A Customer Experience Gone Bad Because of Poor Vendor Integration

First lets clear the air... I am officially admitting that I am a credit union traitor. I use a big bank. I have been a "customer" of TD Bank for almost 10 years. TD Bank is their fourth brand identity since I became a customer of the Franklin Lamoille Bank of Vermont in 2000. Then it was "Banknorth", then "TD Banknorth", and now "TD Bank". Maybe the reason their rates are so poor is because they've spent millions of dollars on re-branding the institution two times in the past three years.

Based on my terrible experience with them today, its blatantly obvious that not only have they switched brand identities, but they have also changed some of their processing systems to become "America's most convenient bank". Its also obvious that I know more about the inconveniences that those systems can create than some of the call center operators do.

I went online today to go through the 2 minute process of ordering deposit slips for my personal checking account. That 2 minute process became a 45 minute one. I went to the online banking site, logged in, and then found the "re-order" checks link. I selected the account I wanted to order for, and was blasted with a popup window that said "ERROR" in bright red text... "NO HISTORY FOR THIS ACCOUNT". I looked up in the left corner... I saw a logo that said "Harland Clarke". I thought "oh great."

Vendor Integration for CUs is Usually Very Poor

If you work in the marketing or IT department at a credit union (or any other department for that matter) you are probably well aware of the fact that third party products offered by web vendors never really have the ability to be integrated very well. You CU people live in an unfortunate world where you have to rely on a hundred different vendors for every little aspect of the web experience that you are trying to create for your members.