InetSolution Blog

How to make your members happy with mobile

inetmac — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:54:00 -0400

It's easy, think of the small stuff.

I was at an event the other day where a friend of mine was showing off the fancy Chase iPhone app. She was enthusiastically demonstrating how easy it was to pay someone and deposit a check with the use of a picture. Now we all know that Chase spent a fair amount of time, money and effort to make that iPhone app and I’d bet the buzz it has generated has been well worth the investment.

Both of those “killer” features are great and should be made offered in an app or through a web browser, but more often I think the little things are overlooked and should be considered:

Is your credit union or bank website not just viewable, but useful on my iPhone or Android
Can I find an ATM or branch easily
Do your ATMs and branches show up in a Google search
How quickly can I find a phone number for a local branch

This past weekend my wife and I were headed to a beach and were saddened to find that the park only accepted cash, so we were turned away to find our closest ATM. We popped open Google on my iPhone and did a quick search and boom, up popped an ATM within 3 miles. It displayed nicely in the Google search results, I clicked and up opened Google maps and I instantly had directions.

Simple little things like these helps to reinforce the idea that an organization is interested, and thought about, making life simple for customers, regardless if they’re standing at a tellers desk or are out and about on a Sunday afternoon.

600 New Ideas to Improve Bank and Credit Union Products & Services

jasolution — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:44:00 -0400

Today Seth Godin shared a good idea that could have a profound impact on any bank, credit union or other type of business. It would take little effort, maybe a few minutes each day, Monday through Friday. The idea costs nothing to implement (except a few minutes of time each day) and is so easy that everyone in an organization could participate.

Seth discusses making an effort to find inspiration rather than waiting for it to come knocking on your door. He closed the post with this suggestion:

Simple example: start a blog and post once a day on how your favorite company can improve its products or its service. Do it every day for a month, one new, actionable idea each and every day. Within a few weeks, you'll notice the change in the way you find, process and ship ideas.

I like the idea, but I’d suggest trying it within your own organization, the one in which you invest eight or more hours of each work day. If you’re a bank or credit union with 30 employees and each employee shares one new idea every weekday, that’s roughly 600 new ideas at the end of a normal month. You don’t even need to start a blog if you don’t have one. You can even use free tools, such as www.tadalist.com, to keep track of all the ideas. If you do have a blog, great, use it. It may not even hurt to post the ideas publicly to let customers and business partners provide feedback.

Don’t just focus on customers, either. I’ve seen enormous benefits by making the people who provide services to Inet feel important (I don’t like the word vendor or resource, but if that’s your vernacular, then those are the people I’m talking about).

What would the impact be on your customers if you put just 10% of the new ideas into practice over the course of a year? How about the impact on your employees when they see that their ideas and input are valued? What impact might it have on the bottom line? I predict that it would be measurable.

But I also predict that only 10% of your employees would participate for the full 30 days. How valuable is it to know who is in that 10%?

P.S. I apologize if you thought you were going to find a list of 600 ideas in this post. We could probably come up with a list of 600 ideas, but they would be far less valuable than a list that people within your own organization who know its culture, its customers and its resources could create.

Your Credit Union’s Reputation is in One Person’s Hands

jasolution — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:51:00 -0400

Rarely does a day pass where I don’t read about someone lambasting some large (or small) company and its foul customer service and depraved business practices. While most upset people tend to blame the company for its practices, the conflict is usually a result of a poor personal interaction between two humans, sometimes a human who is just not on his customer service “A” game that day. Yet it’s the company and all of its employees that collectively take the heat and sometimes, as in this case, the hit to future sales opportunities.

I read this rant today about someone’s experience on Delta airlines. I doubt highly that there are any memos circulating at Delta instructing employees to handle situations in the way the employees handled this one. It’s more likely that this person was unlucky enough to interact with a group of employees who don’t embrace the philosophy of delighting customers, or perhaps were just having a bad day. A different flight at a different time of day with different employees manning the ship may have resulted in a completely fulfilling experience. Heck, the author may have even mischaracterized the events (but the credibility of his claim is increased a tad by all of the supporting comments added to the blog post).

But even though I understand that this isn’t likely a company policy and my Delta experience could be Heaven on Earth, this person’s experience has significantly reduced the likelihood that I’ll choose to fly Delta (I’ve flown Delta once in my career and don’t remember it being an unusual experience, either good or bad) for any future travel. Had I not read this particular rant, I’d have likely booked a flight on Delta without thinking twice.

