Credit unions frequently give out surveys to their members to gain valuable credit union member insight. However, not all questions are created equal. If you want to make sure the feedback you’re getting is trustworthy, we’d like to caution against certain types of questions.
Honest feedback is the best feedback. It’s the only kind of feedback that will allow you to improve your services and take better care of your members.
Member Insight – Why Survey at a Credit Union?
Credit unions who don’t take efforts to maintain their relationships with their members are doomed to lose them over time. Similarly, credit unions who don’t listen to their members may be setting themselves up for failure. After all, if your members tell you that something needs work, you have to be willing to fix that which needs fixing.
Honest feedback can be used to identify weak areas that need more attention. Surveys can also shine light on areas that your credit union performs well in; these areas can serve as a model or benchmark, or they can merit rewards.
Regardless of whether you’re crushing it or getting crushed, honest, accurate feedback is critical for understanding exactly where you stand. And knowing is half the battle.
Don’t Ask This Question (Or Else)!
One of the issues we’ve seen several credit unions deal with now are targeted transactional surveys. These are surveys that qualitatively measure member satisfaction with a particular transaction, product, or service.
(Need a refresher on how transaction surveys work? Check out our guide here!)
The wrong kind of question to ask goes something like this: “How was your interaction with our teller Bob at Big Bad Credit Union today?”
Can you guess why? Don’t worry about it. We’ll just tell you.
The problem with the question above is that some people have big hearts and empathy to spare. When they see that a question pertains directly to a specific employee, they’re thinking about more than just their experience with that employee on that day.
In fact, they’re thinking about what’s at stake for the employee versus what’s at stake in the survey. Even though you at Big Bad Credit Union are trying to gain member insight by asking a simple transactional question, you’ve actually posed a major dilemma to your members.
The Question You Actually Asked
Instead of simply asking themselves how their experience was with Bob the teller, they’ll add on their own layer of questions. Is Bob’s job on the line? Is Bob a problem employee? What was going on for Bob that day? Did he sleep well and have breakfast, or is he going through a breakup or medical procedure?
Gaining credit union member insight through surveys shouldn’t be so complicated. Measuring member satisfaction doesn’t need to take into account the complications of whether your employees are having a good day or if your members’ honesty is impacted by their desire to give Bob a second chance.
We’ve noticed that members are far less honest when someone’s livelihood is on the line. In all cases, we recommend keeping personal specifics such as names out of your survey questions. Doing so will make it much easier for your members to provide valuable, honest credit union member insight.
Just remember: good scores are great, but honest scores are better.
If you’d like to read more about what kind of survey questions you can ask your credit union members, check out our related blog links below!
What are the Top 3 Surveys that Credit Unions Use?
What is the Benefit of Peer Benchmarking?
On a side note, a few weeks ago we released a survey about coffee at your credit local credit union. We forgot to add the question about who’s coffee is too dang hot, but we asked some other great question about coffee and you can view those results here:
In the future, you can expect to see more great surveys and their results!
