Cooperative societies are trying to overcome the COVID Impact and adopt the new normal strategies with the changing customers’ trends. Considering the majority of your target market as cooperative societies are millennials and part of Gen X, the online account opening is the way to go. Here are some strategies to help you get the next normal members.
- Enabling and End-to-End Online Account Opening
Today most of the cooperatives in Africa give new members an option of opening an account online, but in the end, they will be required to visit the brand to complete the process ie document verifications and signatures.
Cooperatives tend to lose several prospective members since most prospects drop off in the process. Today people are trying to get virtual services as a measure of keeping safe from the coronavirus.
Cooperatives that will enable prospective members to open accounts on web portals or mobile apps will gain the most on the millennial market. As mobile domination is taking over in Africa, most people conduct their transactions on mobile banking platforms which have been boosted with the availability of a stable mobile money foundation.
- Capture prospective members’ contact information for follow-ups
Some of the cooperatives member onboarding platforms lack the capabilities to capture the shared details if the process is not completed. Some do but the SACCOs never follow up on the abandoned leads.
If your platform has the capabilities of saving the information, you can do a follow-up on the abandoned leads and convert them easily considering they had taken the initial step.
To avoid losing your leads, the best way is to get a reliable members’ portal or mobile banking solution capable of collecting the information.
- Be available across all digital channels
In most cooperatives, online support is limited to emails and phone calls, and most of the time their lines are busy or not going through.
Fortunately, the pandemic has elevated awareness of several digital channels that more accurately replicate the real-time, personalized feel of in-person service. For example, WhatsApp chat, SMS and social media chats are now easy for cooperative societies of all sizes to deploy quickly.
- Double down on digital service enrollment
A good number of SACCO members still prefer branch transactions and services hence limiting their transactions. Also, the transition process from offline to online should bestead and at a pilot mode to accommodate both kinds of members.
Cooperative societies need to double down on promoting, educating, and ultimately enrolling customers in the full breadth of digital services.
Some services will force most members to visit the branch such as depositing cheques. Also, some members prefer visiting the branch as a way of developing trust and creating an intimate bond with the SACCO.