Am I placing too much trust in the accurate portrayal of experiences by people whom I don’t even know? Perhaps. But with plenty of travel alternatives, why should I risk the possibility of a bad experience like this?

The story is a good reminder that every customer interaction is important, especially in service industries like banking where numerous alternatives abound. There is a bank or credit union on every corner and four of them between each corner. While existing customers may tolerate a little ~~abuse~~ disappointment in your service, potential customers are not likely to be as forgiving. So as a bank or credit union manager, what measures can you take to prevent his type of situation in your organization?

How to Make Sure You’re in Control of Your Bank Website

jasolution — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:24:00 -0400

Being that we’re in the business of website hosting and website development for banks and credit unions, we assist with a lot of website moves throughout the course of a year. Having been working with banks and credit unions to move, upgrade, redesign and create new websites for over 12 years now, I’m still surprised at how often I see one major issue that still catches bank and credit union managers by surprise.

Roughly one out of every four banks and credit unions that come to us find themselves in the uncomfortable position of learning that they don’t actually own their own website and in some cases also do not have control of their own domain name. While they may have the ability to update the content on their website, they don’t actually own the underlying code that drives the website. This means that when they want to move their website to our network (or any other hosting provider), they’re unable to do that without sometimes substantial additional expense.

Just this month I saw this again with a bank in Massachusetts that wanted to move their website from their current provider to a new company. The bank contacted me to help assist with the planning and subsequent move. Unfortunately, they discovered that they did not actually own the website code and their provider is not able to give them a backup of the site. Their only option was to recreate the site on a new, independent platform, which resulted in this decision from management:

We think it would be too much of a project without the source files. It just wasn't something planned for this year.

This most often happens in situations where the financial institution website is hosted on a shared platform that a provider uses to host many websites on a single underlying architecture. The website content is tightly connected to the platform and therefore cannot operate as a fully functioning site outside of that platform. Since the platform is often owned solely by the provider and is shared amongst many other websites, the provider cannot deliver a fully functioning backup of the website that the bank or credit union could take to another provider. Credit unions and banks that find themselves in this position either have to stay with the current provider or undertake the effort and investment to create a brand new website on an independent platform.

Another scenario that we encounter on a regular basis are websites that are built on a content management system (CMS) that is owned solely by the provider and does not include license to use the CMS outside of their hosting network. In these situations the bank may be able to receive a backup of portions of the website content, but not in a fully functional state since the website is tightly integrated with the CMS upon which it was developed. In this situation most financial institutions choose, or are forced, into developing a brand new website.

How do you tell if you own your website?

The best place to start is by asking your current provider what they will provide you if you decide to move your website. Will you receive all of the website files, including a backup of the database, that you could move to another hosting provider? It’s best to ask this question today rather than waiting until you’re in a situation where need to move the website quickly.

If you use a tool like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Contribute or similar desktop application to maintain web pages whose file names end in .aspx, .asp, .php, .htm or similar, then there is a good chance that you own your website and that you could move it to another provider.

What if you find out that you don’t own your website?

This doesn’t always spell doom, especially if you’re happy with your website and the company you work with to maintain it. Hosted platforms can sometimes cost less in initial development fees because the provider is spreading the cost across many clients and does not need to invest significant time into planning, design and programming your site. You will often give up flexibility in terms of design, features and customization, but for many small financial institutions who have not yet adopted an aggressive Internet marketing strategy, this is acceptable.

If you’re not so sure about your future relationship with your current web partner, then you may be wise to start planning your future migration strategy now. You’ll have time to better plan your strategy for your next website and spend more time evaluating your next partner.

What about your domain name?

In my next post, I’ll provide guidance on making sure that your domain name is properly configured under your control with a safe domain registrar.

P.S. The sites we develop are portable, so if you’re one of our clients, then you already know you’re in good shape.

Clearly Defining and Communicating Expectations A Key to Successful Web Development Projects

jasolution — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 01:09:00 -0400

I was on LinkedIn tonight catching up on some questions posted to an e-commerce group that I follow. A fellow member, Anthony from Sony Music Entertainment, posed this question to the group:

I've gone through several web developers but have not been satisfied with the results. What is the best way to find good web developers?

I've been using Guru, Elance, oDesk, and iFreelance to find web designers and developers, but haven't been impressed with the quality I've received. Most of the sites I've had built have not been very complex, but still have various bugs and design flaws. There have even been two instances where I've had to fire developers and start over with a new one. This is incredibly frustrating because I do a lot of research before choosing a developer, looking at past work and even contacting past clients.

