Embracing Change in an Ever-Changing World, With Shannon Ellis-Brock of Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union

Episode Summary

Credit unions use technology and a personalized approach to ensure the best member experience. Even with this winning combination, it’s still a challenge to stand out in a market where major banks dominate.

In this episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Shannon Ellis-Brock, the COO at Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union. Shannon and Josh discussed why innovation and development are such powerful ideas in their industry, how satisfied employees lead to happy members, and why credit unions should partner with companies open to members’ complaints and ideas.

Key Insights

⚡ Creating a great member experience for all members isn’t easy. It is impossible to create a one-size-fits-all experience, especially when your business revolves around constantly changing and evolving technology. To effectively serve your members, whether to attract new or keep the existing ones, you need to ensure the best possible user experience for each member. ”If someone’s opening your app, you don’t want that to be a source of frustration for them. Whether they’re someone who does everything online, is the smartest tech genius in the world, or somebody that really cannot even get an emailed picture of their grandkids because they don’t use technology. So, yeah, it’s hard finding that balance that you’re not turning off people who are not tech-savvy while still engaging people that are.”

⚡ You need to be open to change. Otherwise, you’ll become stagnant. ‘People want change, but they don’t necessarily feel comfortable with it when it occurs. Shannon admitted she sometimes feels the same, but she knows how necessary the change is. ”I just want to keep evolving and changing. And it’s not always easy; it’s not always comfortable. But if you want easy and comfortable, then probably you don’t want to be running a credit union, or you don’t want to be in charge of updating technology. You don’t want to be in charge of finding the best products and services for the membership.” 

⚡ What’s your endgame? Many companies use the ”customer comes first” approach. In contrast, Shannon believes in the ”employees come first” philosophy. When your team members are satisfied, your users will be, too. No one expects you to think about your job as the most important thing in life, but you need to be excited about it, find some purpose in what you do, set some goals, and aim for something meaningful. You should help your employees do the same. ”What do you want to do? When you sit back and look at things, what do you want to have accomplished? I get it when you’re 18 years old starting out, and maybe it’s hard to envision that, but that’s how it starts, with you challenging yourself and thinking about the bigger picture and what that endgame looks like for you. Where do you want to be? And we don’t all have to have a written out plan. We all don’t have to have it all planned out, but at least, have a roadmap; that’s an adventure.”