Enter “how to avoid a security breach” in any search engine and you will see no shortage of opinion and advice.  Some of it salient and wise. Some of it questionable and dangerous. This article is based on twenty five years spent in the financial, health care and telecommunication industries focusing on technical and security issues.  I have personally been involved in handling three significant security breaches, dozens of reputation affecting security events, and thousands of security incidents affecting productivity.

Organization size and security budget applied are irrelevant to the competency and preparedness of IT people responsible for that security.  I have seen effective security programs on a shoe string budget and grossly ineffective programs with big budget, corporate authority, and scores of security people.  

So, how do credit unions and other financial institutions avoid a security breach?

READ MORE>>

Do you ever stop to wonder how much you are really spending on unnecessary phone calls to your call center? You are not alone. According to a SilverCloud survey of over 200 credit unions and banks, 63% of the respondents said that their subject matter experts and managers spend more than one third of their day answering front line questions. While phone calls are an integral part of the customer experience, there are ways to decrease call center costs while keeping your customers happy.

Your business-critical documents are an essential element of your customer engagement strategy because they serve as one of the primary lines of communication between you and your customers. Poorly designed documents end up costing you more time and money on unnecessary customer service calls, low electronic adoption rates, customer frustration associated with hard–to–understand billing, lost marketing opportunities, and poor corporate image.

Here are five document design tips to guarantee a clean and concise customer communication vehicle that will not only aid in decreasing call center volumes, but will also increase your profits by driving behavior and elevating overall customer satisfaction.
​

1. Eliminate- Too much white space in a document can cause the eye to wander. Additionally, it creates wasted page real estate. Capitalizing on the space you have will enhance readability, as well as cut paper and postage costs.
2. Consolidate- Why not combine notices and statements within the same envelope by merging information and printing on both sides of each page? This will reduce print and mail volumes, as well as improve the user experience as they will not have as many envelopes to sift through. It’s a win-win!
3. Personalize- Personalizing your business-critical documents is one of the best ways to create a unique and memorable experience for the customer. Tailor marketing specifically to the individual by including his or her name in the copy of the statement—it will make a huge impact on overall satisfaction.
4. Simplify- Document designs that yield ultimate readability are proven to reduce call center volume because they decrease the chances of customer confusion. Some ways to simplify your documents include using color and graphics to highlight important information, as well as prominently displaying “calls to action” at the top, middle or bottom of each document.
5. Replicate- This is the HOLY GRAIL of document design to minimize  time spent on each call. By arming your CSRs with exact replicas of what the customers receive will allow them to quickly navigate documents and answer questions quickly and efficiently. This will improve customer satisfaction by providing customers with timely and knowledgeable responses and little to no wait time. When you step back and think about it, your customers are busy, so when you save them time, you make them happy!