November 1, 2017 – Community 1^st Credit Union partnered with Center for Practical Management to facilitate performance improvement and leadership effectiveness in the organization. In March 2017, the credit union was a featured client on an educational webinar with Raddon: “Turn Your Problem-Solving Call Center into a Profit-Making Contact Center”.

Contact Center Grows Loan Volume 30% YOY

 “What truly developed our staff was the consistent routine of communication in the engagement,” said Mark Estes, Contact Center Manager for Community 1^st Credit Union. “This engagement was not only for development of our reps either. It was inclusive of developing our leadership skills as managers and coaches, too. I can’t say it enough. CPM’s program played a crucial role in the success we’ve experienced.” 

Estes leads a team of 11 representatives in the Member Relations Center. He takes pride in the team’s hard work, collaboration and of course, the performance results. He also acknowledges that success was a team effort. “We embraced the challenge of showing the rest of the credit union that we could not only match retail branches, but that we could beat them on a monthly basis, too.” Within two quarters of the training program, Estes’ team hit a record-setting loan month with $1.4M.

When he gets asked how they achieved these results, a question Estes gets asked often, he says the answer is simple: Learn to focus on the right stuff. “I was able to shift my attention from being a secondary lender to focusing, almost exclusively, on leading and development of my team to be the best they could be.”

“After a core conversion, our strategy was to focus on the development of more specific objectives, such as stabilizing turnover,” said Melissa Beastrom, Executive VP of Strategic Initiatives. “Center for Practical Management’s program structure and continuous-improvement methods helped us develop our managers, no matter where they were at in experience or talent. It also engaged our staff with one another which is something that I believe had a very large impact on all the teams. Everyone witnessed that they were being supported by their manager, on up to the top executive team because we wanted to be supportive of their success. We are very happy with the results. This has changed the culture of our contact center. I encourage other credit unions to look into Center for Practical Management’s development programs.” 

Community 1^st Credit Union is headquartered in Ottumwa, Iowa, offers 17 retail branches, and serves nearly 60,000 members.

Curriculums and training materials are available to clients, license-free in perpetuity, following contracted engagements with Center for Practical Management. Contact us for a no-obligation conversation and pricing proposal.