Custom Research

10 Tips To An Effective Member Survey
By Jon Haller

So you want to conduct a member survey. Using member feedback to help guide your decision-making process and service offerings is not only admirable, it’s essential in today’s competitive financial services marketplace, if you are to ensure you’re best meeting your members’ needs.

You want to “do it right” to make sure you’re basing your decisions and/or making changes on reliable information. Your only question: “What do we need to do?”

Below are 10 steps your credit union can take to conduct an effective member survey and ensure the information is used to help implement positive changes, not serve as an expensive dust collector.

1. Get input on what issues to cover and/or questions to ask from people throughout the credit union – staff, board members, those in the marketing, lending, etc. functions. Topics typically covered by credit unions include:

• Credit union image (e.g., members’ perceptions of the credit union’s location, hours, rates, staff friendliness, staff knowledge, loan-approval time, etc.)
• Use of financial services – both at the credit union and elsewhere. This information will yield your credit union’s market shares of your members’ business.
• Members’ reasons for using other providers for their loan and/or savings needs.
• Interest in potential new services (e.g., bill payment, PC banking, account aggregation, trust accounts, debit cards, audio response, etc.).
• Choice of primary financial institution (PFI) and members’ reasons for choosing that institution.
• Demographic questions (e.g., age, household income, education, etc.) If you want to identify how members from different age and/or income groups, and members at your various offices differ in their attitudes and financial behaviors, be sure to include these questions on your questionnaire.

2. Prioritize your issues and eliminate “less valuable” questions. Chances are you’ll come up with a very long list of issues and questions. Select only those questions whose results could have an impact on your policies, procedures, service offerings, marketing strategies, etc., and toss out those with lower or no potential impact.
3. Choose a vendor, seeking proposals/cost estimates from at least two or three providers. (For guidance on “how to select a survey vendor, Click here.)
4. Work with your vendor to design your questionnaire. Leave four weeks for designing, printing and mailing the questionnaire.
5. Conduct two mailings, complete with cover letters. About three weeks after sending your first questionnaire, have your vendor send another copy of the questionnaire to those members who haven’t yet returned theirs. Conducting two mailings (instead of just one) yields a higher response rate and, most importantly, greatly increases the accuracy and reliability of your results. This step will take about six weeks.
6. Compile and analyze the results, with your vendor placing most of their focus on those findings that could call for changes to be made in your policies, procedures, service offerings, marketing strategies, etc. Allow six weeks for coding responses, data entry, computer analysis, and writing the report.
7. Ask your vendor to provide you a target-marketing matrix (a.k.a., a “lifecycle marketing matrix”) – information highlighting the best target markets to which you can promote your various services. Using this information and your MCIF, your credit union can realize tremendous cost savings, improved marketing efficiency, increased service usage and an improved "bottom line." (To view a sample matrix, Click here.)
8. Get a presentation of the survey results, including the recommendations for adjustments to the credit union’s policies, procedures, service offerings, marketing strategies, etc. The presentation should be the first item on your planning session agenda, and can also include research- and other information that lends further support for the recommendations.
9. Discuss the implications of the survey findings and recommendations, and assign responsibility and time lines for completing the recommended actions.
10. Establish a date to conduct a follow-up survey to identify changes in members’ perceptions and financial behaviors, new-product demand, etc. since the previous survey and/or since the changes in policies, etc. have been implemented. Most credit unions conduct their follow-up surveys two to three years after the previous survey.

To conduct an effective, reliable survey – including doing the 2nd questionnaire mailing – anticipate that the project will take about four months to complete once you have collected your issues/questions input. In other words, if you need final results for your Fall planning session, you should start collecting issue/question feedback in late May, so that you can finalize and mail the questionnaires in late June and have everything completed by late September.

Member surveys will identify a credit union’s competitive strengths, areas needing improvement, and opportunities for attracting more of its members’ business. Identifying and then shoring up these areas ultimately improves a credit union’s bottom line and member satisfaction. Obtaining member feedback should be an integral part of any credit union’s strategic planning process.

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