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.