I just become the father of three teenagers. My youngest turned 13 on Mother’s Day. Yikes! Yes, the over sleeping, late for the school bus, and eating me out of house and home issues abound in my house — as they do in many others, I assume. I am far from an expert on teenagers, but I am learning a lot these days about the younger end of the millennial generation.
I am impressed with this generation. I find them very sincere, helpful, and possessing an unfathomable ability to effortlessly integrate new technology into their lives.
Micah Solomon, a customer experience consultant based in Seattle, recently wrote an article for Forbes magazine entitled, “2015 is the Year of the Millennial Customer: 5 Key Traits These 80 Million Consumers Share.” In it, he looks at character traits of millennials as they relate to their role as customers. This got me thinking about how these customer traits fit with credit unions.
Here are the 5 traits and how they relate to the credit union movement.
1. Millennials expect technology to simply work — so you’d better make sure that it does.Advances in technology have leveled the playing field between big and small financial institutions. Responsive websites, complete online banking, mobile apps, tablet-based iBranches, — we have it all. There’s nothing the big banks do technologically that a credit union can’t do better.
2. Millennials are a social generation — and they socialize while consuming (and deciding to consume) your products and services.Check the bottom of this blog. We’re actively involved in every form of social media. We love interacting with our members as much as they love socializing with us.
3. They collaborate and cooperate – with each other and, when possible, with brands.
Collaborate and cooperate. These words define the credit union movement whose mantra is “People helping People.” Credit unions are financial cooperatives with the sole goal of protecting and paying interest to those with a little extra money and loaning it those who need to borrow to purchase a car, house or start a business.
4. They’re looking for adventure (and whatever comes their way).
Adventure, is interestingly defined in the article. The author states that “…they prefer an ‘experiential’ retail environment, where shopping is more than a transaction and the pleasure of being in the store isn’t limited to the goods that customers take home.”
Watch this short video about our new iBranch and decide for yourself if it feels more like a conversation than a business transaction.
5. They’re passionate about values — including the values of companies they do business with.
Credit unions are also education and community based – not sales based. We offer diverse and proven educational methods including web-based courses, written worksheets, videos, and even classroom training.
Heavy on technology, looking to collaborate with others, and expecting social consciousness sum up these traits. Sounds just like a credit union to me.