Leverage Design Thinking to Reduce Member Friction

Thanks to the Apples and Amazons of the world, credit union members have high expectations that often aren’t met. Whether it’s a mobile app, an online application process, check holds or anything that causes a member to sigh at service, financial institutions need to turn that frown upside-down. Credit unions excel at customer service and now need to lead in customer experience as well.

Unfortunately, solving these member frictions seem to be limited to either time or money, or both. And even if a credit union had all the time and money in the world, it would need to be perfect and take at least a year to bring to market. Right?

NOPE! With design thinking, solutions can be created in 30 min and actions taken on them in as little as two weeks. 

In fact, this took place during part of a series of “Innovative Thinking” workshops that our Client Strategy team at AdvantEdge Analytics held with a large credit union in Southern California. The goal of the series was to help them become a more technology-driven, highly-innovative organization that will provide a distinctive member experience.

A cornerstone of the workshops is the Design Thinking process, a human-centered design approach. The first step in the process is to “empathize,” therefore putting the user (or member) first, which is a great fit for credit unions.

In simple terms, the Design Thinking process works like this:

1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test

In the first workshop held with the credit union, after introducing this concept, the participants discussed their biggest member friction points in cross-departmental teams. Then they were given what seemed like an impossible task: solve the member friction using a Design Thinking approach in only thirty minutes. Many thought it was impossible, but time constraints can be a powerful and valuable lesson in and of themselves. They spent about five minutes on each of the following areas:

1.   Empathize - The groups voted on the biggest member friction point and then did the “5 whys” exercise, where they asked the question “why” it is that way and then with the answer, asked "why" again. After doing this at least five times, assumptions fall away and it’s easier get to the root of the issue.

2.   Define - The groups combined their “whys” with their member/user’s perspective to get the problem they were solving for. Then they re-framed it into a problem statement, using one of the following to start – whichever fit best:

• How might we _________
• In what ways might we ________
• How do we ________

3.   Ideate - They then used post-it notes to brainstorm ideas to solve the problem statement, individually building on each other’s ideas to get 25-50 ideas.

4.   Each group member had three votes to mark their favorite idea so everyone had a voice.

5.   Prototype - The top voted idea (their product or service) was then storyboarded using post-it notes on flipchart paper.

6.   Test - The groups ended by discussing how they would test their solution as well as getting feedback or data on it to iterate.

All eight groups finished on time and were proud of their work. More importantly, the solutions, storyboards and ideas were all innovative and feasible. The cross-departmental teams proved important as well to provide different perspectives on the issues and solutions.

What’s your member friction? Consider trying this exercise at a future department or leadership meeting to make your members (and staff) happier and more engaged.