By Robert McGarvey

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the truest.

When I ask credit union executives how they plan to innovate to remain competitive with banks – and at least the big banks are whirlwinds of tech experimentation and innovation – I hear back about chatbots, instant messaging, hoped for improvements in antivirus, and a lot more. All good. But – in my view – none is likely to move the competitive needle for any credit union.

But a new survey from TimeTrade, a developer of appointment scheduling software, just may have fingered the exact differentiator credit unions need to stay viable in a world of every bigger and slicker banks.

The 2016 survey asked 1064 credit union members about their experiences and the answer came back that they very much want one thing: “Results reveal that credit union members desire more personalization and more in-person interaction at the branch than bank customers do. This is supported by the survey data, which shows that not only is personalization an in-branch priority for credit union members, but they visit their branch more often than the typical bank customer.”

What is dazzling about this insight is its simplicity: Credit unions excel at what in their hearts most credit union executives have long believed is their strong suit, that is, people skills and personalization of the member experience.

You have never heard a credit union CEO say his/her institution is winning over more members because it spent millions on a new core system – at least I hope you haven’t heard that.  I happen to know what core my credit union runs on and, honestly, I don’t care and I am a tech guy.  I would care if it didn’t work but it works fine and that’s the end of the story.

I don’t know many members of any credit union who have a clue about cores and why should they?

Besides, banks can win the tech spending race every day, all the time.  J. P. Morgan Chase is spending $500 million on cybersecurity and probably that is much more than all of the US’s credit unions added together will spend.

Other banking behemoths do likewise.

Pick fights you can win.

Person to person is a winnable fight.

The TimeTrade survey gave credit unions the lead in personalization: “85 percent of members feel they have a personalized experience with their credit union, versus only 79 percent of customers who feel the same about their bank,” said TimeTrade.

Millennials too are on this bus: “Among millennial members (respondents ages 20 to 35), 43 percent said they value the personalized experience they receive from their credit union,” said TimeTrade. That is, it’s not just older Baby Boomers.  

Interesting, too, per TimeTrade, is that “77 percent of millennials are willing to schedule an appointment to visit their credit union branch for specialized service, compared to 68 percent of all members.”

So there is no proof – per these data – that millennials have written off branches and personal interactions at them. Quite the contrary.

A staggering factoid in 2016 is this: “43 percent of members visit their credit union more than 10 times a year,” reported TimeTrade.

Many of us – this reporter included – have predicted the death of the branch as slick technology (mobile banking, mobile remote deposit capture, etc.) has made it unnecessary to set foot in a branch.

Just maybe we have missed the point. Just maybe a substantial subset of credit union members go to the branch because they want to.

What that means for credit unions is simple. Train employees to excel at member service and always hire frontline people to whom that matters.

While you are at this, think hard about buying up abandoned bank branches – which in many markets are available at distressed pricing.  That advice represents a reversal of much prevailing thinking (mine included) but if the credit union secret sauce is personalization and if branches are cheap in many locations, it becomes a simple and cheap equation that may lead to greater marketplace visibility and perhaps victory.

Always ask: will this next step help us personalize service to more members?

When the answer is yes, it just may be a good idea.

Even better is that winning the battle for personalized service is within a credit union’s skill set.  It’s a fight where intimate scale becomes a plus.  Where local management and leadership can help an institution triumph over a behemoth with Wall Street leadership.

Sometimes the path to victory is shorter than we might think.

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

It’s not about the money.  But I assure you 2017 will end without me being elite in any airline program.

The numbers just don’t add up anymore.

We all know that this is the year when all the big carriers have joined in imposing a minimum spend to qualify for elite status, at any level.  On American, that’s $3000 for entry level gold, $6000 for Platinum. $9000 for Platinum Pro. And $12,000 for Executive Platinum One World.

The other big US carriers – United and Delta – have similar requirements, although Delta has a $15,000 minimum spend for its top status.

Color me uninterested.

Definitely money is not the obstacle. Often I hear people saying that the new spend requirements will deter travelers from pursuing elite status.  I don’t believe it.

There are more profound reasons for declining interest.

Hitting the lowest dollar targets is easy. Round trip to EWR from where I live, PHX, runs around $500.  One to  Reagan Airport will run around the same.  Figure a couple trips for me this year to EWR, at least one to DC, probably a few to Florida.  Add in flights to Las Vegas – who knows how many but in some years a lot – and some to DFW and, really, there are no hurdles to elite status on my behalf.

Neither dollars nor miles.

But it would require loyalty to a single carrier and I don’t see the point.

Partly it’s because I now live in Phoenix where no carrier truly dominates.  The numbers put American in the lead but Southwest nips at its heels and, often, there are good reasons (price and convenience) to prefer Southwest. Recently I’ve flown American, Southwest, United, Delta and it’s all the same to me.

