Nexus Connection

Green Standard in Banking?

Posted by Theresa Witham

As an editor for Credit Union Management, I take notice of interesting financial institution marketing, especially on TV. I live near Baltimore, and was impressed by the ads that PNC Bank has occasionally run in my market.

So I did a little research and learned that PNC, headquartered in Pittsburgh, has been committed to building green since 2000 and it applies green building standards to all new branches, claiming on its Web site and in television ads to have the most buildings on the entire planet certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.

More than 50 percent of the construction materials used in the bank's green buildings are locally manufactured or made from recycled or green materials--from the structural steel to the carpeting and fabrics throughout the building.

• Glass in the windows is three times more efficient than conventional glass.
• Natural "daylighting" is incorporated into all occupied areas of the building.
• Lighting fixtures and daylighting controls help minimize electricity use.
• Fresh air is used as much as possible. During moderate weather seasons, some buildings can be cooled and ventilated with 100 percent outside air.
• Reduced water usage results from the installation of dual-flush toilets (which give users a choice about how much water to use) and low-flow faucets.
• Heating and air conditioning systems use 35 percent less energy than traditional ones.
• Highly reflective roofing material reduces heat retention and is supported by trusses and plywood that come from managed forests, which plant multiple trees for each one cut down.
• Most everything is made from recycled material--from the steel structure to the carpet.
• Pre-manufactured exterior panels reduce construction waste.
• Roof projections were designed to shade the building interior from direct sunlight.
• Solar shades for windows block direct sunlight without eliminating daylight.
• The plants, adhesives and caulking used during construction do not contribute to greenhouse gases.
• Use of drought-resistant plants require little to no water.
• Green housekeeping procedures and green cleaning products are utilized.

The bank's corporate offices are also green. Plus, PNC works with real estate developers to determine if contaminated land, or "brownfield" sites, can be cleaned up and redeveloped for branches.

The bank applies its green efforts to all major construction projects. For example, if future development sites have existing buildings, they are "deconstructed" rather than demolished. For one project, this allowed the bank to salvage or reuse more than 90 percent of materials that would otherwise go to landfills.

What's good for the environment is good for employees, the bank says. A study found employee retention and satisfaction to be much higher at PNC Firstside Center, a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Silver certified building, than at similar traditional facilities.

And what's good for the environment is good for the bank's bottom line. PNC says the green practices can reduce its building operating costs by 35 percent or more. By improving natural lighting, heating and cooling, the bank says its employees are more comfortable and productive, and the gas and electric bills are reduced with advanced air-cooling systems. Plus, the HVAC technology takes advantage of seasonal pricing by using natural gas in the summer and electricity in the winter in select buildings.

PNC is not the only financial institution that is making a green commitment. Read several ways that CUs are getting greener in articles from the August 2009 "green theme" issue of Credit Union Management:

• Green Assets
• Greening Your Staff
• Living Green
• Shades of Green
• Walk the Green Walk

These CUs have promoted their green efforts to their members and their communities, fostering goodwill and showing their commitment to creating a better world. What is your credit union doing to support the environment, and how is it promoting its efforts?

Theresa Witham is a CUES editor.

Also read "Going Green Promotes Positive Press and Positive Impression" and "Going Green Neither Corny nor Idle" on CUES Skybox.

Learn how CUES saved $52,000 by making some small energy changes in CUES Cost Control Series: Facilities.

Learn more about green facilities in CUES Complete Guide to Credit Union Facilities.

Packaging (Loans?) Made Perfect

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

A friend I respect a lot for her medical knowledge (formerly an ER nurse, now mom and biology instructor) raved on Facebook recently about Target's new medicine bottle.

