Mapping Out Your Member Onboarding Journey

Each year the amount of money the financial industry invests in advertising and new technology continues to increase significantly. With some of the more important expected outcomes being the acquisition of new customers or members and share-of-wallet growth, you might think it’s a priority to ensure they become, lasting, profitable relationships – right? If we use new product sales withing the first 6 months of acquisition as a measuring stick, the answer is unfortunately ‘no’. In fact, only 15% of financial institutions worldwide were effective in selling an additional product within six months of an account opening, according to a Digital Banking Report 2021. This highlights a strategic gap that’s more prevalent than you might think: many financial institutions simply don’t have a functional onboarding process in place.

What’s important to remember when it comes to building a relationship with new members is that if your credit union is not the one initiating the interaction, you’re leaving the relationship building up to them. Essentially, you’re waiting for them to come to you, rather than proactively taking the lead and reaching out to them. It’s easy to see why these gaps in communication aren’t optimal, both for members and credit unions.

Go Beyond First Product

To achieve peak share-of-wallet potential and to serve members better, we need to think beyond first contact and focus on nurturing ongoing relationships. While having a new member sign up for a chequing account or product online is great, it isn’t time to pat ourselves on the back quite yet. Instead, we should maintain communication, build trust, and explore other ways we can help them with their finances.

This can be challenging in an increasingly digital sales environment, where speed, simplicity, accessibility and standardization often take center stage. However, to strengthen our relationships with members, there must be a shift in focus to make room for personalization, continual need assessment, education about product benefits and support—all key puzzle pieces in a successful onboarding program.

Map Out the Journey

So, what might your member onboarding journey look like? The answer might differ based on your objectives. But it could begin with a personalized welcome message. After that, it’s important to ensure that new members have access to online banking and download your mobile app, as these will have a major impact on future engagement. You could follow that up with an educational email about their new account and helpful features like alerts, paying bills online, transfers and so on. Next, it might be time for a check-in phone call to make sure everything is alright, assess their needs and offer support. Building trust and a friendly, helpful rapport will drastically increase receptivity to upsells. Finally, based on information and data you may have gleaned in the previous steps, you might want to suggest new products relevant to their individual needs.

One of the common mistakes credit unions make is the assumption that their members don’t wish to be contacted by them. The opposite is actually true—as long as the communications are relevant, helpful or beneficial to them. In fact, a studies indicate that member satisfaction increases as the number of communications increase up to six contacts. So, make those communications count!

And when you contact them, consider a multi-channel approach for the best results. A phone call is still ranked as the most effective channel for onboarding due to its personal and engaging nature. Just because a member may have opened a new account online doesn’t mean a staff member can’t reach out to them over the phone to follow up. Email is a close second in terms of effectiveness but much easier to implement on scale. Digital marketing and social media can be great ways to support your efforts. And one of the most overlooked channels to consider is SMS text messages, which combine timeliness with high open rates.

Communication is Key

It seems like common sense: better communication leads to stronger relationships. Then why do only around half of financial institutions have a member onboarding process in place? According to an industry survey, 58% of Financial Institutions stated that the #1 challenge is complexity. Luckily, this is where ASAPP OXP™ can help. ASAPP is ‘Canada’s most complete omnichannel experience platform’ because it offers powerful Feature Sets that go beyond Account and Lending Origination.

When it comes to member onboarding, one of its most helpful Feature Sets is ASAPP OXP | CRM. It gives you the ability to create Custom Workflows, allowing you to simplify complex, multi-step processes. You can set automated, time-sensitive Task Reminders to staff, linked to specific members, accounts or conversations. And attach branded email templates, call scripts or other documents to streamline the communication process and make sure everyone’s on the same page. Once you build out a member onboarding process in a Custom Workflow, it can be easily saved and assigned as needed.

We’ve explained the importance of an onboarding process for new accounts, but it’s worth noting that you should have a separate communication plan in place for new product purchases as well. For example, the onboarding journey for someone taking out a mortgage should be different than someone opening a new account. Ideally, all communication touchpoints should be relevant to the action taken and specific situation.

Hopefully, the information we’ve shared will help you design, manage and deploy a more effective member onboarding journey. If you’d like to learn more about ASAPP OXP | CRM and how it can help you streamline and simplify the process, please visit our website or request a demo.