Focusing Employees on Member Wow -- Emilia Brad

info@netpromoter.com — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:38:00 GMT

How do you grow at double the rate of your industry with a $0 Marketing spend? Diana Dykstra, CEO of the San Francisco Fire Credit Union, shared her story of driving growth through a focus on customer loyalty and employee engagement.

The underlying theme was a fundamental belief that "people are good" — front-line employees want to do the right thing and management's job is to empower them to delight the customer. Ms. Dykstra talked about the measures implemented at the credit union that allow and reward employees for going above and beyond to address customer needs. It's this culture of customer-focus that has resulted in the impressive Word-of-Mouth results.

Another ingredient of success was an understanding of loyalty drivers — in this case convenience — and making investment decisions using NPS results. For example, instead of investing in branch offices at an estimated annual cost of $500K - $750K, the credit union decided to waive ATM fees no matter where the customer withdrew funds. The result was that customers received the "convenience" factor for a much reduced investment. Other examples include providing all customers pre-approved loans at any time, eliminating the traditional direct marketing campaign, i.e., junk mail, and eliminating bad profits — non-punitive fees.

This was a dynamic presentation and inspirational message about unleashing the creativity of the front-line and creating a working environment where customer delight is top priority — with impressive business results.

Click here to download the presentation.

Focusing Employees on Member Wow - Denise Wymore

info@netpromoter.com — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:20:56 GMT

It's not just a noise a dog might make, it's a consumer ranking website of everything you'd find in your local yellow pages. In San Francisco, if you search for credit unions, you will find San Francisco Fire Credit Union's loyal members. They are the highest rated financial institution in one of the noisiest markets in the US. This is not a ranking you can buy, you have to earn it. Every single day.

Diana Dykstra is the CEO of San Francisco Fire Credit Union and a self-proclaimed Net Promoter Score zealot. She HATES satisfaction surveys. Why? Because when she took over as CEO, her credit union had a 98% satisfaction rate. But she knew, just from interacting with employees and members that they were not "delighted."

So that became her goal. To delight her members. Banking is an errand. You get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. Members are satisfied. But it doesn't have to be that way. One of the first questions she asked, was of her staff. Would THEY recommend SF Fire as an employer? "Our employees ARE our business" said Diana. "If they are detractors, we breed detractors." Her first round of internal NPS yielded a dismal -19.5%. Within three years she was able to turn that score around to 64.39% today, which she admits, is still too low. "Leaders would NEVER tolerate a large gap between forecast and actual financial performance but seem to look the other way when service gaps exist" explained Diana. She knew that she had to build a culture where service was the responsibility of the entire organization, not just the front-line.

To show that she was serious about service, she added her face and email access 24/7 to her on the front page of her website. Diana admits it has created a true addiction to her Blackberry. If a member wants to "Ask Diana" anything, DIANA responds as quickly as humanly possible. She shared stories of calling members on Sunday morning and helping folks as far away as Africa when their debit cards weren't working. By focusing on team, listening, learning and innovating and more importantly recognizing they are not in the banking business - but the E-lationship business - they are proud to say their member NPS has risen from 52% to 74% in just three years. Her BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) for 2010 is to outrank USAA at 85%. One way she has decided to elate members is to eliminate all fees (except bad behavior fees).

"Members don't like fees" she explains. "If they've been doing business with us and want travelers checks or a notary, I'm not going to charge them." She also recognized that with two branches, she would never be perceived as convenient to most members, so they took the bold step to rebate all ATM surcharges for members. Extreme service is now a core competency of SF Fire Credit Union, not just a function. She's whittling away at the "brick" of policies, procedures, rules, regulations and compliance that used to drive her culture and has a goal to have employee's so engaged in elating that her employee handbook will be one statement:

"Just do the right thing."

That's a WOW!

Click here to download the presentation.

Blog Posts From Miami Conference Blog 2008 Tagged With credit

Focusing Employees on Member Wow -- Emilia Brad

Focusing Employees on Member Wow - Denise Wymore