I asked Kristen for more specifics about just what she liked, and check out what she said:

It is really well thought out for people who are on multiple medications, and for families with more than one person taking medications: 1) Each family member is assigned a color--all the medications with the blue band belong to one person, and the red bands to another 2) The bottle itself is flattened, so all the information--drug name, instructions--is easily readable without having to read around a cylinder 3) The backside of the bottle includes a physical description of the medication inside--ever tried sorting pills for Grandma and wondered which medication was the yellow pill and which the blue? 4) The bottle is designed to stand on its lid, and the top (normal bottom) of the bottle has the name of the medication in large print--really useful for people who store their medications in a basket--they can identify the medication from above. Packaging science at its best. I am really impressed!

Now I have to say I really like and trust my local pharmacist, but this bottle is cool enough to at least turn my head and consider whether Target might be a good place to fill my next script. Read more about Target's marketing plans for the new bottle in this article.

In a way I can't believe I'm blogging about pill bottles this morning. I wonder if there's a way loans or savings accounts could be packaged that would make people turn their heads and think about switching over to your CU? Ideas, anyone?

Drum Roll, Please ...

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

Used to be you had to be on hand after the CUES Golden Mirror Awards banquet if you wanted to check out "the boards"--a room full of displays of the winning GMA entries. Marketers, CEOs, vendors, agency reps and I used to walk up and down long aisles of easels, checking out the great ideas, celebrating the successes, and loving the artwork and choices of color.

My how things have changed.

This year you and I can check out the best in credit union marketing right here, without ever leaving our seats. From that one link, you can view not only a list of winners, but the complete entries, artwork and materials for each one of the winners. And for the top three--the GMA Best of Show, the Rookie of the Year and the Golden Shoestring--there's also a video summary of their winning work.

So join me after the drum roll ... in congratulating--and being inspired by--the 2009 GMA winners!

Don't Just 'Super Size' me, Hook me Up

Posted by Ron Jooss

Last night I was coming home from the grocery store and I stopped in at Cold Stone Creamery (or Stone Cold Creamedy, as my 5-year-old son calls it). I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but somehow I never feel all that guilty about it. The kid who was working the store was hanging a Happy Halloween banner. He jumped off the ladder as I opened the door and said, "Welcome to Cold Stone Creamery."

The Cold Stone Creamery waiter/waitress is kind of the 00s equivalent of the soda jerk. They plop your choice of ice cream onto a slab of frozen marble and mix in the ingredients you choose. It's not a very glamorous job.

I ordered the same thing I always get, a large sweet cream with double cherry pie filling. Cold Stone is cool because the ice cream is great (it's laden with fat) and you can add your own ingredients. But I'm not very imaginative when it comes to adding ingredients. That said, I'm very happy with cherry pie filling. Or at least I thought I was.

The kid started making my order, then he asked me, "Would you like some graham cracker crumbs mixed in with that?" I said, "Wow, that sounds really good, just like a cherry pie. Go ahead, add it in." He laughed and said, "Don't worry, sir, I got you hooked up." Just as he was finishing, he said, "How about a little caramel with that?" "Perfect," I said. This kid was a pro!

This, my friends, is customer relationship building. The Cold Stone kid wasn't trying to Super Size me, he was truly trying to make my ice cream taste better--and he did. That ice cream was just about the best I ever had, the best ingredients in the right amounts, just a little graham cracker and a touch of caramel.

If that kid worked in a credit union call center, you can bet every member who called in to see if a check had cleared would learn about debit cards, and if they overdrew their accounts, he’d work with them to apply for overdraft privileges. Are your member service reps doing this for every member? If they are, they are not only truly improving the member experience, they’re helping each member have a little better day.

Ron Jooss edits the General Management and Board sections of CUES' Credit Union Management.

How Wired Should Employees Be?

Posted by Theresa Witham

There's a lot of talk about how Web 2.0 can be used to appeal to young members. But what about young employees? If employees are comfortable communicating via text or instant message instead of e-mail, how can a credit union use that to its advantage? And what about blogs? Can they appeal to potential employees, too?

Speaking of blogs, what kinds of policies do CUs need to regulate employee participation? I see two sides to this: There are the policies that deal with employees who are blogging on behalf of the credit union or commenting on work-related blogs. These policies need to spell out what the employee can and cannot do. (Tim McAlpine has a great post about blog policies and paranoia on his Currency Marketing blog.)

