Delivering Your Brand Message Through Your Staff

As marketers we spend a lot of time developing our credit union’s brand and ensuring that all of our messaging reflects this brand. Knowing that our brand is really the sum of all the messages we deliver and of the members’ collective experience with the credit union, we need to make sure we are putting appropriate emphasis on the role our employees play as a delivery channel for our brand messaging and the brand experience.

Research indicates that members, despite the growing popularity of other delivery channels, still prefer the branch for banking transactions. They perceive face-to-face interactions as a higher quality service experience. 

It is imperative that we allocate the time and resources necessary to train our staff on what our brand promise is and what this looks like in member interactions. It also means providing them a strong knowledge of our products and services and, more important, an understanding of how they can help our members in each unique situation. Not only will this help us accomplish our sales goals, but will make our staff feel good about cross selling; because for them it won’t be about selling, but about serving our members and helping them with their finances.

First steps for involving your staff in delivering your brand promise:

• Develop brand guidelines that you share with your staff. Include dress codes, standards for teller station and desk decorations/personalization, social media usage and how members will be greeted and handed off to other employees. This sets clear expectations of how your brand experience should be delivered to members.
• Deliver brand training and involve all of your staff. Take time to explain your brand to your staff. Discuss what your brand promise means and how their interactions with members reinforce or break down that promise.
• Role play member interactions with your front line staff. Act out member interactions with your employees to help reinforce how your products and services are relevant to different life stages that members may share with to your staff. For example, if a member tells you they just welcomed their first grandchild into the world, explain how this is a perfect opportunity to tell them about your youth savings accounts so that the member can start out their grandchild with savings for their future.  
• Encourage staff to participate in community events that support your brand. Urge your staff to participate in the community events that your credit union supports so they feel a part of good work you do for the community. Explain how their involvement reinforces your brand within the community and the connection between the events and your brand.

If your credit union can accomplish this, your staff will have a purpose motive instead of a profit motive, with the end result being both. You are also meeting their urge to have a purpose that is satisfying by providing them the training needed to best serve your members with their financial needs.  

By making it a priority to provide your staff with the training and knowledge they need to comprehend the products and services you offer to the extent that they can recommend the most relevant products and services for each member’s unique situation, you can provide them the autonomy to do what they do really well. Listen and connect with your members and provide them with financial advice that will reinforce the credit union as a partner in making financial decisions. And isn’t that what most of our brands are about, being a financial partner with our members?