Canadian credit unions are awaiting their move to their new digital banking solutions.
In the meantime we’ve been keeping our ears open to the tips and tricks that credit unions have shared with us, including ways to ensure staff, members, and digital channels are prepared for the changes to come. Your credit union may have taken some of these steps already, and to support your readiness, we wanted to share three areas that are crucial to a successful launch of your new digital banking solution.
01./ Staff Enablement and Awareness
In the months leading up to the launch of your new digital banking system, you’ve most likely involved a great deal of your staff to support or to be engaged with the changes that are occurring. Your staff may have even been able to test the member-facing components of your new digital banking solution or will soon be able to as your official launch nears. We’ve heard from credit unions that engaging employees in this way has been quite helpful to prepare them for potential member inquiries and create greater employee awareness of the general navigation of the member experience. Having employees interact with the new system will get them excited about the upcoming launch and they will be your front-line advocates with your members.
Credit unions that have launched their new solutions have advised that transitioning the supporting role to the support teams even before launch has been an asset to handling tickets that flow from members in an efficient manner. While it may be easy to keep the launch related tasks within the project team, transitioning that function before the official launch to members can be an important way to get ahead and enable a friendlier member experience.
Another crucial point of feedback has been communication and ensuring internal awareness with employees, especially once the launch takes place. Furthermore, having the systems, channels and events in place to be able to share progress of the onboarding once the solution is live is extremely important. This can occur in many ways, including sharing member feedback on your intranet, or making sure your support teams are aware of other issues that may be related to, or impacting the launch so they can more efficiently support members.
Finally, even with the inevitable negative feedback that can be expected with large-scale changes, make sure that you and your team celebrate your victories. Launching a new digital banking solution is a historic event, and it should be celebrated amongst your whole team.
02./ Member Communication and Support
Introduction of a new solution will cause a change for your members, it’s realistic to expect a larger volume of member support calls, emails, Tweets, Facebook posts, and other communications than what you’ve seen before. It’s fair to say that every communication channel that you’re present on will receive some feedback about your launch. While the positive feedback will be quite encouraging, the negative feedback will require more effort and attention to resolve.
Some advice that we’ve heard for handling this influx of member feedback is to:
- Ensure your support team is playing the member support role, instead of your project team or non-traditional support teams. Removing the need for a transition once your solution has launched will eliminate gaps that could develop and hurt the member experience.
- Determine which resources will be responsible for specific channels, or for monitoring and responding to member feedback. You want to be sure that your coverage of these channels doesn’t have any gaps, so members can know regardless of where they give their feedback, they’ll be heard. Specific channels that should be on your monitoring list are app store reviews, Google reviews, Twitter and Facebook.
- Use every channel you’re present on to inform members of any pertinent updates. While email or phone calls may be the traditional ways you’ve contacted members, social media can also be a useful mechanism to broadcast any relevant information members should know as well.
We’ve seen data presented that suggests the influx of support calls trends back to a normal state three months after launch. This benchmark may be helpful as you prepare for launch and the transition to an operational state for the solution.
03./ Validation of your Data
Some of the easiest ways to assist with a smooth rollout of your new digital banking solution are to confirm you have the correct data in place to remove hiccups during the launch.
An important piece of advice from credit unions that are well into their operational state, is to use every touchpoint with members to confirm their contact information, most specifically, their email. Like mentioned above, if you want to use the traditional mass email sent to your members to inform them of relevant information, there will be a requirement to collect and validate your data.
Additionally, experience shows how important it is to make sure relevant information from your core banking system is also properly setup to be able to handle the integration between that and your digital banking solution. A more specific example being e-agreements, which if not setup correctly can provide some unnecessary challenges on launch day. By taking measures to validate these key data points, you will be better prepared to launch your digital banking solution, while also eliminating a number of support calls on day one.
Ready to Launch?
We’re excited to be a part of helping Canadian credit unions launch their member-centric digital banking solutions, and have been thrilled to support credit unions throughout their journey to do so. If you have any questions about how we can assist with your digital transformation please reach out to us at communications@celero.ca.