If I still lived in Jersey City, where I lived for most of this century, I would be all in with United because I only flew from Newark – in eight years, not once from JFK or Laguardia – and that meant United. (Continental before the merger.)  Word of advice: if where you live puts you in that kind of near monopoly, earn elite status because very probably it’s inescapable.  

But a lot of towns are like Phoenix – it’s just as convenient to fly one carrier as another and in those cases suddenly elite status loses its attraction.  Give me the choice and I will opt for the ability to pick the best carrier for each flight, rather than accumulating miles in pursuit of a goal of becoming elite.

That’s because elite status – at all but the very highest levels – brings no real benefits that I don’t already have.  Low level, under $100 annual fee American and United credit cards give me free bag check and priority boarding.

Those of course are two of the prime perks of low level elite status.

Southwest sells priority boarding.

Also included in low level are eligibility are upgrades – and know the likelihood of getting one approaches nil.

A low level elite gets a 40% mileage bonus that I don’t get – but since I buy tickets with the airline cards I get my own bonus anyway.

An elite gets better seat selection – that is fact and can be a real plus in economy. But often I can buy those same seats for a few dollars extra, so maybe that benefit cancels out.

Do you see why elite status has lost its appeal to me?

Several friends have the highest status and that is a different world.  They get real perks – upgrades, often; upgrades for companions; 120% mileage bonus; 3 free bags checked; complimentary same day flight changes; a genuinely exclusive service desk; guaranteed availability in the main cabin; and a lot more, some of it genuinely useful.

Alas, I don’t fly that much to qualify for super elite (100,000 miles on American, plus that $12,000 which often is the easier part). But if you believe you will – without going very far out of your way – go for it. The perks are sweet.

But for the rest of us, the question is: is elite status worth breaking a sweat to earn? And my answer is, nah.  Just don’t bother.

Especially not for the lower levels.

Buy a credit card associated with the airlines you will fly most often, get the priority boarding (also free bag check if you use it), and then exercise total freedom to book the flight that works best for you.

Airlines have forced this reality on us, by curtailing the perks that matter (upgrades in particular, although award tickets to prime destinations are also said by many to be harder to score).  As for the rest of the perks, they can be gotten in other ways.

And that’s exactly what I plan to do in 2017.

By Robert McGarvey

There I was, kvetching about the grind of the road, when an oldtimer gave me a jaundiced squint and told me that, obviously, I did not know the secret.

What secret?  “Do something for yourself on every trip.  Do something new that you really, really want to do.”

“It’s not about your bosses. This moment is about you.”

That was some years ago and it changed my perspective on business travel. It went from being a grind to fun.  Genuine fun.

Note: this “secret” does not have to involve a major commitment, of time or money. But make it local, make it special, and you’ll remember your trip to city XYZ with a smile.

This is how to personalize a blur of meeting rooms (and the ones in Houston look exactly like the ones in Orlando).

Case in point: Phoenix, where I live.  It’s easy to dismiss the nation’s sixth biggest city as a blur of suburban mediocrities and much of it honestly is exactly that.

But there’s more, better to be discovered.

I tell all visitors to downtown to make a quick trip to the Heard Museum, which happens to be in my neighborhood but more importantly it just may be the country’s premier museum for Native American art.  You won’t see its collections at the big city museums and you will be glad you did take the time to see them in Phoenix.   

You have never seen anything like the Barry Goldwater katsina collection.

The Heard is maybe a 10 minute lightrail ride from downtown.

Your meeting is in Scottsdale?  Go to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art where you will see very contemporary, typically avant garde works.  

Don’t think all I do is look at art. Already I know my next outing when I am in New York and that’s Ben’s Best in Queens, said by some to serve the best pastrami in New York and a place I have not yet made it to. I am a longtime Katz’s booster so tI know I will be pleased with Ben’s even if I still remain a Katz’s guy.  And of course if you have never eaten pastrami at Katz’s, go to this Lower East Side deli on your next trip to New York.

When next I am in Washington DC I will make time to eat in a Jose Andres restaurant, mainly because he has emerged as one of the country’s most interesting cooks. What about Ben’s Chili Bowl?  Your call. The place is famous, celebrated, but there are more grumbles that it no longer cares. And that always is a risk with a town’s most famous, traditional eateries. Often they are coasting, have been for decades, so take a few minutes to hunt down contemporary opinions before investing your precious few hours of exploration.

You are heading somewhere you are clueless about? Ask business associates what they recommend. I cannot tell you what to do in Chicago, a town I like but only as the occasional visitor.  But you know people who have ideas – ask them.

Do that whenever you are heading to a town with which you are unfamiliar.

Oh, and ask people who share your tastes. I have a business associate – we all have one like this – who knows every top sushi joint in every city. Ask him where to go in Phoenix and probably he’d point to Hana – a good choice, by the way – but I’m the sort who will politely nibble sushi but I am not making it my centerpiece and I have never gone out of my way to eat it.  So I don’t ask him about his local favorites.

