With Summer upon us, many families are busy mapping out their summer vacation plans. So get out your atlas and rulers, or make the trip to AAA for that all-important TripTik Travel Planner and guidebook, the only way to get turn by turn directions and a listing of hotels. WAIT - it's not 1988! Clearly, technology has advanced significantly, and the task of planning road trips has gone digital. The same can be said for mapping out your credit union's member journey.
Journey mapping, according to the CUNA Technology Council, “is an engaging, collaborative process used to map out a particular experience from the member’s point of view. It involves identifying pain points and designing new processes to create a seamless member experience." Is it easy for a new member to join your credit union and onboard to your digital products and services? Oftentimes we become so entrenched in the details of technology deployment that we lose sight of how the member, new or existing, experiences our products and services. For a new member, however, logging into your mobile banking and online platforms are typically the first experiences they have with you, so it's crucial to ensure it is a smooth process.
If the Griswolds taught us anything, it's that a cross-country family trip shouldn't happen overnight. There are planned stops along the way to maintain sanity. For journey mapping, there too needs to be a planned approach:
- Decide on what you want to measure. You can't visit every US National Park in one week. When journey mapping at your CU, don't take on too much. Approach each product and service individually. The initial Mobile banking login and account setup may be the only flaw you have in your member journey, but it may be overlooked when tackling the entire member experience. Once each journey is mapped, only then can you step back and get a holistic view of the entire trip.
- Determine how the experience is right now. How is the onboarding experience for new members as it stands at this moment, with no improvements made? How quickly and easily can they log in to your mobile banking platform and begin account transactions without calling help desk for support?
- Determine how the experience should be. Identifying flaws during step 2 will help you formulate the perfect plan, and visualize what the journey should look like. Take a look at what other credit unions are doing and what seems to work or not work for them. You may not have the same budget as larger credit unions but you can model some of their concepts or strategies.
- Examine any challenges and obstacles that are in the way. Road closures happen... the key is to follow the detour and make the best of it. Sometimes the member journey can be a bit bumpy, but budgetary limitations can be an obstacle to repair... or board member buy-in... or other projects taking precedence. Identify what those obstacles are and consider workarounds.
- Consider the solutions. If the obstacles identified aren't insurmountable, what options do you have to improve the process for the member? Along the way, you may find that improving the member experience also improves efficiencies within your own internal processes and credit union operations.
Tools like TripAdvisor have become a standard part of vacation planning... who best to give advice on where to stay, eat, or visit than people who have experienced it first hand and can provide honest reviews? Journey mapping embraces this concept and requires the credit union to experience member services from the member point of view. In addition to gathering feedback from existing members, mapping the journey takes it a step further and asks that you walk a mile in a new members' shoes.
