Building A Member Focus: ESL FCU’s Journey Into CRM

David Fiedler, president/CEO of the $2.4 billion asset ESL Federal Credit Union, Rochester, N.Y., realizes member relationship management isn’t just a systems issue. Instead, he says it’s “the sum of the culture we’ve built and the systems we use to support it.”

Adam Honig, president of Akibia Consulting in Westborough, Mass., recently talked to Fiedler about ESL Federal’s member relationship management efforts.

How does ESL FCU define customer relationship management (CRM)?
We refer to it as member relationship management [MRM]. We label the whole experience ”Member Focus.” In other words, it’s the sum of the culture we’ve built and the systems we use to support it. Systems are one component of MRM—that’s an important distinction to make.

When we started down this path about six years ago, we knew enough about the evolving CRM world to realize you can’t approach it purely as a systems issue. We began by aligning our management team—luckily with very little resistance—on a plan to build a Member Focus culture from the ground up.

One advantage that came from our 80-year heritage as a savings and loan provider for Eastman Kodak was a legitimate desire to provide good service. That's a huge advantage in building this kind of program.

Keep CRM simple. Don’t overwhelm people with too many bells and whistles at once.

We worked with a consultant to train our salespeople on a needs-based selling approach. We hired a Member Focus culture coach to work on the front line with our managers, helping them develop their own coaching skills. There was some rehiring as well. Inherently, you’ll have people who can’t make the transition to a new culture. Their environment changes, but they don’t.

Addressing the cultural aspect has been a major investment in terms of time and resources. But it’s a necessary investment that laid the foundation for our entire MRM program.

Once we had the cultural foundation in place, we began to define what we needed from a systems standpoint to support it. We conducted a comprehensive needs analysis that ultimately resulted in selecting Siebel Systems, San Mateo, Calif., as the software provider.

Has CRM’s overall magnitude been bigger than expected because of its continuing nature?
There’s a tendency to think of CRM as a definable capability, like a payroll system. It's just the opposite. It can go in whatever direction makes sense for your organization based on what you’re trying to achieve. That's the part most people probably won’t understand if they haven’t had experience with this category of software.

With software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the functionality is constant and the challenge is learning how to use it. But with CRM, it’s the other way around. There’s a core architecture, but the structure you build around it has to be unique to your needs.

It’s difficult to fully appreciate the magnitude of the investment at the front end. As we moved forward, that magnitude became increasingly apparent. We don’t feel like we’ve spent too much money. It’s that we’ve really come to understand that this whole thing we signed up for over a 10- or 20-year period—whatever the time period we want to think about—is a major investment in time, money, and resources.

Do your member service representatives see the value in your MRM system?
As always, there are early adopters chomping at the bit to consume as much of the functionality as they can as quickly as possible. And then there are others who are somewhat intimidated by it. They’re not opposed to it; they just don't feel as comfortable with systems and it takes them a little bit longer to get on board.

The key is keeping it simple and not overwhelming people with too many bells and whistles at once. The basic functionality we now have in place and trained our folks on is step one. As we continue to add more functionality—so long as we’re doing it right and keeping it simple—the value will compound and become more evident. That’s because it will become easier to know essentially everything there is to know about our members and to keep that information in one place.

How do you measure your program’s success?
Ultimately, the core metric we decided on is sales per full-time employee—new deposits, new loans, new investment sales—because this metric captures our MRM program’s efficiency and revenue generation.

Frankly, the sales goals we put in place mutated quite a lot over the first five years. Last year was the first year we didn’t make significant changes in the structure of the sales goals and the supporting reporting systems.

We’re excited about where we are at this point. The gestation period is sort of like giving birth to an elephant. The culture piece has been evolving for several years, but adding the system's capability to that is a huge step forward. That’s what’s starting to become visible at this stage.

What advice would you give to CUs just starting on their CRM journey?
CRM is ongoing, and it’s difficult to figure out how to justify the incremental investments along the way. It’s important to establish specific milestones for your investment, define what you expect to get, and move forward from there. If you try to do too much all at once, you may never get there.

We completed a comprehensive implementation for what we call Phase One, but we made sure to keep it manageable. We’re building on that foundation now in Phase Two, approaching it function by function in terms of, “If we do this, what do we get for it? What’s the value to members? What will it cost us, and what’s the timeframe?”

CRM is a much different animal than other types of information technology-related initiatives. While it’s imperative to work with software and service providers who understand that, it’s also important for credit unions to establish a long-term goal of achieving a certain level of self-sufficiency—for the budget’s sake. Sooner or later you need to get on your own feet and move ahead.

I can’t stress enough that CRM, MRM, or whatever you want to call it is a major investment. But the short- and long-term benefits are well worth the effort.

Contact Adam Honig at 508-621-5100 or visit www.akibia.com.