Adventure’s Text Messaging Journey

Today’s Credit Union members are embracing Text Messaging as an alternative to contacting a call center for information about their accounts. In addition, texting supports quick responses from members to Credit Union associates; the speed of communication helps to complete transactions such as loan approvals more quickly, ultimately strengthening the relationship between Credit Unions and their members.  

Adventure Credit Union is a community based Credit Union serving 10 counties in Michigan surrounding the Greater Grand Rapids and Lansing Metropolitan areas. Adventure has $420M+ in assets under management. They recently implemented an Eltropy Text Messaging solution to improve and streamline communication with their members.

Before Text Messaging became available, members relied upon Adventure’s call center to get answers to questions. With more than 30,000 members, phone lines could quickly become busy. 

“Now that Text Messaging is an option, we are seeing that a lot of our members with quick and/or easy inquiries are choosing to text, rather than call,” said Lauren Neracher, Adventure’s remote banking center manager.

“The Eltropy platform allows us to have employees from across the organization, not just in the contact center, respond to Text Messages. As a result, Text Messaging is probably the fastest way for our members to receive a response from a Credit Union employee.” 

By shifting some of those queries to Text Messaging, there have been fewer calls in the queue and shorter wait times on average.

The Covid-19 pandemic drove home the need for Adventure to provide an additional method of communication to its members. Accessibility and ease of communication were critical, particularly so the Credit Union could reassure members that Adventure was open to care for their financial needs.

“We felt that Text Messaging was the ideal solution,” said Amanda Garabedian, Adventure’s chief operating officer.

“We chose Eltropy because of the easy user interface and quick implementation period. The Michigan Credit Union League’s recommendation of Eltropy gave us even more confidence to move forward with the partnership.”

Training and Deployment 

Training the credit union staff to use Eltropy was simple, with most employees able to master the solution after attending a 45-minute training session and a bit of practice.

Adventure gradually ramped up the use of Text Messaging, first by adding information about the offering to its website and then to the greeting on its phone system.

Members’ response has been positive. Most who try it, like it and continue to use the channel rather than calling or coming into the branch.

Future Plans

Adventure plans to integrate Eltropy with its core system, Symitar. This integration will help provide a holistic view of their members’ activity. Additionally, the Credit Union remains open to finding additional use cases.

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by Team Eltropy

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