20 Ways Credit Unions Can Increase Their NPS

Few metrics carry the weight of your Net Promoter Score (NPS). It’s a crucial measurement of member service success, as well as your members’ sentiment toward your credit union. It’s a simple, direct way to determine if you’re on the right track but raising a tanking score can be challenging.
 

How to Better Understand Your Credit Union’s NPS

Before diving into how to improve your NPS, it’s important to understand it and what it represents.
 

• It’s a numerical score based on member sentiment and survey responses.
• It can range from -100 to +100.
• It explains how likely your members are to recommend your credit union to friends, family, and others.
• Your score is created by combining the answers from detractors (those who score you between 0 and 6) and your promoters (those who score you between 9 and 10).
   

Why does it matter, though? Apart from offering a snapshot of your member satisfaction levels, member comments can help you address shortcomings within your organization and pain points your members struggle with.
 

How to Send Out NPS Surveys
 

Sending out NPS surveys is best done via email. You should have your members’ email addresses as part of the account creation process. Note that you’ll need to choose the right sample size for your purposes. Go too small and you won’t have the accuracy you need. If your sample size is too large, though, it increases the time required to analyze the results and put needed change into action.
 

How to Improve Your NPS
 

1. Keep Your Brand Promise

What’s the promise of your brand? Local experts? Working with families to build a brighter future? Whatever it is, you need to keep your brand promise at all times.

 2. Send NPS Surveys at the Right Moment in the Member Journey

You’ll find critical moments to send NPS surveys within the member journey, including right after transactions or actions – a member opens an account, for instance.
 

3. Go Beyond Standard Survey Questions

If you really want to delve deep and find out what your members think of you, go beyond the standard questions. Don’t just ask “how’d we do?”. Ask what you can do better and why your member gave you the score they did.

4. Provide Incentives for Feedback

Want to incite responses? Offer a reward for doing so. More of your members will be likely to respond if there’s something in it for them.

That could be almost anything, from branded swag like cupholders to extra cash or points within your rewards program.
 

5. Make Your Surveys as User-Friendly as Possible

One of the most off-putting things for a member is opening a survey to find that it’s almost unintelligible. Design your surveys with ease of use in mind. Then test the design with real people to find out if it works the way you assume it will.
 

6. Personalize Your Email Survey Invites

Don’t send generic surveys. Show your members that you recognize and value them as individuals. Instead of “Hi, we’d love to know your thoughts about…”, open with “Dr. Mrs. Smith, we’re excited that you chose us for your son’s first checking and savings accounts. We’d love to know what you thought of the experience!”.
 

7. Engage with Your Detractors

Anyone who scores you between 0 and 6 is considered a detractor, but why? What made them leave that score? Is there anything you can do to turn the situation around? Engage with them and find out what went wrong and how you can make things better.
 

8. Follow Up Quickly

Speed is of the essence when it comes to capturing member sentiment, as well as for damage control if something negative happened. Follow up quickly with your members to raise your NPS. How quickly? The general rule of thumb is to send a survey seven to 30 days after an interaction.
 

9. Use Data from Your Promoters to Convert Your Passives

Your promoters, those who score your credit union between 9 and 10, can give you leverage to help motivate those who fall in the middle (passives). Delve into what your promoters love about your credit union and then find ways to offer or augment that to your passives.
 

10. Make Sure Every Department Knows Their Value

Interested in improving member sentiment? You’ll need to communicate to every department the value they bring to the process. That includes departments that might not be member-facing, as well as those in the C-suite who might not interact with the public directly.
 

11. Get Buy-In from the Top

Improving your credit union’s NPS isn’t rocket science, but it’s not something that the “rank and file” can do on their own, either. You need to get buy-in at all levels and then ensure that the initiative is driven by those at the top of the organization.
 

12. Create a Culture of Change

Changing things in the member journey will require flexibility and experimentation (risk), which are things that most financial organizations dislike. Create a culture of change within your credit union to ensure that you can innovate and evolve. 
 

13. Share Regular Insights Across Your Organization

Boosting your NPS will require that every team member pulls their weight. You can make that happen by sharing important insights across the entire organization. That gives every department the information necessary to make needed changes and drive member-focused improvements.
 

14. Continually Track Your NPS

Checking your Net Promoter Score once per year doesn’t offer much in the way of value. For it to really make a difference, you’ll need to monitor results constantly. That ensures you’re able to accurately analyze your credit union’s health and keep your finger on the pulse of member sentiment
 

15. Beware of Overzealous Sales Reps

“Going for the sale” is great, but it should never come at the expense of member satisfaction or trust. Overzealous sales reps and account execs who misconstrue what members can do with a product or outright lie, just to close a sale, are doing nothing but eroding your brand’s value.
 

16. Invest in Member Success

Want to boost your NPS? You need to invest in your members’ success. After all, they’re the reason you exist.

How do you invest in their success, though? It goes beyond offering great member service. You need to anticipate their needs and be there ahead of time. You must set expectations and then live up to the promises your team members make. It’s all about being proactive and offering the right solutions at the right time to the right people.

Offering a personalized, holistic financial wellness program is a great place to start. In addition, you also want to market the program well to ensure your members (and potential members) know it exists.

 17. Understand the “Why” Behind Your Score

Qualitative data is essential for raising your NPS. To do that, you must segment your audience and delve into individual responses. You may also want to put additional weight behind sentiment from members who spend the most with you or who have been with you the longest. By understanding the “why” behind a score, you’re able to start changing the standard.
 

18. Get Your Promoters to Spread the Good Word

Your promoters love your brand. Give them the means to share that love with others. They’ll be able to attract others like them, boosting your score, but also building your member base. 

19. Research Your Competitors

You cannot afford to fly blind here. What are your competitors doing? What additional benefits are they offering? How are they faring with their members? What are they doing that drives value and improves member sentiment? How can you follow their example (or avoid it if they’re floundering)?
 

20. Empower Your Member Service Team

Finally, make sure you’ve given your member service team the leeway they need to make informed decisions and change the member experience for the better. Fettering member service specialists with the need to check with a supervisor or get management’s approval for minor things only slows the process and makes it more likely your members will be dissatisfied.
 

How to Interpret Your Score
 

Calculating your NPS can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just subtracting the number of detractors from your promoters.

If 70% of your respondents are promoters and 20% are detractors, then your NPS is 50. Passives aren’t weighed, which is why you want to transform those into promoters whenever possible.
 

What Is a Good, Average, and Bad NPS for Credit Unions?

 All industries vary significantly when it comes to good, bad, and average Net Promoter Scores. For credit unions, 60 is considered good. 45 is about average. 30 would be poor.
 

Ultimately, improving your NPS is not only possible, but it can be simpler than you might think. It will require a concerted effort across all departments, as well as buy-in from your leaders. In some cases, it may also require a cultural change.

However, with dedication, access to the right information, and the willingness to invest in your members’ success, it’s possible to boost that score and maintain it.

For additional resources, read: 5 Easy Ways Credit Unions Can Increase Member Loyalty.