I have other friends who are habitual shoppers. Their tips, too, are useless to me.

The idea is: ask people who share your enthusiasms.

As I think about my 2017 to-do’s, I get more excited about travel.

Pretty much every city I travel to has something I want to explore and that prospect excites me.

Is there any town that foils my strategy? Las Vegas does.  I go there a lot and, in the past 10 years, I don’t recall seeing a single show or eating a decent meal or, really, doing anything except work.  Days are long blurs from stand up breakfasts in meeting halls to late night emails at my room desk.  

Next time – really – I have to stop in Gold and Silver Pawn, the home court of Pawn Stars, a reality TV show I confess I have watched probably too many times.  

My list isn’t your list however. So start filling out your local to-do’s. That’s the fast way to make business travel special in 2017.

3 Easy Steps for Safer Mobile Banking – McGarvey on #creditunion technology http://bit.ly/2hgWFtb

 

By Robert McGarvey

Finally a hotel technology push – a big one – that is worth applauding. Wynn Las Vegas has announced that its 4748 rooms will be equipped with Amazon Echo, the voice driven answer machine, aka Alexa.

Much – most – hotel tech “innovation” leaves me bored or cranky.  It’s an industry that generally is at the rear of the curve when it comes to technology adoption and I point you to the silly in-room phones that hoteliers continue to talk about. No, I haven’t used one in a decade and can’t say I miss this.

Hoteliers also babble about robots which, I suppose, are okay but I have not personally seen one yet and can’t say I care. Ditto for beacons, which are the buzz in some quarters.

Alexa is a different matter. I have owned an Alexa since January 2015, and just recently installed a second, the diminutive Dot – in another room in my house. I don’t go a day without talking with the Echoes I own. Alexa has dramatically simplified my life and is a poster child for technology that works.

Here is why I am excited about what Wynn is doing: Let me take you back maybe five years when I checked into a Strip hotel.  I don’t name it not to protect the guilty but because I don’t remember which one. In Las Vegas I have no brand loyalty and generally stay close to whatever meeting brings me to town.

But Wynn may be winning me over to the Wynn brand with Echo because this solves a big problem for me.

Back in Las Vegas some years ago – I come back to the room late one night, the window’s drapes are to the sides, the lights of the Strip cascade into my darkened room. I have to close the drapes to sleep.  Honestly, it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to use the electronic system to close the things so that I could go to sleep.

In some rooms, too, in-room lighting is a mystery to me. Occasionally so is the thermostat.

Wynn Hotels plan to solve exactly that pain with its Echo installation.  The device will roll out with a limited range of skills but they are exactly what I want in a Strip hotel.  In a press release Steve Wynn said, “The ability to talk to your room is effortlessly convenient. In partnership with Amazon, becoming the first resort in the world in which guests can verbally control every aspect of lighting, temperature and the audio-visual components of a hotel room is yet another example of our leadership in the world of technology for the benefit of all of our guests.”

That’s a helluva tangled sentence but as I parse it, Wynn is saying you can ask his Echoes to close the drapes, turn lights on or off, raise or lower the temperature, probably control the TV.

And exactly those are the things that too often confuse me in Las Vegas rooms.

Wynn’s Alexa should also be able to handle the questions and tasks I throw at mine daily: What’s the weather? What time is it? Set an alarm for 6 a.m.. Give me a news update. Etc.

You can do the latter – much of it – with Siri, certainly with Google’s voice recognition tools. But neither of them can handle your in-room comfort and what matters more than opening/closing the drapes, setting the temperature and the limited range of Wynn specific skills enabled on his Echoes.

If I had to predict a hospitality tech trend for 2017 and beyond it is that we will see more voice activated devices in hotel rooms, at least those with somewhat sophisticated in-room equipment.  And probably the winner will be Dot, mainly because of the price point.  Amazon sticker s $50 – but I got mine for $25 (net), by combining various Amazon offers.

The big brother Echo costs $140. That’s what Wynn is installing.

Google Home costs $129. It’s doubtless a good device – Google voice rec works superbly on my Pixel phone, vastly better than Siri on an iPhone. But Amazon already has a vast user base and that’s a plus for any hotelier. Guests need no instruction with Echo.

Watch, too, as Wynn enables more skills – that’s my bet. Soon guests will be able to make restaurant reservations, book spa treatments, buy show tickets just by talking with their in-room assistant.  Program the device to know the room it is in, that connects to a credit card and right there commerce is enabled. Send the guest a confirming email and there’s some verification.  I’d use it.

