Better Lobby Management Keeps Members Coming Back For More

How do branch visitors feel about waiting in your lobby? Does the experience encourage them to return to buy more products and services, or does the lobby "wait" leave the impression that your credit union is less efficient or professional than they deserve?

The lobby is the beginning of many customer service experiences. Unless a member is coming in for teller or ATM services, they will likely have to wait in the lobby for a few minutes before being served. Low rates alone are no guarantee that the member will be satisfied with the branch experience, or be willing to come back for more. To take and keep market-share from larger financial institution, credit unions must consistently provide a good member experience - beginning with the first impression created in the lobby.

While examining one credit union's deposit account process, we discovered that the visitor's lobby experience was an untapped area for service improvement opportunities.

Better Lobby - A Solution For SAFE Credit Union
When SAFE, a community credit union in North Highlands, California, engaged us to re-engineer their deposit account process, CEO Henry Wirz and SAFE's Board made a strategic decision to invest in superior work processes, cost-effective technology, and staff training – setting a goal to make their lobbies among the best managed in the industry.

We began two years ago by surveying the market for existing solutions. While we found several mature, industrial-strength lobby solutions available, they seemed better suited to very high-volume situations like motor vehicle offices rather than credit union lobbies. The low-end, share-ware applications had extremely low acquisition costs, but met few of the credit union's other needs.

Since none of the available solutions were a good fit, SAFE made the decision to develop a new lobby management application and make it available to all credit unions. As a result, a solution called Better Lobby is now available through a SAFE-sponsored CUSO called Better Branches.

Better Lobby allows any staff member to place a branch visitor into the lobby queue. The queue is visible to all service staff in the branch as well as on-site and remote credit union management. Only the visitor's name and visit purpose need to be entered to start the process. MSRs select the member they will serve from the queue and, when the service is complete, close off the service event. Basic follow-up reminders are provided if a call back is needed. All branch MSRs are notified of new additions to the queue and of any visit that waits longer than the established standard.

Better Reporting Provides A Real-Time Peek Into Branch Activity
In addition to bringing order and visibility to the branch lobby, Better Lobby provides remarkable reporting on service events that were previously, very hard to measure. Better Lobby's "Service History" report best illustrates this point. The report shows the number of members served by each SAFE MSR at one of the credit union's 10 branches during the period of July 8-9. The real-time report was created part way through July 9th, so some visitors are shown as either still "waiting" or "being helped". Employees are identified by their initials next to each bar in the graph. At the bottom is a list of members who were served at that bring during the reporting period, together with their "wait time," "help time," "status," and "MSR" who served them. More information is available by scrolling through the report. Three additional real-time reports are also available.

Criteria for Choosing a Lobby Management Solution
When it comes to choosing a lobby management solution, the size of the branch is a determining factor. Very small branches do not need lobby management technology to provide good service. Their size alone means that visitor volume is typically low. As a result, members receive a level of personalized service that contributes to a perception of high-service quality.

But branches with six or more total staff are likely candidates for lobby management improvements. The ideal Lobby Management Solution should meet the following criteria:

· Require very little effort to learn and use.
· Encourage best work practice and enable great customer service.
· Provide immediate benefits to CU staff at all levels of the organization.
· Provide real time reporting – what is happening in the branch right now!
· Help establish and monitor employee performance standards.
· Actively discourage bad practices (like serving customers out of order due to sales incentives or because the service request is "easier" to handle).
· Be affordable and easy to setup and administer.
· Integrate with the host and other systems – and use current technology.
· Produce an attractive return on investment (ROI) – be paid back in months, not years.

Assessing Your Credit Union's Lobby Experience
To determine whether or not your credit union needs to implement a lobby management solution, begin with an honest, thorough analysis of your current lobby experience.

How long do members really wait in your branch lobbies? You can better manage the customer experience when you know exactly how much time members spend in the lobby. Don't be satisfied with averages. The average may seem reasonable to you, but members' needs vary depending on their circumstances. The same member who happily waits 20 minutes on their day off work, may be very dissatisfied with an unexpected wait of 20 minutes during their lunch break.

Of course, the average time may not represent the actual wait times that are experienced by members at different times of the day and in different branch locations. Your average wait time for the month may be 4 minutes, but what is the longest wait time – and what percentage of your members exceed a wait of 10, 15 or 30 minutes? Achieving short wait times requires either active lobby visitor management or over-staffing; and we all know that over-staffing is not a sustainable practice.

If long waits are unavoidable, make sure you learn from the situation and take action to improve. Long waits contribute to a bad perception of your CU's professionalism, reliability, and competency in the mind of the member. This perception will influence where they buy their next financial product or service.

Complete your lobby analysis by answering the following questions:

· Why do members (or potential members)visit the branch?
· How many new accounts were opened yesterday in your branches?
· What staff representatives opened them?
· How long did it take?
· How much time are my platform staff spending with members?
· What portion of their day do they actually spend providing face-to-face service?
· Which MSR handles the most traffic?
· When do the peaks and valleys occur?

Of course, some of this information is available in existing systems, but it is a rare credit union that can apply time measurements to "customers served" and "products sold".

You may conclude that a well-engineered lobby management system is just what you need to consistently boost service levels and increase sales.

Better Lobby, and other innovative applications, are sold by Better Branches LLC. Better Branches exists to provide break-through solutions that help credit unions win in the marketplace.

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