Credit union enhances member service with CRM

The Australian Central Credit Union (ACCU) recently upgraded its customer relationship management (CRM) system to Consona Customer Management Version 6.0 from Consona. The financial institution started its CRM initiative with Consona in 2003 after it came to realize that its member information was scattered across various siloed systems and that frontline employees found their time monopolized searching for hard-to-locate information instead of giving customers the best possible service. Consona Customer Management, which interfaced with ACCU’s existing applications, integrated customer information from those disparate systems and provided a front end that enabled staff to better serve members.

In the five years since that original CRM launch, the ACCU has refined and expanded its Consona solution, and realized a number of improvements along the way, including richer member information that enables more sophisticated sales and marketing efforts. Now the staff can focus more on providing advice and solutions to members than on tedious administrative duties.

David Hombsch, senior manager of technology services at the ACCU, says, “Over the past five years working hand-in-hand with Consona CRM, we’ve succeeded in meeting our business objectives, and we continue to look to the system to support ongoing strategic initiatives. What attracted us was the solution’s ability to mold to our business processes, rather than us having to completely re-engineer the organization around the software.

“The solution not only met our immediate needs, but had the scope to meet our longer-term growth requirements. We have been able to do things we hadn’t specifically contemplated at the outset, but which significantly enhanced our productivity and, most importantly, the experience we provide our members. There is no doubt that the implementation has been a resounding success.”

According to a press release from Consona, its solution allows ACCU to:

• view members’ holdings and interactions across all channels of the organization instantly;
• easily locate or compose customized documents and correspondence to respond to an inquiry or provide customer guidance;
• reduce and streamline manual and semi-manual work processes, enhancing productivity and providing a more effective audit trail; and
• expand its business strategy to adopt an integrated advice model and link members to personalized products and services.