Now if only hotels would finally eliminate the front desk check in routine, a process that is honestly unchanged in my 40 years of checking into hotels.  Okay, way back when, accounts were usually settled with cash, not credit cards, but really nothing else has changed.  For many years hoteliers have talked of eliminating the front desk check in.  I’m still waiting.

And you know what? Alexa already is Expedia enabled and, probably with some minor tweaks, Expedia could handle check-in, even issue an electronic key to my phone.

I’m ready. Are you?

 

The Coming Culture Wars in the Trump Era: Frugality vs. Consumption – TheStreet http://bit.ly/2gBVdB8 My reporting

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By Robert McGarvey

Voice calls are coming to airplanes – rather they are coming back.

Loud – protesting – voices are getting raised but, really, this is progress, baby, and it won’t be derailed by people with no memory of history.

First: here’s why I am convinced we will soon be permitted to make voice calls inflight.  The US Department of Transportation has issued a proposed rule to protect passengers “from being unwillingly exposed to voice calls on aircraft.”

DoT is not seeking a ban on such calls. Quite the contrary.  What DoT is seeking is “to require airlines and ticket agents to disclose in advance to consumers if the carrier operating their flight allows passengers to make voice calls using mobile wireless devices.”

The Federal Communications Commission, by the way, has sway over cellphones’ cellular radios and the FCC continues to ban voice calls inflight.

DoT is looking instead at WiFi calling – available via Skype, Google Voice, What’s App, many more apps, also T-Mobile and at least some other cellular carriers.  Said DoT: “As technologies advance, the cost of making voice calls may decrease and the quality of voice call service may increase.”

Meantime, the big air carriers have been pushing WiFi providers – mainly GoGo – to up their game.  There is every indication that will happen and, truth is, WiFi calling with What’s App, Skype, et. al. is not bandwidth intensive anyway.  Skype, for instance, says the minimum bandwidth for voice calling is 30kbps. It recommends 100kbps.  That is not a high hurdle.

DoT admitted that the last time it raised the topic of inflight voice calls – in 2014 – the people spoke and they weren’t happy.  “In February 2014, the Department had issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) regarding the use of mobile wireless devices for voice calls on commercial aircraft.  In response to the ANPRM, a substantial majority of individual commenters expressed opposition to voice calls on the grounds that they are disturbing, particularly in the confined space of an aircraft cabin.”

This ire puzzles me.  I recall getting a call from a business associate who was inflight in the mid 1980s.  He was using Airfone – the inflight system birthed by John Goeken, founder of MCI. It debuted in the early 1980s and was still in at least some planes until 2006.

Airfone never enjoyed much use.  We all saw the phones – usually in the seatback of the middle seat in coach; in every seatback up front. But high prices – in 2006 calls cost $3.99 plus $4.99 per minute – seemed to stall usage.

Publicist Richard Laermer in fact said the price of an Airfone call was why the service triggered few complaints. “With Airfone, it was so expensive you made it and hung up.”

He’s right. Airfone calls generally were minimalist.

Laermer said that won’t be so with WiFi calling.  “The Wifi calls are going to be ‘Hey. Hi. Just calling to see how you are.’ And that’s going to eat people up inside. It’s bad enough listening to someone drone on and on with their seatmate, but to listen to half a conversation will start a revolution in the air. I think this is a very bad idea. Coming from someone who travels every week…it’s going to cause people to start knocking phones out of people’s hands.”

San Diego PR executive Antoinette Kuritz said similar: “For many of us, plane time is time to read, relax, disconnect.  Others are prepping for the meetings to come when they land.  Then there are those who nap.  The chatter rampant cell phone use will allow makes all of that impossible.  We will be subjected to the often inane one-sided conversations of those who need to display their connectivity to others.”

I can’t disagree with those who wish phones would stay off planes.

But here’s the deal: Satellite phone calling already is available on at least some flights. 

Then, too, WiFi calling already is happening inflight. Yes, the air carriers and their WiFi providers seek to block access to the known WiFi calling services such as Skype. But the Internet is ever inventive and new services multiply like cockroaches in a New York tenement.  A whispered reality is that calling already is happening, maybe mainly in hushed tones inside a locked bathroom.

My belief: inflight calling will come to airplanes, probably by 2020, very possibly via captive services and with high tariffs involved.  It’s unlikely that carriers – who seek to shake a dime out of every passenger interaction – would let this opportunity pass.

Couldn’t it still be an annoyance? You bet. That’s why frequent flyer Andy Abramson has said for this to work, there will have to be guidelines monitoring when calls can be made and more. His list – which includes a ban on profanity – is here.

Abramson also wants no calling rows so those who want silence can find it.

Read Abramson’s suggestions because – bet on this – calling is coming to planes.

There might even be a plus in this for all of us, whether we personally make and receive calls at 30,000 ft. or not.  If enough revenue comes in from calling, the carriers just may – really – seek real upgrades in inflight WiFi.  And that is something I can applaud.

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