Trust: A Key Driver of Member Loyalty

Banking is an industry built on trust. Earning and retaining trust is essential for the survival, much less the success, of a financial institution. Because trust is one of the key drivers of member retention and acquisition, the question that must be continually asked is this: Do our people help our members in such a way that increases their trust and, ultimately, their loyalty?

Trust starts on the inside of the organization and ripples out, from the core to the face – where it's felt and assessed by your members, who are weighing their experiences with every encounter, from the human to the digital. The key is to pinpoint the elements within the organization that compromise trust, and then know what to do when those risks are staring you in the face. These threats to an authentic culture that builds trust can appear within different components of the organization: Sometimes it's a process, sometimes a channel, sometimes a product or service, and sometimes it's the people and those who lead them. All of these components demand attention, because consumers today expect a seamless experience across all touchpoints. Nothing diminishes trust more than inconsistent, unreliable or rude service, and there are too many options today for financial consumers to bear long with you!

Given this present reality of member attrition, how do you assess the leadership that's needed to nurture and inspire an organization of trust, from the front office to the back office? How do you ensure that employees across the organization are each contributing, whether directly or indirectly, to a consistently excellent member experience that builds trust and long-term loyalty? Here are seven practical characteristics that will help you classify where you are as an organization and give you a target for where you could be:

Seven Characteristics That Pinpoint Performance Deficiencies

1. Management Technique. Do your managers coach and inspire their teams to align around the common purpose of serving the member? Or, do your managers focus on the many tasks at hand, never understanding how the tasks to be performed contribute to the higher purpose of "people helping people"?

2. Engagement. Are your employees motivated by team camaraderie and pride of purpose to deliver best-in-class, sustainable results? Or, is team morale at the mercy of "destructive heroes," those highly skilled employees who have been around for a long time yet undermine the culture of your organization?

3. Adaptability. Are barriers to change overcome by the drive for organizational, team and individual success? Or are internal barriers toward change so high and impenetrable that there is no clear path forward?

4. Ability. Do your teams and managers perform well and have a strong sense of co-creating the future of the credit union? Or are the performance gaps so deep and wide that discovering how to bridge them seems like an impossible task?

5. Accountability. Is there mutual accountability and an organic inter/intradepartmental connectedness? Or do your employees avoid taking ownership of their behaviors?

6. Performance Feedback. Is feedback used for continual learning and improvement of essential skills to more deeply engage and equip employees in co-creating the future? Or is feedback on the group's performance used primarily negatively and punitively, characterized by a great deal of resistance – from the group's leader on down?

7. Performance Agility. Have employees mastered the essential skills to intuitively perform with a focus on deepening the relationship with the member? Or is your employees' focus merely on "one more transaction to handle" or "one more member to deal with"?

Measurement in the form of authentic feedback from your own members and employees is essential to identifying and resolving these performance deficiencies. Such feedback, captured in actionable analytics, uncovers points of friction within your organization and reveals what is (and isn't) working. Insight from behavioral level feedback obtained not long after the experience actually occurred lets you know exactly where to act, and exactly how to act, to build out an exceptional culture that is strengthened by trust – from the face to the very core of your organization.

There's no compromising with this reality: The pathway to authentically living your difference – and ensuring that your members and potential members experience that difference – is intentional and meaningful action. The right application of the measurement (and there are wrong applications!) results in noticeable and meaningful improvements that actually build trust through the member experience you deliver. Credit union leaders need to take the initiative in reestablishing in the banking consumer's mind that credit unions are indeed different: Not just because of how profits are allocated and not because of digital capabilities, but because members experience a genuine difference in how they're cared for as members of the credit union. And as you build trust and loyalty, your members become your strongest promoters, conveying this difference to others.

It is through creating and nurturing this trust – every member, every experience, every time – that you escape the wave of commoditization and emerge uniquely different.

Rhonda Sheets

Rhonda Sheets is president/CEO for Support EXP. She can be reached at [email protected].