I've found that most of the respondents on the freelance sites are outside the US (most are from India). Although I'm sure there are plenty of great developers in India and other countries, I prefer to work with a US-based company.
Now I have two separate ideas that will require a bit more complex web development. What is the best way to go about finding good web developers? (preferably ones that don't cost an arm and a leg)

Anthony’s woes are not unusual amongst people who use the freelance boards like those he’s been using. Anthony received some feedback from fellow members on the group, but nobody really addressed what I feel the root of the issue is – expectations. So here’s my response to Anthony (which, unfortunately, exceeded LinkedIn’s comment limit by over 1,000 characters, so that’s why I’m posting my response here to our blog rather than on LinkedIn).

Hi, Anthony,

To be candid, good developers usually do cost an arm and a leg because good developers are in demand with no shortage of people willing to hire them. The following advice may sound like tough medicine, but I'm writing with the desire to truly help you find a good development partner.

I suspect that one challenge you face is that you are not a software developer and therefore likely do not know how to differentiate between a "good" developer and a "bad" developer. The first step is to define exactly how YOU define a good developer.

I'll venture a guess that your assessment of good really is less dependent on hard development skills and more dependent on a subjective evaluation of whether the developer met your expectations. For example, if the end product and developer met your expectations for design appeal, website speed, timely responses to questions, etc., etc., then there's a good chance you'd label that person "good"; however, if you hated the website design, were unhappy with waiting three days for an email response and you thought your website was slow, then you’d call that person a bad developer.

None of those criteria may have anything to do with the actual quality of the developer but instead are simply a measure of how well he met your expectations.

So how do you find a developer who meets your expectations? The first step is to clearly define your expectations. Once you've done that, I then recommend you get to know someone with strong knowledge in the area of software development in which you intend to hire someone. Ask that person to assess your expectations and then help determine what skills a developer will need in order to meet those expectations. Make sure also that you can articulate your expectations…if you can’t then it is unreasonable to expect that even the most talented developer will be able to meet your expectations.

Armed with that information, perform actual interviews where you talk to the candidates. The interviews can be via Skype, telephone or in-person – NOT VIA EMAIL. Make sure to ask questions that help you determine whether this person understands and shares your expectations.

Using services like ELance, Guru.com, oDesk and the like are about on the same level as throwing darts, in my opinion. They are not designed to bring you together and allow the intimate interviewing process to occur that will help you find a developer that you’ll mesh well with. They’re designed to hook you up with cheap labor – period. If you don’t pay much, it is unreasonable to expect much in return.

Looking at past work and interviewing previous clients are nearly useless indicators of quality as well. In all likelihood, the past work is more indicative of the client's desires than of the developers skills. Ultimately many developers picking up gigs through services like that tend to do whatever the client asks for rather than focusing on helping the client achieve clearly articulated goals (which often don't exist either). If the client says, "Make those buttons blue." then the buttons become blue, regardless of whether the designer had recommended red, green or purple. How much effort do you expect from someone working for $10 per hour for someone they don’t know and will likely never meet?

Again, it’s all about expectations. If you’re paying one tenth the going rate for a developer, you should expect to get one tenth the quality.

As for interviewing past clients, that's a hit or miss proposition, too. I've seen hundreds of website and software projects that were complete garbage from a design, code and usability perspective, but the clients loved them because the end product met their expectations. I've also seen truly genius level programmers dismissed as hacks & know-nothings by clients who lacked the knowledge to discern "good" developers from "bad.” These genius programmers didn’t meet the clients expectations (and usually because the client did not or could not clearly communicate their expectations).

Invest the time (and it will be a good investment) to seek out a development partner that you feel comfortable with and with whom you can reach a clear understanding of your expectations. Seek out an advisor who you trust and who has the knowledge to evaluate potential developers’ skills, too.

Once you have found a good match, stop looking on the freelance boards and start investing in a long term relationship with your developer. The longer you work together the better you will understand each other's needs. The better you understand each other, the more likely you are to be satisfied with the outcome of your projects.

Will you pay good money for a good developer? Of course you will because they're in demand and there are plenty of other people willing to pay top dollar for his or her talents. But you've already experienced the results of hiring low cost developers and it doesn't sound to me like you're happy with the value there. Remember to focus less on price and more on value.

MemberProtect Gets A New Installer and Administration GUI

jasolution — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:11:00 -0400

While many geeks like us don’t always mind the challenge involved in conquering a new platform or software application, we also understand that time is money, especially for independent developers and consultants. Prior to our latest update, it would not be unusual for a developer using MemberProtect® for the first time to spend three or four hours setting up a new ASP.NET website project to use MemberProtect to perform user authentication, manage users, roles and privileges. We’ve now shaved that time from a few hours down to less than five minutes. Let me show you how.