But what about employees who have a personal blog, MySpace or Facebook page? Maybe they post pictures of their dogs and kids, or maybe they talk about model trains, or maybe they write about their weekend activities. Maybe those weekend activities are completely legal, but perhaps not the most professional. Can a CU do anything about that?

Then there are the policies that ban all blogging from work, lumping CUES Nexus Connection in the same category as stuffonmycat.com. I know I am biased here, but the CUES blogs and the blogs of many of our commenters have interesting posts and wonderful conversation. Why not amend those policies to let employees read and participate in any blogs directly related to their work, whether it's a CU blog or one that relates to a job function, such as marketing or HR? Also, do the rules change (and should they?) if it's the CEO or a vice president blogging instead of a loan officer or membership services rep?

I'm seeking background for a future Credit Union Management article and would love to hear your ideas. Thanks!

Promotion at the Expense of ID Protection?

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

I read this blog post recently, suggesting that consumers should call their financial institutions and opt out of all direct mail marketing offers, especially direct mail that contains promotional or convenience checks. The poster, Tom Fraglia Fragala, CEO of identity theft prevention company Truston, explained that he had twice been a victim of ID theft when such checks were stolen from his mailbox.

It made me consider the balancing point between promotion and the protection of members' identities. Would it be better to skip sending checks that a member doesn't know he's getting (and therefore can't watch for in the mail) in favor of avoiding the bad PR when a few members' identities get stolen? Or is the payback of sending such checks so high to financial institutions that it's worth the risk? What's your thought?

Lisa Hochgraf is marketing/operations editor for CUES' Credit Union Management magazine and edits the CUES Tech Port e-newsletter, News to Go.

Pain-Relief Dialogs

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf with lots of help from Mary Arnold and Christopher Stevenson

If you want to set yourself apart, identify members'  pain points, and remedy them.

I got to thinking about pain relief because of a wonderful experience I had recently at one of Rochester's much-loved Wegman's grocery stores. The pain-relief dialog I might have had with the grocer goes something like this:

Me, the frustrated corn eater: "The corn silk makes a mess, whether I husk it in my kitchen or on my deck. What a pain!"

Helpful Wegman's grocer: "Okay, Lisa and your silk-hating friends, here's a place you can shuck your corn and leave your mess with us, the kindly grocery store."

Needless to say, several other Wegman's lovers and I stood around in the produce section Sunday, happily husking corn, leaving the mess behind, and talking about how great this was.

I was so excited about this (who knew?!), I asked both Mary Arnold and Christopher Stevenson at CUES what they would see as parallel customer experiences in CU land.

Mary suggested credit unions could welcome children's coin deposits. That pain-relieving dialog might go something like this:

Frustrated parent: "I want my kid to learn about money, but the bank spurns him bringing in his piggy bank."

Helpful CU: "Your child can come to our branch and use our free, character-branded coin counters to convert coins to the equivalent of an ATM ticket. Your little one can take the ticket to a teller station and make a deposit."

Talk about easing the pain! Mary's article about Commerce Bank doing just this also describes how ING has set itself apart by focusing (and I really do mean focusing--they don't do a ton of other things) on helping people get around the pain of saving.

Here's Christopher's CU pain-relief dialog. And his has an interesting twist. He describes a way CUs are already relieving members' pain. The problem is, of course, that not enough members know CUs can help them this way. But first, the dialog:

Frustrated CU customer: "This is awful. I'm moving to a new town and either have to close out all my accounts and re-open them at a new bank or credit union in my new town or use that online banking stuff (but I like to go to the branch and get face to face service)."

Helpful CU: "No you don't, frustrated CU member. Just use our shared branching network and you can take advantage of all the services you've grown accustomed to here with a face-to-face transaction."

OK, so providing pain-relief to members is nothing new to credit unions. Keep on keeping on ... and be sure to blow your own horn about it.