post with your response.
- And by all means, take it seriously. If you don’t think this will climb up the search results, ask the “worst bank ever” what they learned (or maybe didn’t).
CUs don’t guarantee consistency….
A colleague recently tried to find his local CU (in the UK). He found it – but it had no info on the locked door as to when or if it was due to open. So it seems like frustration with the CU movement is international.
Having said that … a friend from Melbourne (Aus) gave me chapter and verse on how brilliant his Police based CU was. He could call 24×7 (from the UK and USA) and get a real person, presumably talking Australian. He could also get checks cleared really fast by calling and saying please!
CUs have their issues – but the good ones have their fans. Hope the CU in question gets things sorted. But it does sound like the cheesed off chap has had enough …..cant say I blame him.
ps “cheesed off” in the UK means ….. well go figure…. as you guys say.
Trey .. there is one small point that comes before your usual excellent advice -
“be aware of the comment” – monitor tags, blogs, groups etc for this stuff.
Good stuff!
Colin
Cheesed off chap.
That is my new favorite phrase. Sounds a ton better than pissed off member. Doesn’t it?
But on a more serious note. I think the reason more and more credit unions are getting bad marks and blogs for their service is that so many credit unions no longer value it. Meaning they don’t measure it. And if the DO measure it—it’s done annually, randomly and/or poorly. What gets measured gets managed.
The Net Promoter Score is a great way to measure service. For anyone that is serious about service—you should first buy the book The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld, then you should join the FIlene Research Institute and go see George Hoffheimer speak at the NPS conference in NYC later this month.
Denise – many credit unions are already using Net Promoter Score to measure their members’ loyalty to the credit union. One great example of a credit union measuring and working on improving their Net Promoter is San Francisco Fire Credit Union. They increased their score from 51% to 64% in just two years and continue to focus exclusively on building and retaining their members’ trust. Here is a link to an article I wrote about their successful program for CreditUnions.com – perhaps it can help explain further how to boost a Net Promoter Score! http://www.creditunions.com/home/articles/template.asp?article_id=2144
I did not know there was an upcoming NPS conference – is it hosted by Satmetrix?
Debra,
Yes, it is hosted by Satmetrix. Unfortunately it’s sold out. I plan to blog my experience AND record a Podcast with my friends/marketing experts that will be attending. Stay tuned. In the meantime….
Here’s the link:
http://www.netpromoter.com/np_conference/index.php
I had read about Diana’s success (great article) and had dinner with her last year, so I got to hear and see her excitement over it. Definitely measures brand effectiveness. Something we are desperately in need of.
Your article is “making the rounds” with my clients. They are loving it!
Denise,
You should get to know Debra. She was at my session at MACUMA yesterday and seems to have a real passion for credit unions. By which I mean she’s been a reader of Open Source CU for a while—which is the true mark of passion, right?
Nice to meet you Debra, and thanks for commenting. We’ll be looking forward to more!
Aw! Thanks Matt! Likewise!
And Denise – I was in London for the past week and used the phrase “cheesed off chap”. It really is appropriate and fun to say when inserted into conversation at just the right moment(especially because “pissed” has a different meaning across the pond).
I have been researching blogging and credit unions for my business policy class at AU and for a prospective employment position when I graduate from college this May.
I wrote a paper inspired by the work done by Trey Reeme here and in his guest appearance in the following pod cast: http://www.ciicu.com/ Tue, 29 August 2006 Current Issues in Credit Unions Episode 5 Topic:Google bombing and internet libel: how should a credit union handle these attacks from a marketing and legal perspective.
The following week after finding this pod cast in a differnt class for social networking through technology, our Professor Melander invited a guest speaker Tom Kyte of Oracle to speak with us about blogging: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-i-want-to-be-when-i-grow-up.html
It was a facinating presentation and great to have live feedback on some of Mr. Reeme’s points – particularly in avoiding law suits.
I made comments to this facinating topic on my own blog page: http://ilovedcblog.blogspot.com/
Admittedly I’m new at blogging – so please forgive me if I am screwing up any protocols. Thanks!
ilovedcblog: Many thanks for the shoutout. You’re not screwing up any protocols – except for the Mr. in front of Reeme – I’m too young to be a Mr!
Thanks for the links – would you hook me up with a copy of the paper?
Hey, the way I see it, who would give a 19YO a 21K auto loan right off the back…second, unless he’s some wiz kid out of early college, I’m guessing he’s maybe $2 above min wage if lucky. Prob has $100 max to his name…I find it funny when people think they deserve these things…ha… second, your getting charged on your account most likely because you don’t keep enough in it…humm… also your a stranger because they deal with ump many people a day…I’d pay to see someone who can honestly name every person that walks in the door at a busy bank. Just my opinion
The 10 day hold thing….you might win me on that one….I know some banks that are just plain stupid when it comes to those.