There is humongous opportunity right now for credit unions and financial institutions to create a better customer experience. Just a few small changes could mean higher customer satisfaction as well as more new and returning business.
For credit unions to do a great job protecting clients and their assets, and to help those entities grow and be more profitable, their systems and environment need to be equipped for the job. They need to empower their processes and people to succeed.
Below are just a few simple technology tools and considerations that can help your credit union or financial institution to serve your current and future members better than ever before.
Single Sign-On
Financial organizations depend on reliable IT systems that guard the environment, data, and assets with technologies involving tight security.
Meanwhile, getting high returns requires as much efficiency and savings as possible. Maintaining high levels of productivity helps minimize costs, right? Well, time (and, thus, money) is lost left and right in many credit unions who wrestle with logins across their critical systems and consoles.
Example scenario:
Employee forgets a password, but they try a few variants that are incorrect. That guessing leads to a locked account. They have to find the staff responsible for manually unlocking them or resetting the application.
What an unfriendly, resource-consuming process! …Yet, all of us recognize that situation all too well.
Single sign-on (SSO) centralizes the user authentication sessions so that just one set of credentials carries across multiple applications needing access in order to complete a process. It improves the lives of both your users and your customers, and it is achievable without compromising security! It can even make it stronger if it is done right!
Secure Password Vault
Password managers and secure password vault tools can make a world of difference. These don’t guarantee that you and your team will not be the next victims of some cyber event, but this is a surefire way to up your security situation big-time. We talk about these often for good reason. They are insanely helpful in ensuring that your passwords stay safe, and they take the onus off of you to remember all those passwords along the way!
Here are some reasons why this concept is so impactful for organizations:
- One master password that gives you access to all of your others. Once you’re securely logged into your password manager tool, you have access to your saved passwords. This crosses out any need or rationalization for those notes and lists saved in unsafe places, that’s for sure!
- Your passwords can be more complex without having to remember more. Since the software can give you a sort of “score” of how strong your passwords are, it can encourage you to up your password game and can even generate new ones for you if you’d like. You don’t have to actually keep track of all of these, either, since this tool does it for you!
- Your passwords will be encrypted. These longer, more powerful passwords get saved in a super safe way that hides them from cyber criminals so long as they’re save in your vault.
- Adding and updating is easy. Most vaults out there will even give you a new suggested random password and save the new one for you once you update it on the website or tool it is providing credentials for. As long as you’re logged into your password service it can tell you what your current passwords are and you can make any changes you need to from there to keep your records current. The passwords are sort-able and categorized as you wish!
Self-Service Offerings
Fact: Customer service is moving head first in the direction of self-service. So, what does this mean for local banks and credit unions?
An optimal end-to-end customer experience requires that each touch-point in the client’s experience is consistent, personalized, and maintains continuity. The majority of online systems becoming more and more available for financial institutions like credit unions are designed with the consumer in mind – virtual assistants, summary and payment portals, and the like are increasingly commonplace.
This is fantastic, except it can make it very challenging for the organizations themselves who are trying to serve those customers efficiently and securely! Not only that, but it cuts out some of the conversational interaction that people want and need.
It’s important for your retail banking system to be accessible and standardized in order to simultaneously overcome the challenges of critical account protection, operational efficiency, and customer experience. Rather than jumping right into the latest and greatest technologies, we recommend careful steps toward modernization.
A self-service-enabled model is possible if you leverage the appropriate technologies, but it can wreak havoc on your systems if they are not equipped to carry the weight. Simultaneously, your customers need to be kept apprised of evolving shifts in the way you service their accounts.
Whether you’re considering adding text notifications, a new web-based service portal, available video conferencing, or some other digital-based augmentation to your business, we encourage you to take a holistic approach when it comes to determining how equipped you are to incorporate it into your overarching business operations.
A modern approach involving both digital channels and business member participation can mean better control over movement of funds and account activity monitoring, and it maintains the “human touch” that clients love about their local bank or credit union.
You can add the convenience of those authorizations, control over transaction activity, and enhanced fraud prevention and treasury management with this hybrid model for intervention that preserves the customer service and support customers crave.
Empower your organization and your customers regardless of the complexity of their transactions. By streamlining the customer experience with some of these tools, you can all-the-while maintain business and regulatory compliance. These are keys to thriving in this highly competitive industry environment!
Get in touch with us here to learn how we can help your financial organization get a competitive advantage with smart, secure technology!
Oops! We could not locate your form.