What is knowledge management in credit unions?

Knowledge management in credit unions pertains to the use of information and expertise across business functions of these institutions with the sweet spots being in customer service and sales. It could include data, policies, procedures, compliance, insights, and expertise. Here are some examples.

• Member’s account balance and income (the latter if the customer had disclosed it)
• Member’s transaction history
• Products searched for by members and potential members
• Interest rates for home mortgages for various terms

• Policy for monthly charges for an account
• Policy for account beneficiaries
• Customer qualifications for loan amount and approval
• Frequency of interest compounding for various types of accounts (e.g., savings account versus CD)
• Maximum number of outbound transfers per month for any given account type

• Promotional performance of high interest rate offers versus upfront bonus to get new members
• Average life-time value of customers from County A versus County B
• X% of contacts were on topics not covered by the knowledge-base for product
• X% of contacts last year were related to customer service for existing accounts and Y% related to new product questions from current and potential members

Service expertise

• Why did the interest rate on my savings account fall all of a sudden?
• Why did the interest rate on my credit card go up all of a sudden?
• Do I need to go through another home inspection for refinancing my home loan?
• I want to dispute transaction X on my credit card. How do I do it?

Sales expertise/advice

• Would I be better off with a 30-year fixed rate loan or a 15-year ARM?
• Do you have a special offer for small business loans?
• How do I improve my credit rating?
• Why does credit card X give 1% money back but the other one gives 2% back?

Per ACSI’s Finance Study, CSAT with credit unions has been on a steady decline five years in a row. In fact, it has fallen behind that of banks, which itself had been stuck in neutral six years in a row (2018-23), according to the Forrester CX Index. A big driver of customer dissatisfaction has been the lack of knowledge among contact center customer service reps and retail advisors with 44% of consumers complaining about inconsistent answers they get from frontline personnel.

As routine customer queries are answered through automation, contact center and branch staff in credit unions are getting queries of increasing complexity, with which they are struggling. After all, 75% of them make do with feverishly reading printed documents or trying their luck with basic keyword search when the irate customer is on the line. Clearly not a recipe for a great customer or employee experience! The answer lies in empowering employees and customers with a modern knowledge hub to get CSAT out of the rut it has been in for so many years.

The question then is what is a Knowledge Hub? It is a one-stop platform for modern knowledge management that includes and orchestrates all the essential building blocks needed to help credit unions and other organizations take self-service automation to the next level while guiding frontline staff to provide better service to their customers. These building blocks include content management, profiled access to content, ML-powered intent inference, search methods, generative AI for knowledge automation and better findability, conversational AI for real-time guidance at the point of member interaction, analytics, and integrations with existing systems.

Forward-looking credit unions and regional banks are getting a leg up on competitors by leveraging knowledge and AI to wow members through proactive service and next-best-step advice at scale over time. A killer use-case for this capability is financial health management. eGain’s AI Coach advises and motivates consumers over time to financial wellness with personalized advice over time. The tool nudges consumers to wellness over time by providing not only pinpoint advice but also by motivating them by leveraging techniques in behavioral psychology. The Coach is a win-win for financial institutions and the customer—the customer fixes their finances, and the institution is able to sell them more products as they become more viable. Consumers are welcoming this tool with rave reviews:

eGain is used by a wide range of credit unions from a federal credit union giant to regional credit unions. Here are examples of their at-scale success, powered by the eGain Knowledge Hub™.

• Federal Credit Union: Engages millions of members across digital channels such as SMS, email, and mobile app with proactive service. The credit union sends well over a billion messages per year with the eGain Conversation Hub™, using over 800 knowledge templates created in as little as 10 minutes with eGain’s authoring console! Rich API integrations enable 360-degree customer views for agents and seamless notification set up and delivery automation.
• Mid-sized federal credit union: This organization digitally engages members, discovers their financial goals, and delivers personalized financial wellness action plans. Impressed with positive feedback from existing and potential members, the credit union has made the Coach available to its employees as well!
• Regional credit union: It replaced their legacy knowledge system with the eGain Knowledge Hub. To start with, the solution was deployed over six hundred contact center agents and other internal employees to handle member queries on transactions, promotions, account opening, and credit cards for personal, business, and specialty account holders. Since go-live, agent adoption of knowledge has increased by 40% and answer effectiveness has surged by 47%!