Article

Shrinking the elephant: How BECU made ATM big data manageable

How one member-minded credit union used customer analytics to radically reduce the time and cost it was investing its ATM network — so that it could invest in the ATM user experience instead.

May 28, 2015 by Suzanne Cluckey — Owner, Suzanne Cluckey Communications

"How do you eat an elephant?"

"One bite at a time."

Earlier this year, the BECU worked withInetco Systems Ltd.to address some of the big issues that face most FIs today:

favored customer touch points are increasingly becoming technology-based, which makes it tougher to establish a personal relationship;
Interactions are spread among more channels, making it harder to gain an accurate profile of the customer; and
manually extracting, parsing and cleaning data from this growing variety of sources makes a timely response to customer service issues much more difficult.

A webinar on Tuesday, June 9, "Advice from the Trenches — BECU's Approach to ATM Customer Analytics," will take a close look at the outcome of the BECU-Inetco collaboration.

Shirley Taylor, BECU ATM channel manager and Inetco guest presenter, will relate how BECU, the largest credit union in Washington and the fourth largest in the United States, used Inetco Analytics to attain ambitious goals for its fleet of more than 200 remotely monitored ATMs — at the same time reducing resources expended to track use patterns and customer behaviors.

Taylor has described analytics software as a "lens" into BECU and the member experience. Among other pluses, the program has allowed the FI to slice the time its operations team spends weekly to gather and analyze cash utilization data from eight or nine hours down to just one, Taylor says. Additionally, it has allowed the CU to reduce the time required to decide lease renewals from half a business day to just one hour.

Presenter Kambiz Asrar-Haghighi, VP of product management at Inetco, will explain how customer analytics software reduces masses of data from a host of channels and devices into meaningful real-time reports that an ATM deployer can use to implement measurable real-world solutions.

Additionally, he will provide a live look at the capabilities Inetco Analytics that fleet operators can use to drive channel profitability, decrease operating costs and deliver a quality customer experience.

Asrar-Haghighi will demonstrate how channel managers and data analysts who once had to spend days mining information from various multivendor network infrastructures can now access that same information with a few clicks, for an immediate understanding of who is using which ATMs, what transactions they're performing, and what level of service they're receiving.

Webinar attendees will learn how customer analytics has helped BECU shrink big data down to a manageable size that it has been able to use to improve the end user experience, delivering the high level of service that members have come to expect over the CU's 80-year history, even as they enjoy its 21st century array of technology-driven banking options.

The one-hour event is free for all attendees and will include a question and answer session.

photo istock

About Suzanne Cluckey

Suzanne’s editorial career has spanned three decades and encompassed all B2B and B2C communications formats. Her award-winning work has appeared in trade and consumer media in the United States and internationally.