Redefining The Credit Union Lobby Experience For Competitive Advantage

As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The moment a visitor enters your branch lobby, their opinion of your service quality and professionalism starts to form.

In an industry where sign-in clipboards and loud calls of "next" were frequently the standard, we thought it was time to introduce a new solution; to set a new standard. Our founder, SAFE Credit Union of North Highlands, California agreed. So, in 2003, Better Branches LLC was born and Better Lobby was launched.

Since that time, a number of American credit unions have improved their branch performance by using the Hosted or locally licensed version of the application. Credit unions using Better Lobby range in size from 18,000 to 250,000 members. To our knowledge, Better Lobby is the only CUSO built-and-sold lobby management solution.

How Does It Work?

Better Lobby helps with credit union branch operations by:

· Queuing arriving visitors for non-teller service quickly and easily by the first staff member to greet them

· Recording arrival, wait time, visit purpose and consultation time for every visitor to the service platform

· Encouraging higher levels of staff accountability for service quality through real-time reporting

· Providing lobby visibility to everyone, anywhere in the CU

· Notifying management of long waits

The result: the lobby visitor experiences significantly improved professionalism and confidentiality.

Unexpected Benefits

Following adoption of Better Lobby, our clients told us of several unanticipated benefits:

· Our clients discovered that having tellers logged into Better Lobby allowed them to make a very professional "hand off" to MSRs when visitors required platform service after completing their teller transactions

· Better Lobby contains most of the data needed by branch operations specialists to optimize staffing and scheduling

· Unmanned check-in kiosks were needed by some branches. In response, we developed PC-based Kiosk screens that permit visitors to log themselves into the lobby queue while maintaining lobby visitor privacy

Unexpected Recognition

In 2005, we were pleased to learn that SAFE Credit Union had been awarded the CUNA Technology Council Award for Best Sales Practices for the Better Branches provided New Account Opening Process, of which Better Lobby is an important part.