Jim Kasch's presentation begins with a simple message for credit unions: “Stop trying to delight your members.”

The headline, which he borrowed and slightly modified from a Harvard Business Review research article on customer service, grabs your attention because for years credit unions have focused on delighting their members or earning high member satisfaction levels to boost their net promoter scores.

But Kasch believes — and third-party research backs him up — it's no longer just about member satisfaction. Instead, it's more about reducing member effort or making it easy for members to do business with your credit union. What's more, researchers who developed a Customer Effort Score metric said it is a better predictor of member loyalty than the Net Promoter Score.

Year after year, credit unions have become accustomed — and perhaps even too comfortable —with good news from research organizations such as the CFI Group that show credit unions are consistently doing a better job than banks at keeping their members satisfied.

But in 2016, CFI Group showed member satisfaction dropped to a four-year low. More importantly, the research revealed a larger percentage of millennials were less satisfied with their credit unions than non-millennial members. For example, millennial members said they were charged with incorrect fees or had a deposit credited to their accounts late. And if young members are faced with obstacles when they attempt to correct these problems, they may end up taking their business elsewhere.

“We've been so focused on our satisfaction scores, and we like to crow about that we're the greatest. Our members love us. They hate banks and they love us,” said Kasch, a credit union executive veteran who launched the Orlando, Fla.-based Canidae Consulting in 2015.

If consumers love us so much, he asked, then why have credit unions only gained 0.7% in market share over the last six years, and why has the credit union market share remained stuck at 7% since 2007?

“Don't focus on how satisfied your members are. That's not really moving the needle for you,” he said. “Instead, ask your members and ask your employees this question: 'How can we make it easier for you to do business with us?'”

Kasch began questioning the overall effectiveness of member satisfaction scores while he was working as the president/CEO of Darden Employees Federal Credit Union in 2010. Its potential members were 200,000 employees who worked for one of the Darden brand restaurants — Olive Garden, Capital Grille, Eddie V's Yardhouse and others around the nation. More than 60% of those employees were millennials.

Admittedly, Kasch didn't know much about this new group of consumers, but what he discovered about attracting millennials was contrary to popular assumptions.

“It wasn't about technology and it wasn't about social media,” he said. “It was about product design, simple messages and committing to things larger than yourself. And all of those things actually translate really well to every single consumer buying segment.”

Within the first 18 months, Darden Employees FCU more than doubled in assets, quintupled in loans and quadrupled in membership.

While Kasch was successful in growing the credit union, which kept its brand identity after merging with the Tampa, Fla.-based USF Federal Credit Union in 2015, he struggled with member satisfaction goals.

When you talk to a call center rep or a teller about how you can influence or move that member satisfaction number up, it becomes increasingly difficult to create new or different ways to improve member satisfaction, he noted. But when he first read the research about making it easy for customers to deal with your business, it made perfect sense to Kasch.

“I realized this is something that everybody at the organization can sink their teeth into, even those who work in the back office and in other support roles in operating the credit union,” he said.

In 2012, Kasch read an article in the Harvard Business Review that was based on customer loyalty research conducted by the Customer Contact Council, now part of Gartner Consulting.

Over three years, the organization surveyed more than 75,000 business-to-consumer customers, including financial institution customers, and business-to-business customers about their service interactions via phone calls, voice prompts, web, chat and email.

This extensive research made two major findings. The first was that delighting customers or exceeding their service expectations doesn't build loyalty.

What builds loyalty, according to the research, is when companies “reduce their customers' effort,” or the work they must do to get a problem solved. In other words, what matters to customers and builds their loyalty is how the company helps them solve their problems quickly and easily. Second, implementing this finding can help improve customer service, reduce service costs and lower customer churn, according to the Council's research.

Solving customers' problems quickly and easily means removing obstacles. For example, the research found those obstacles included customers contacting the company repeatedly to fix an issue, having to repeat information, or having to switch from one service channel to another. More than half of the customers surveyed said they encountered these types of difficulties.

The Customer Contact Council also developed a Customer Effort Score, or a CES, metric, which is measured by asking this question: “How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?”

“Of the customers who reported low effort, 94% expressed an intention to repurchase and 88% said they would increase their spending and only 1% said they would speak negatively about the company,” according to the Customer Contact Council's research. “Conversely, 81% of the customers who had a hard time solving their problems reported an intention to speak negative word of mouth.”

What's more, the Council's research concluded its metric was better than net promoter score because of its ability to capture customer impressions, both positive and negative, at the transactional level as opposed to NPS, which generally captures more holistic impressions of a company.

Kasch said a good place to find the pain points in your credit union's operations and processes is to ask employees. By making their jobs easier, it will become easier for members to do business with your credit union.

For example, Kasch worked with a California client that uncovered issues over its credit card dispute resolution process.

“The process that the credit union had in place was so burdensome and it was so convoluted,” he said. “While it made complete sense to the card services group, it made no sense to members and it hardly made sense to the call center reps who had to walk members through this process. So when you talk to employees, ask, 'How can we make your job easier?' and they will have answers for you.”

At the California credit union, the call center reps revealed that it was a waste of time to enter the same data twice on two different systems, and they also needed access to the credit card system so that they could see what members are talking about when they ask questions.

Surveys are another important way for credit unions to identify areas where members are experiencing obstacles, bottlenecks or pain points in all of the credit union's delivery channels as well as product and service processes.

While there are some obstacles that can't be removed because of compliance issues, there are many other ways credit unions can improve delivery channels and processes.

“As I've always stressed to credit unions, it's all about the members's experience,” Kasch said. “Every conversation needs to be about what it looks like and feels like to the member when they interact with the credit union. And to the extent that you can, how do you make it as easy or as frictionless or as seamless as possible for the member.”