A thoroughly planned member onboarding strategy is important to a credit union's success. It is the honeymoon period of your relationship where during the first few months you show a new member they made the right choice by selecting your credit union. The first key step of that onboarding process is account switching. Change is hard and you need to make it as easy as possible from a member experience perspective. Digital Account Switching is the answer.

Picture this: A man walks into a Gap store and his eyes are immediately scanned to identify him. The hologram in front of him then greets him by name and asks if he enjoyed the tank tops he recently purchased. If this sounds familiar, then you're most likely remembering this scene from the movie, Minority Report (which is based in the year 2054). When the movie came out in 2002, that scene seemed wildly futuristic, but in 2020, it feels like that encounter is just around the corner--a frictionless experience with the goal of every interaction being tailored to the user without any extra effort on their behalf. So where does the credit union user experience stand in relation to those futuristic portrayals? Some credit union onboarding services that once seemed space-aged are already available, while some are still on the someday list.

The cost of switching is an age-old concept, applying to essentially every industry. Humans are creatures of habit and even when people are aware of a better alternative, they will not switch to a new product or service due to the expense or effort it would require. With something as simple as household products, there is little to no cost of switching. If a shopper routinely buys JIF peanut butter for the kids' PB&J sandwiches, but at the grocery store that week Skippy is on sale, it’s likely they’ll go with the cheaper alternative. The cost of switching here is low... peanut butter is about $2.75 (or $4 if you're a health nut who prefers organic) and if the family doesn’t like the Skippy, they’ll just switch back to JIF next time. However, there are far larger barriers when switching to something like a new cable company, insurance provider, or financial institution.