Xtend, Inc., the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based multi-owned cooperative CUSO, recently completed its largest ever member outreach call project. The 9-month campaign, which was sponsored by its partner CU*Answers, Inc. (also a Grand Rapids-based CUSO), provided nearly 25,000 targeted outbound calls to members of the 59 credit unions that participated in the project.

“Our team really took that ball and ran with it,” says Julie Gessner, Manager of Communication Services for Xtend. “This is the second year our partners over at CU*Answers sponsored an outbound blitz on behalf of their owning credit unions, and by far it was the biggest project our Xtension Call Center has ever executed. Both CUSOs worked closely to develop a menu of campaign topics to choose from, and when the final numbers were tabulated, it was clear that we exceeded our goals across the board.” Gessner reported that a total of 24,748 member calls were executed, with nearly 25% of those calls resulting in a conversation with the member.

CUSO President Scott Collins noted, “I commend CU*Answers for choosing to be a catalyst for outbound member contact again this year. We all felt last year’s project was very successful, but this year we took it to a new level based on the number of leads that were generated. Overall, I think it validates that members want to hear from their credit unions, especially when they have a better solution or story to tell. Member conversations turned into leads more than 13% of the time which was huge, but we are shooting for even bigger number in 2012.”

Collins finished by noting that CU*Answers recently offered 500 free calls to all of the nearly 200 credit unions using its CU*BASE core data processing suite, making it the third consecutive year both CUSOs would be investing in a major lead generation project.