We’ve added a new installer that will perform the following tasks for you automatically in less than five minutes:

Create a new database on your SQL Server
Automatically build all of the MemberProtect data structures in the new database
Create your first MemberProtect user, organization, role and privilege inside the database
Deploy a Lite version of our InetActive™ web-based site management application to your hard drive as a Visual Studio 2010 solution
Import your MemberProtect license into the application

For most developers, this solution will serve as a solid foundation for any new membership website, whether a small bank or credit union website, or for the next ginormous social networking phenomenon. Since MemberProtect is a membership & security framework, we do not lock you into any design or layout constraints - designing and building the front end website is still in 100% under your control. But the membership foundation is now in place, as is the web-based GUI for managing your users, organizations and roles. Since we’ve provided you with the source code, you can customize InetActive Lite to meet your needs.

Watch this video for a 10 minute walk through of the setup process and for an introduction to InetActive Lite. Or better yet, just download your free MemberProtect Lite Edition package and try it for yourself.

Getting Started with MemberProtect from InetSolution on Vimeo.

Friday Fun - Website Security Stick Man Battle

jasolution — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:18:00 -0400

If you haven’t seen the much ballyhooed throw down between normal website security and that of websites created using the MemberProtect framework, then you’re missing one of the most exciting 51 seconds of video on the Internet. Hasten to our blog to watch the battle unfold.

Special thanks to Don for putting his extraordinary talents to work to bring this battle to life.

P.S. If you’re an ASP.NET developer creating secure websites and you’re not yet using MemberProtect, then check it out. We now have a free Lite edition that you can download.

New Web-based Banking System Rolled out for Corporate Credit Unions

jasolution — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:29:00 -0400

When a group of seven corporate credit unions wanted to replace their Open Door transaction processing platform, they chose us to develop their new web-based platform. The result, based on the web-based system we’ve created for other corporates, is called CorPower. The new CorPower system is designed to allow natural person credit unions to perform Wire Transfers, Account Inquiries, Check Management, Coin & Currency ordering, Reporting and more. The CorPower system uses InetSolution's MemberProtect security framework for data protection and user authentication.

I’m willing to go on record to say that CorPower is the most sophisticated, modern online banking application in the corporate credit union industry today.

Key features:

Uses MemberProtect's risk-based authentication (RBA) system to control access to the application
MemberProtect Roles and Privileges system gives administrators complete control to manage and delegate user management to the individual credit unions
Combines MemberProtect’s built-in logging and custom auditing to provide a complete audit trail for all user actions performed on the system
Seamlessly performs OFAC checking for Wire transactions
Real-time Share to Share, Share to Loan and Member to Member transfers
Designed to run on a server farm for scalability and load balancing of both web and database traffic
Integrates with numerous back office applications to perform report processing, wire processing, future dated transactions and routine platform maintenance, such as log rolling

CorPower Logon Page

We delivered a reliable, high-performance application for well under the cost of other solutions in that market place and with superior functionality. We’re very proud of the CorPower application and its performance in the field. Due to our solid software design, we were able to hand over day-to-day maintenance of CorPower to in-house staff at U.S. Central Federal Credit Union and they have been able to perform minor rollouts and updates with only minimal assistance.

I think one of our CNP counterparts said it best with this statement,

You have been a pleasure to work with on this enormous project and I, too, am very proud of what we have all accomplished together as a team. There were many times when you and Justin made it very easy for me to want to put extra efforts into this project because you were so great to work with and cared deeply about the outcome.

P.S. For those who don’t know him, Justin was the software architect and programming lead on this project. Many others here at Inet assisted in developing, supporting and deploying the CorPower application.

Nearly Half of Households in Detroit are Unbanked

jasolution — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:22:00 -0400

Jeff Gerritt shares some eye opening insights into the banking – or lack thereof – habits of households within the city of Detroit. Party store and check cashing businesses, which charge up to 3% of the check amount, are the “bank” of choice for up to one half of the city’s households. Some of the reasons that these people say they don’t use traditional banks, and thus pay exorbitantly higher fees to cash their checks, are surprising.

One reason poor residents in urban areas like Detroit don’t use banks or credit unions is that they simply don’t trust them. As Jeffry Pilcher reminds us, even many people with money don’t trust their banks, even when the banks tell people to trust them. It’s not surprising people who are poor and lack basic personal financial management skills are leery of trusting financial institutions given all of the reinforcement marketers are giving to the negative evil banker stereotype.

