cuasterisk.com » Member Reach

Contact Center Expands Its National Presence

Tony Muka — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:41:26 +0000

During the first quarter of 2009, Xtend, Inc., a multi-owned cooperative CUSO headquartered in Grand Rapids, MI, spread beyond its Midwest roots as it began providing call center services for credit union partners in Massachusetts, Texas, and Washington D.C. These contact center services are provided by Xtension, a division of the CUSO that specializes in both inbound and outbound support initiatives for credit unions and industry partners. Currently the Xtension contact center supports twenty-two (22) credit unions throughout eight (8) states and the District of Columbia, as well as four (4) CUSOs in three (3) states.

The three most recent credit unions to deploy the shared staffing resources of Xtend are Boston-based Massachusetts State Employees CU, Houston-based Harris County FCU, and DC-based District Government Employees FCU. Each of these new partners wanted us to support their staff and members in a slightly different manner, says Xtend President Scott Collins. For one we provide overflow support to their in-house call center to give them increased coverage and expanded hours. For another we receive member inquiry and transactional calls based on automated routing as a cost-effective extension of the credit union staff. And the third partner has directed all inbound calls to our center as the first member point-ofcontact.

Collins believes that flexibility, integration, and the ability to deliver cost-effective solutions based on different rules of engagement and business plans are key reasons that credit unions are evaluating Xtends shared resources business units like Xtension more than ever before. Two of these partners have never utilized a third-party call center before and the third transitioned from a large national player. What an exciting challenge for our new contact center business.

Visit www.xtendcu.com to find out more about the CUSOs inbound (Branch XT) and outbound (Member Reach Plus) offerings.

Download Press Release

Member Reach Business Going Strong

Tony Muka — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:39:16 +0000

Xtend, Inc., a multi-owned cooperative CUSO headquartered in Grand Rapids, MI, reports that its electronic member communication business unit -Member Reach- continues to be one if its most widely utilized services, supporting forty (40) credit unions in seven (7) states and counting. The service delivers electronic messages to credit union members at timely moments in their relationship with the credit union. These messages are delivered across multiple channels including Email, Home Banking E-Statement, and IVR textto- speech. Over the past twelve months, Member Reach has delivered 1.24 million messages to credit union members.

Julie Gessner, Xtends Manager of Communications Services, believes the secret of the programs success is our ability to go from analyzing data, identifying a member audience, and delivering a specifically targeted message across multiple delivery channels in a matter of minutes. And we do so for over three dozen credit unions at a time. According to Gessner the key ingredients are the CU*BASE core data processing system from CU*Answers that is utilized by all Member Reach clients, a passion for mining the data it captures, and developing short, timely messages that tell the member we are paying attention to what is going on in your relationship with us.

Scott Collins, President of Xtend, attributes the success of the program to our willingness to do the busy work every day in support of our credit union partners, and because of our scale we can do so at the incredibly low price point. The CU*BASE tool set that we have in common has been solid for years all we did was provide the database analyst mentality, a passion to generate a buzz about credit unions, and a nobrainer price point of $50 a week.

The CUSO is also evaluating a future expansion of its HTML messaging and electronic newsletter services.

Download Press Release

Member Reach Business Going Strong

Tony Muka — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:04:15 +0000

Xtend, Inc., a multi-owned cooperative CUSO headquartered in Grand Rapids, MI, reports that its electronic member communication business unit — Member Reach — continues to be one if its most widely utilized services, supporting forty (40) credit unions in seven (7) states and counting. The service delivers electronic messages to credit union members at timely moments in their relationship with the credit union. These messages are delivered across multiple channels including Email, Home Banking E-Statement, and IVR textto- speech. Over the past twelve months, Member Reach has delivered 1.24 million messages to credit union members.

Julie Gessner, Xtend’s Manager of Communications Services, believes the secret of the program’s success is “our ability to go from analyzing data, identifying a member audience, and delivering a specifically targeted message across multiple delivery channels in a matter of minutes. And we do so for over three dozen credit unions at a time.” According to Gessner the key ingredients are the CU*BASE core data processing system from CU*Answers that is utilized by all Member Reach clients, a passion for mining the data it captures, and developing short, timely messages that tell the member “we are paying attention to what is going on in your relationship with us.”

