Marketing expert Bonin Bough, a keynote speaker at this year’s virtual World Credit Union Conference, told delegates that one-on-one digital messaging is the way forward.
“Customer service is not a call centre, it is a profit centre,” he said, advising credit unions to talk to their customers and focus on personal attachment.
“The majority of interaction today is happening in messaging,” he added. “That is how customer service will operate, and we need to figure out how to make it simple and easy for the customer and build strong loyal relationships, capturing data and understanding them while at the same time being able to have a unique and valuable conversation with them.”
Mr Bough said that businesses which performed well during the pandemic did so because they had a “one-to-one relationship with their customers.” Those which found simple ways to work with customers affected by delays thrived.
“They allocated the time necessary to building that customer information, that customer data, and that customer relationship,” he said, adding: “We have the power to use our customer communications to actually build those relationships, maintain that loyalty and more important drive them into do business and commerce with us.”
Businesses need to shift from seeking talent to training existing staff members, he said. “Every single one of us are change agents, but we need to now figure out how do we continue to train people as the world changes. How do we continue to change as organisations to allow for them to feel trainable?
“Human capital is the most important asset that we have and we have to figure out how to move from just trying to find talent to actually training talented people.”
Held entirely virtually for the first time, the 2021 World Credit Union Conference featured more than 30 online keynote presentations or breakout sessions from more than 50 speakers.
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