Even if banks and credit unions can convince these people that they are not evil, the likelihood of any bank or credit union being able to retain these customers for long is slim. With overdraft and minimum balance fees anywhere from $9.00 to $35.00 each, someone who lacks basic financial literacy (which is likely a high percentage of Detroit residents since only 35.1% of residents over 25 have graduated from high school¹) is likely to rack up significant overdraft charges in a given month. Paying the 3% fee to cash their checks is likely a less costly alternative for these residents than paying bank fees every month. Despite what many critics claim today, the problem is not that the bank fees are too high, but that many people lack the education necessary to manage their money so that they can avoid those fees.

Educating parents about financial management is certainly one option to help steer younger generations away from this practice. After all, children tend to bank at the same institution as their parents, and in this case, that would be the local party store. But teaching parents in inner city areas like Detroit is expensive and difficult and it's nice that Goodwill is willing to take on that effort.

Reaching young people directly in their schools is another avenue that I feel holds value. For example, last year we donated our services to a credit union in New Mexico that is establishing and supporting student run credit unions in the local high schools. The students are involved in managing and marketing their credit union and they’ve incorporated financial literacy into the school’s curriculum. While I do not have any statistics showing the success of these programs, until I see stats that prove otherwise I’m inclined to believe that any financial management education that we can provide to young people is a worthwhile investment into these young people and into the future of the banking industry.

The article cites several other reasons why so many Detroit residents have chosen to remain unbanked and is worth a read if you’re involved with a Detroit area bank or credit union. Organizations like Reframe Detroit may also consider financial literacy training an effort worth undertaking as part of its People Renewal philosophy.

1. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006-2008 American Community Survey

Did the Bank Bashing Campaign have Unintended Results for Credit Unions?

jasolution — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:23:00 -0400

A few months ago I wrote about my aversion to the hot bank bashing marketing trend that some credit union marketers were exploiting mercilessly (and some still are). I’ve also been noticing the growing number of people in the credit union industry who are railing against Dick Durbin’s proposed interchange fee regulation. Could the two issues possibly be related?

As the discussion about Dick Durbin's new interchange fee regulations grows, one comment (from Bob) to the above-mentioned blog post continues to resonate with me.

I think Jason makes a good point! Too many times we get caught up in the frenzy of the campaign to criticize the competitors and do not realize how we might suffer the same backlash.

One example that comes to mind is when the public got mad at Ford over the Explorer and Firestone/Bridgestone tire issue. Ford SUV sales went down, but so did other SUV sales! The issue soon went from being an anti-Explorer campaign to an anti-SUV campaign. Soon television tabloids were running stories about all SUVs being bad and how they should be off the roads. Government standards were developed for testing ALL SUVs - not just Fords. This cost every manufacturer significant money to comply with these standards (some of which involved extensive record keeping and reporting).

Here, the public thinks that the TARP banks are bad, sure - but few know which ones are TARP and which ones are not. And, once people get irritated about banks and start thinking about what they don’t like about them, the conversation soon drifts to bank fees and interest rates and late fees and ATM fees.

Question: Do CUs charge any of those fees? If so, be careful and watch the anti-bank campaign as it might turn into a brush fire you lit that now turns into an "anti-financial institution" forest fire.

Pay particular attention to the Bob’s last sentence.

These new regulations, spurred by the “big, evil bank” backlash, whose flames some credit union marketers have been fanning, is now resulting in regulation that will substantially impact credit unions and small banks. As Vantage Credit Union’s write-up stated:

What’s interesting is we seem to have an amendment that is feeding on consumer anger that all financial institutions are bad and have hidden profit motives. Credit unions aren’t part of Wall Street. We are NOT a “greedy profit driven” financial institution. But, most importantly, interchange rates have absolutely nothing to do with the financial crisis and are completely out of scope of this Financial Reform Bill. But, don’t believe me. I’m biased right? I work here. So, let’s look at a couple interesting and unbiased groups who oppose the Durbin Amendment.

I think this was Bob’s point exactly. Credit unions and small banks are now caught in the firestorm that they helped to grow. Bob’s crystal ball was obviously showing a clear view into the future when he made that comment.

As marketers, we'll reap far greater rewards focusing on our customers and meeting their needs rather than talking trash about our competitors. Credit union and small bank marketers need get back to the business of touting their benefits and improving their own products & services and let the bank bashing fad die.