The following is a transcript of the podcast episode
Aaron McPherson
Thanks Ryan. This is Aaron McPherson. I’m talking with Ashley and Amanda. It was great working with you on this white paper. I think we both agree that digital transformation is absolutely critical because that’s where the customers are these days, but I’m interested in some of the insights that you have as to why digital transformation is so important in the Modern Age.
Amanda Atcheson
This is Amanda. I can take that one to start. I think what we’ve seen at Co-Op is the trends, the market trends that are out there in any industry are pointing toward this shift toward digital and so consumer expectations are rising. They are expecting that that experience that they have with the Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon — pretty much every interaction they have digitally — so credit unions and institutions really have to see what those experiences are and see how they can meet those expectations as at the same time technology is advancing faster than ever. There’s this overtaking of digital technology that we do really have an industry need to respond to in order to provide that experience that members really expect.
Ashley McAlpine
Yeah, and I think, if you go off of what the consumer expectation is, we’ve really seen a lot of drive from our members and just customers in the market, that that’s their expectation. A lot of folks right now are talking about having the value of the product or the price being an influencer when it comes to consumers, but the expectation is that by 2020 that the digital experience is going to be that differentiator between when a consumer chooses to go with one product versus the other. That’s going to be important to make sure that businesses out there in the industry maintain and keep those relationships with consumers. There was a really great study: if you look at Bank of America, once they shifted to that digital-first strategy, they moved from being the fourth to the first largest share of consumer deposits in the United States. So as you can see that actual real-life study come out that when we’re making that digital transformation and we change that focus that there’s actually quite a large benefit.
Amanda Atcheson
Right. Something we like to say about digital transformation is “We know it’s really hard, but it’s worth it,” and that study that Ashley just pointed out, that really pays off. It really does pay off when you lead with a digital strategies today.
Aaron McPherson
Yes, I know. When I sign up with a new company nowadays often my first thing is to see if they have an app in the app store, because like a lot of people, I live off my phone and so I expect that they’re going to have that available to me. One of the things we found in our surveys is that digital channels like mobile phones and online are becoming more and more important even as people still value being able to go into the branch or being able to call somebody up and talk to a real person. So we’re not seeing people abandoning the old channels, but what we are seeing is that the new channels, the digital channels, are becoming increasingly important to the experience. I know one of the first strategies that we had in the paper was being member-centric. I wonder if you could go into a little more detail on what that means and what the first steps are to digital transformation.
Amanda Atcheson
Being member-centric in a digital age, the way that we’re approaching that with the seven strategies is I think all credit unions would say, we’ve always been member-centric, and that’s true. That’s what really differentiates credit unions from their competitors. We really put the member first, and that’s part of our core values. But being member-centric in a digital age is a l...