Surveying members is one of the best ways of directly measuring your credit union’s member satisfaction. Your survey results can tell you a lot on their own, but they can tell you even more when you compare your performance to that of your competitors. Credit union peer benchmarking can help your team take their services to the next level.
One of the downsides to being a big fish in a small pond is a lack of perspective. Sure, you may be doing very well for yourself, but with proper context and objectivity, you may see that you’ve still got room to grow.
By comparing yourself to similarly-sized fish—er, credit unions—in similar place, you can valuable perspective. Also, you can use that perspective to your advantage by gamifying it. Here’s how:
To Be the Best, You Have to Beat the Best
The basic idea is that you want to be the best credit union out there. Without peer benchmarking, you may mistakenly think you are. In reality, you may have several competitors out there, all gunning for that number one position. How do you know who’s top dog?
By utilizing and comparing NPS surveys
for member insight, credit unions can get a clearer picture of where they stand. NPS scores are standardized, so they provide a reliable metric against which to measure performance. Measuring against yourself is all well and good, but measuring against your competition? Now that’s peer benchmarking.
A Survey About… Coffee?
Here’s an example: let’s say you want to see which credit union offers the best coffee to its members. While your NPS score of 20 may sound pretty good—it’s a positive number, after all—you don’t know what your competition is doing or how they’re scoring.
Peer benchmarking means measuring your scores against the scores of your competitors. If your coffee quality NPS score is 20, you’re doing very well if other credit unions all scored below zero. However, you may not be doing so well if every other credit union has a positive coffee-quality score as well. If your competitors score 81, 75, 44, and 30, your score of 20 suddenly looks pretty bad.
You never would have realized how much work you had to do in your coffee scene if you paid attention only to your own NPS score. Now that you know that you have to step up your coffee game, what’s your next step after peer benchmarking?
Gamifying Member Insight
By targeting specific services for evaluation, you can see what needs work. If you’re trying to improve your coffee, you could try a few things. Fortunately, you already have all the information you need to gamify your response to your peer benchmarking.
Gamifying won’t work if you don’t care about your performance. Most people like a little competition though, and everybody likes being the best at something. By going through the peer benchmarking process, you’ve already set your team up for gamifying your services.
Knowing that people like but don’t love your coffee may make you wonder how to improve it. You may consider learning why your competitors are scoring so well. Maybe Starbucks caters. Maybe they roast their own beans. Maybe they use kopi luwak. Regardless of their technique, you know that yours doesn’t pass muster.
Gamification in this context refers to two interrelated things. First, it references the effort your put in to understand your score vs your competitors’ scores. Second, it includes the actions you take to attain the highest score.
By making your survey scores into a competition, you can energize and motivate your team to provide the best coffee. And by coffee, we mean services. Because really, this is about way, way more than just coffee.
And the Winner Is…
Honestly, the winner is any credit union who makes efficient use of their NPS scores. If you do a little peer benchmarking for one of your services, you can use that information to your advantage.
If your score is high, awesome. Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working.
If your score is low, see what your competition is doing. Focus on improving that service. Use your competitor’s score as the number to beat. Keep working on that problem area until you’re number one.
Your credit union’s members will appreciate the work you put into providing outstanding products and services. Your employees will enjoy a tangible reason to stay energized, focused, and excellent. After all, they’re doing it for themselves as well. They want to win.
For more great content on surveys and how your credit union can use them, check out these articles:
