So maybe I use my wife’s make-up removing face wipes every night. It is much more convenient than having to wash my face and they work better anyways. So aside from the fact that I use a feminine product to clean my face, there is an important lesson to be learned here: ethnographic research.
What you say is ethnographic research? Wikipedia defines ethnography as, “In the biological sciences, this type of study might be called a field study or a case report…” Basically, it means watching your members, or customers, use your product and making determinations about ways to make it better. I’ve read reports of a large LCD TV manufacturer follow customers home and watch them try to unpack their unwieldy and awkward widescreen LCD or plasma TV’s. The result? Rather than taking a TV out of the box, like you do with nearly every other product, you actually take the box off of the TV. The TV remains sitting on the bottom part of the box and the end user simply pulls the upper part of the box off. That proved to be much simpler than trying to lift an 80 pound TV out of a box at waist level.
Back to my face wipes. They are some variety of alcohol-based wipe so there is a small amount of cleansing fluid in the packaging. But over the course of time, all of the fluid settles to the bottom of the package and the wipes at the top of the package, the ones you actually use, lose some of their moisture. The result is a product that doesn’t work as good as it should. The solution is simple, I turn the package upside-down every few days to let the fluid seep back down and remoisten the wipes at the top. Simple solution for the end user, but how many people actually do that vs how many switch to another brand?
What kind of gyrations do your members go through to get an envelope out of an ATM that only somebody sitting in a lawn chair can reach? Have you ever watched any of your members try to log in with your MFA product or fill out a deposit slip? And I don’t mean casually observe. I mean time them. Watch how long it takes someone to find that check box that I want to “deposit” funds or how long it takes them to read the statement, “I’m sorry, you are attempting to access your account from an un-authorized computer…” Sometimes the best thing you can do for your brand and your members’ experience is to simply sit back and watch. You might be amazed at what you’ll find out.
Screw banks and CU’s using Twitter. It is over rated and doesn’t give you any ROI. I don’t care if you are having a seminar on credit reports or a shred day. Pilcher’s Twitter directory is fine and dandy and it does a great job demonstrating that nobody using Twitter except to regurgigate tired marketing messages. Twitter could be a real communication tool for your members if it is a medium they are currently using. You’ve surveyed your members and done your market research so you know what percentage of your membership is on Twitter, right?
Why the hell don’t we actually make Twitter a useful communication tool? Think about how text banking works. I text bal to MYCUBAL or whatever and 10 or 20 seconds goes by and my balance comes back. Whoo hoo. Why don’t we do the same thing with Twitter? Log into online banking and link your Twitter username to your online banking account. Tweet a direct message to your credit union with a command like bal or last 5. The CU’s application grabs the direct message, looks up the Twitter username in online banking and pulls the balance out of the OFX server or directly from the core. Then the application direct messages the CU member back.
Duh. Seems like a no brainer to me. Let’s get off the marketing band wagon with Twitter and figure out how to actually make it a useful tool for our membership.
Update: I was just catching up on my feeds and noticed the post at The Financial Brand about the How To: Twitter for FI’s guide. Look at the bullet points:
- Promote new products and offers
- Share personal finance tips
- Express their brand and reveal their personalities
- Build community outreach programs
- Provide information about community events and activities
- Increase exposure for their charitable and philanthropic efforts
Pick one of those that isn’t marketing and show me one useful thing that a member could use any of that for. Oh wait, you can’t.
Batch mode is for baking cookies. Not financial transactions. In today’s modern computer era, so many vital functions are still run behind the scenes on mainframe computers passing files around on the back end trying to make things work. What is the big hold up with getting with the times? Are core processor’s and credit/debit card providers afraid of interoperability? Is there anything us lowly credit unions can do to encourage a little better behavior?
I’ve been sitting on the domain for a while now and the offer to help CU’s spin up a blog for free proved to be less than popular. I’ve got the domain now and I’m willing to do whatever with it.
I can’t remember where I heard it, but a user-generated site that lists all of the credit unions that blog would be cool. That way the busy executive can skip having to look around and follow everyone. Something like Yahoo Pipes would work but somehow let everyone add sites on to the list.
Maybe donate it to CUES or Callahan or somebody and let them run the list?
Thoughts?
Cloud computing is the wave of the future for all things data related. Amazon started it with EC2 and S3. Microsoft is in it. Salesforce is doing it too. Credit unions are just starting to realize the benefits of virtualization and as more CU’s struggle with income generation, expense control, and capital expenditures, virtualization is going to take off. But why use your members’ capital to acquire VMWare or Citrix servers, additional bandwidth, etc when you can “outsource” the hardware and infrastructure to providers that are much more efficient at it than the CU could ever be and do it cheaper?
Credit unions love to have control of their infrastructure and data, many IT departments love new projects and new technologies. And they are pretty much required to. Just look at the NCUA’s guide for doing third-party due diligence. They don’t make it very easy to use new technology or unproven (read: new and innovative) vendors or products. Cloud computing is where we’re moving but how can credit unions make that jump while satisfying the NCUA’s security and vendor requirements?
Life is crazy. I’ve got a lot of cool projects coming down the pipe that I can’t wait to share with everyone. I’ve got a super-sweet secret project going with the great Brent Dixon, some kick butt online banking stuff that nobody is doing, and a few other little tricks up my sleeve.
I was in DC for the GAC a few weeks back now, and as usual, it was a tremendous conference. I would highly recommend attending it anytime you can if you can swallow the pill and fork out the dough to say in DC.
Times are good and I love credit unions.
Trey and the gang at TD already have one, but for the rest of of who aren’t cool enough, this is an amazing demo of what Surface could do in banking. Dang.
Surface: The Banking Demo
As some astute observes noticed, last Friday, Janurary 30th, was my last day at MaPS Credit Union and fi-linx. I have taken another position with Nexcentri, a CUSO of Tampa Bay Federal Credit Union. So no, I’m not leaving CU land or Oregon, just moving to my “home” office. Nexcentri has a few projects going on that I’m going to help with and I’ll also have the opportunity to flex some of my creative muscle and bring some of my product ideas to market as well. I can still be reached at all of my regular contact points such as Twitter, Gmail, and my blog of course. I’ll be seeing everyone around shortly, most likely at GAC in the next couple of weeks.
MaPS was a tremendous organization to work for and I will miss the employees, culture, and innovative spirit that they bring to the industry. I wish for great thing for everyone at MaPS and I’m greatly looking forward to my new challenges and opportunities with Nexcentri.
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