Scott Collins, President of Xtend, attributes the success of the program to “our willingness to do the busy work every day in support of our credit union partners, and because of our scale we can do so at the incredibly low price point. The CU*BASE tool set that we have in common has been solid for years — all we did was provide the database analyst mentality, a passion to generate a buzz about credit unions, and a nobrainer price point of $50 a week.”

The CUSO is also evaluating a future expansion of its HTML messaging and electronic newsletter services.

Download Press Release

CUSO Begins Construction of New Headquarters

Tony Muka — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:43:24 +0000

Xtend, Inc., a multi-owned cooperative CUSO based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently began construction of its new headquarters location. Although the address will not have to change much — staff will continue to operate from within the facility that houses credit union partners from CU*Answers, WESCO Net, eDoc Innovations, and cuasterisk,com — the new space will bring together all twenty-three (23) full-time and part-time employees for the first time.

Although the space was occupied as recently as 2008 by a major national mortgage company, it still required a major “demolition and reconstruction” project in order to meet the needs of a diversified and growing company. Scott Collins, President of Xtend says “Our Company is still relatively young but we have been growing steadily. This new center has over 7,000 square feet of space, which allows us to bring the entire operation together for the first time in our seven years. The team and I are excited to say the least.”

Xtend plans to move its SRS Shared Resources and Staff business unit (compliance, bookkeeping, and mortgage support), the Xtension Call Center, and Member Reach ecommunication service to this new headquarters location as early as February 1st.

Download Press Release

Xtension Call Center Adds Outbound Member Calls!

Tony Muka — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:14:47 +0000

The Xtend CUSO recently announced that its Xtension Call Center was maintaining its steady growth of credit union clients and had recently added several new services for better serving members. These services included handling various inbound member calls as well as outbound calls via the Member Reach Plus service. Xtend says this Member Reach Plus offering represents an expansion of its proven Member Reach service, which contacts members at key points during their credit union relationship. Xtend claims that since 2006, Member Reach had delivered over 1 million messages electronically to members, triggered by a series of pre-defined events such as loans reaching maturing, new memberships and more. Xtend explained that since certain members prefer not to interact with the credit union via Online Banking and e-statement tools that it’s Member Reach Plus service is the perfect complement. Adding outbound calls to its menu of member contact services helps to ensure that no member gets left behind. This outbound call service is intended to work hand-in-hand with Member Reach as another delivery channel for outbound member contact, by simply being there at just the right time for its members. Xtend says that as the Member Reach products grow in number, it should provide a steady stream of outbound member contact activity for its Xtension Call Center on behalf of Member Reach participants.

Xtend says several reports summarizing calls and pertinent statistics to help leadership teams gauge the effectiveness of these member contacts are included as standard. They also stated that their Xtension Call Center provides the ability to free up a great deal of credit union staff time, and provides a service for which most credit unions would normally hire several staff to maintain. The Xtension Call Center currently manages approximately 1,400 outbound calls and 1,500 inbound calls per month.

Xtend concluded by saying that for credit unions utilizing the CU*BASE processing system, every member contact is logged into CU*BASE through its extensive Sales Tracker cross sales/ telemarketing tools and credit unions may easily track all Xtension agent activity side by side that of credit union staff.

Download Press Release

Xtend and Member Reach – Delivering the Message!

Tony Muka — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:57:58 +0000

Xtend, a multi-owned CUSO, announced it had designed a marketing platform for allowing credit unions to more easily contact members on a day-to-day basis. Xtend stated that the goal of its Member Reach service is to:

Electronically reach a credit union’s members 100 times more than they currently do.
Deliver consistent marketing messages to its members
Generate more services per member.

Xtend says that for credit unions using the CU*BASE processing system, Member Reach is an important tier of the Partners in Practice Marketing Package. Using CU*BASE tools and a variety of delivery channels, targeted members will receive email messages, online banking and statement messages, e-newsletters, audio response and optionally, a direct phone call. Member contacts are triggered by a variety of pre-selected events (28 total) including loans close to payoff, paid off loans, CD maturity, new members, Gen Y Members, tiered scoring relationships and more.

Xtend states that Member Reach is designed to tackle the daily contacts with members that most credit unions often talk about, but rarely find the time to implement. Xtend President Scott Collins says “no message is too small; they will be fast paced and quick hitting. Best of all, as based upon responses from a credit union and its members, we can adjust these messages on the fly!”

Currently, Xtend has partnered with 34 credit unions for using Member Reach, and is averaging over 100,000 member contacts monthly.

Download Press Release