Business View Magazine | October 2020

127 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020 121 F INANC I AL CREDI T UNION cultural connection. We want to continue to stay connected to our teams, but I believe that we will continue to have a larger segment of remote employees,” he muses. “I have to admit, I was a little skeptical, at first, when we were in the planning phase. But I will tell you that productivity from a lot of those employees has increased with them being remote. Better yet, our members haven’t seen a decrease in the level of service; if anything, it’s increased. We pay a third party to conduct net promoter score surveys for all of our branches and contact center – those numbers went up during the pandemic. So, I would guess that we will see a great change going forward.” Another switch going forward, according to Marovich, will be a credit and debit card conversion process. “We’re going to move to contactless cards, having seen through the pandemic how huge the increase was in the usage of those cards,” he explains. “And we’re also going to offer our members more digital options with their cards.” Blackstone elaborates: “You’re going to see a lot more refinement of our digital offerings, driving consistency in the experience between different products and services with a more common feel and theme, making it easier to get things done. I think you’re also going to see an additional expansion in our LTMs (Live Teller Machines) because the reality is, we have to continue to service our members regardless of where they are. Notarizing documents is the only thing we don’t do on an LTM currently – we can open accounts, start loan processes, etc. It’s safe for the member and safe for us. So, we’re going to get a broader expansion out to some of the other additional counties that we’re chartered for.” While 121 Financial continues to concentrate on digital refinement and reaching out to more members, it is concurrently looking to see how it can generate additional revenue so that it