Some credit union executives found point-of-service feedbacksolutions have helped them make daily improvements in deliveringin-branch member services – and given them a competitive edge tokeep and attract members.

Many cooperative leaders typically rely on monthly, quarterly orannual surveys and mystery shoppers to find out what members thinkabout their services and what could be better. While those toolsare useful, they give cooperatives feedback information only fromthe time the survey and mystery shopping took place.

That's why some large and small credit unions are usingpoint-of-service feedback solutions that record member satisfactionor dissatisfaction anonymously every minute of every business day,giving credit unions a daily report of their service performanceand the ability to resolve issues promptly.

Credit unions are also leveraging this technology because theyare finding the member response rate is higher than with email orsnail mail surveys. What's more, it is motivating employees toachieve consistency in delivering excellent member service.

About 20 large and small credit unions are using apoint-of-service feedback solution from HappyOrNot, a Finland-basedcompany that manufactures small, portable kiosks that record membersatisfaction or dissatisfaction, according to Ed Gundrum, CEO ofDoublePort, an Andover, Mass.-based authorized reseller ofHappyOrNot in North America.

The kiosks feature four buttons etched with a dark green facewith a big smile, a light green face with a slight smile, a lightred face with a semi frown and a red face with a frown.

One simple question printed on a small placard atop the kioskasks members to “please rate our service today,” for example.Credit unions phrase service questions in other ways as well, butonly one question is asked to keep it simple, which helps toincrease member response.

The $120 million Duke University Federal Credit Union in Durham,N.C. installed 20 kiosks in one branch. Each teller station, aswell as the desks of loan officers and member servicerepresentatives, has a kiosk. There is even one affixed next to thevacuum tube at its drive thru.

“We wanted to capture the satisfaction from the member at thetime they did their transactions for every employee,” DukePresident/CEO Dan Berry explained. “We felt like we would gethigher volume of feedback.”

In December, of the credit union's 11,000 branch transactions,about 2,600 members provided feedback. That's a response rate of23.6%, which is significantly higher than the response rate from anemail or U.S. mail membership survey.

Berry said this response rate has been consistent month overmonth since the credit union installed the kiosks in April 2015.Other credit unions also reported the same response rate of morethan 20%.

Member responses are recorded along with the date and time. Thatdata is then uploaded to a HappyOrNot central server via a cell SIMcard within each kiosk. The cloud-based service generates thegraphic reports, which are emailed to management and employees forreview early the next morning.

The data can be broken down to show employees on which days andduring which hours they performed better or worse.

“I have a credit union with $146 million in assets and I reallyneed to compete on services with everybody in the area,” HowardMeller, president/CEO of GHS Federal Credit Union in Binghamton,N.Y., said. “HappyOrNot kiosks are just a way for me to alwayscheck to make sure that we are providing the service that we needin order to grow.”

He noted the kiosk enabled the credit union to identify membercomplaints of long wait times at branches during the lunch hour andaddress them through staff scheduling changes.

“It's in-the-moment feedback, it's real simple and nobody reallyhas to think about it,” he said.

Big credit unions such as the $2 billion Langley Federal CreditUnion in Newport News, Va. also installed the HappyOrNot kiosks,which have been able to capture some in-the-moment feedback intheir 18 branches.

“Although this is a very rare occurrence, we did have a memberwho left a branch dissatisfied and expressed his frustration at theHappyOrNot kiosk,” Langley Branch Services Analyst Amy Stoll said.“The branch manager forewarned us that this would probably show upon the kiosk. We probably would not have been made aware of thismember's dissatisfaction and been able to correct it without thepresence of HappyOrNot.”

In addition to giving managers quick feedback about serviceperformance levels, Duke and the $1 billion Northeast Credit Unionin Portsmouth, N.H. is using the kiosk technology to catapultservice performance to greater heights.

“One of the things we wanted to do was to be more consistent inour service at the branch and we want to have incentives tied toit,” Berry said.

To establish those incentives, Duke first gathered about sixmonths of data from the kiosks to establish a baseline foremployees to work from. The average member satisfaction score was94%.

Duke's incentives program, which launched this month, will giveemployees a $100 bonus for a member satisfaction score of 95%, $200for 96% and $300 for 97%.

“What we hope it does for us is that it will reinforce thatservice consistency, and I can say that our employees do focus onthat,” he said.

Rose O'Hare, a branch manager for Northeast, said the kiosks area great motivator for staff members when they see they areconsistently making members very happy.

“We post statistics on our back office bulletin board that arevery positive, ranging from 98% to 99%,” she said. “Our staff allwants them to be 100%.”