Your Credit Union Should Stop Doing This (A Guide To Greatness)

Hey all!

Quite often when I blog, my advice to credit unions centers around things they should start doing - 'engage your members!' 'Think about Gen Y!' and other juicy morsels.

Grab your socks. Today we're doing the opposite. After reading Mark Arnold's recent blog post "What Should Your Credit Union Stop Doing?" I've decided to expound upon his original ideas and add some of my own. These are ideas that I've culled from my own personal experiences and from those of my friends.

Please Stop: Sending me a physical newsletter. Those bright, glossy sheets of paper go straight into my recycling bin. I have never read one. I'd opt out, but...this leads me to my next point.

Please Stop: Hiring Hide-and-Go-Seek champions to design your web pages. It should not take me 10 minutes to navigate the basic functions of online banking. I've literally been saying this since 2009 - invest money in your online banking system, or else you'll lose any entire generation of members.

Please Stop: Upselling me when I call. When I call my credit union, its usually because something not so great has occurred. I'm late on a payment, I've lost my card, or I need some information that I haven't been able to ascertain from your website, because its terrible. This is not the time to try and get me to refinance my loan or to open another checking account.  I'm already a member. If I wanted or needed that service, I would have already set it in motion. While we're on the subject of phone etiquette...

Please Stop: Having the most complicated phone trees on earth. I understand that having computer automated answering services are crucial in directing the flow of calls to your member care center, but it gets confusing when there are 18,000 different extensions and they all could work. Simplify.

This is just a short list of dire grievances practices that I wish credit unions would stop utilizing. Got any to add? Leave em in the comment section!

DeAndre