You only get one chance to make a good first impression, making the new member onboarding experience critical for fostering trust and building long-term relationships.

Nobody knows this better than $3.5 billion asset Canvas Credit Union in Lone Tree, Colo., which has 265,000 members and 29 branches. It received a 2021 Best of the Best Award for new account experience from Member XP. 

Canvas staff engage new members with a friendly needs-assessment interview, after which they make informed recommendations for products and services to make members’ experience as seamless as possible and help members achieve their financial goals. 

“We then follow up regularly to ensure their experience has been exceptional,” says Tansley Stearns, the credit union’s chief people and strategy officer.

“Our purpose is to help people afford life,” she says. “We do that by creating an exceptional experience that allows us to identify needs and make beneficial recommendations. For the member onboarding process to be most effective, we have to understand our members’ needs and meet them where they are.”

To achieve this, Canvas monitors and measures members’ experiential journey by collecting feedback about various points in the member onboarding process. This includes the initial contact, how the interaction progressed, timing expectations, and overall perception of the experience.

For each experience a member has with the credit union, Canvas measures the Net Promoter Score, Member Effort Score, and Member Effort Gap.

The credit union also asks “driver” questions, which are designed to discover pain points and moments of truth associated with the experience, such as identifying the needs of the new member, how welcoming the team member was, and whether there was appropriate follow-up.

2021 CUNA Operations & Member Experience Council and CUNA Technology Council Virtual Conference

This type of detailed feedback across the entire member experience is critical for continued growth and success, Stearns says. Canvas adds 2,600 new members each month with an average 2.25 products per new member.

“The work of crafting an exceptional new member experience is never done,” says Stearns. “We’re now implementing more personalized automation and additional options such as live chat and text to follow-up with our members. 

“With a focus on ease of use, we are mapping the member journey,” she continues. “This helps us identify additional opportunities for improving member experiences, not only with onboarding but also other areas of connection with Canvas.”