By Denise Wymore
I was speaking to a group of marketers a few years back about member service as a differentiator, and how to choreograph wow experiences. It was after lunch and my next set of slides was on the Net Promoter Score.
Before I began I asked for a show of hands, “How many of you were satisfied with the lunch we served today?” It was classic conference room chicken with two sides, iced tea and cheesecake. Almost every hand went up. Then I asked them to vote with their fingers, “On a scale of 0 fingers to 10 fingers, how likely is it that you will recommend this lunch to a friend, family member or co-worker?” No one held up all 10 fingers. Most were five fingers or less, essentially creating a negative Net Promoter Score.
The point of this is to show how misleading “satisfied” can be in surveys. By only asking the satisfaction question you lure yourself into believe that you’re great. When in fact, you might not even be that good.
I’m satisfied with my credit union when I can get in, get out and no one gets hurt. To get me to promote my credit union the experience requires so much more than just completing the errand.
Here are the 5 most common mistakes credit unions make in measuring and managing member service.
The Annual Survey. I’m married to a credit union CFO and I know for a fact that he measures ROA daily, monitors loan and share volumes weekly, reports on net income, expense, loan balances, share deposits, etc. monthly. There is nothing in his department that is done only once a year. So why, if we are in the service business, would we choose to measure member service on an annual basis? The ideal would be a quarterly relationship survey (a random sample of the entire membership) and weekly transactional surveys (new account opening, new loan, call center, teller transaction and mobile banking). That’s the recipe for a successful voice of the member program.
The “too long” survey. Conducting surveys comes with a price tag so many believe if we have to pay for it, let’s make it matter. Often a committee is formed and before you know it you have a 25 question survey. Survey fatigue is a well-documented phenomenon that occurs after five questions, the quality of the data gathered goes down as people start randomly punching responses, and all too often they just abandon the survey altogether. Response rates drop and data is not reliable.
The anonymous survey. I am always surprised when I hear the argument that members will not respond to a survey if we know who they are. That’s usually an indicator that they are expecting bad news. On the other hand when you are a true fan, a zealot, you will tell the world
Not closing the loop. This is the reason you should never ever do an anonymous survey. Credit unions committed to member experience management close the loop with all detractors within 48 hours. The likelihood that the detractor becomes a promoter greatly increases and you can begin to identify root causes of problems that created the detractor in the first place.
Never identifying root causes of detractors. Deb Eastman, chief customer officer of Satmetrix calls this the Whack-a-Mole phase. You get a complaint, close the loop, refund the fee.Whack! You get a complaint, close the loop, and perform some kind of service recovery. Whack! You get a complaint, close the loop, reconsider the loan application. Whack! But all of these complaints are likely pointing to a bigger problem. Especially when you start to see patterns emerge.
Taking the time to understand the member journey and questioning each part of that journey for the best possible member experience will not only help you identify where you went wrong but can lead to innovation!
Innovation leads to differentiation which is beyond satisfaction.
Denise Wymore is the Senior Director of Marketing for Satmetrix, the co-creator of Net Promoter. Prior to joining Satmetrix she spent over 30 years working for and consulting with credit unions all over the nation.