North Shore Credit Union

The North Shore Credit Union is one of the larger credit unions in Canada with over 41000 members and $1.8 billion in assets under administration. The credit union is highly member focused and they joined with Ipsos Reid late in 2006 to launch an innovative research initiative to learn about their members. Based on that research, several focus groups and brand audits, the credit union has a rich amount of information about it's member behavior and perceptions of the credit union. However it is difficult to create effective customer service targets and success metrics with such vast amount of information.

The North Shore Credit Union came to us with the project of creating personas that would help them define and communicate the needs and goals of their members across the credit unions. It is North Shore Credit Unions' goal to ensure that every member is provided personalized service that meets the member's goals and also creates a lasting relationship between the credit union and it's members.

We scoured the data provided, interviewed key stakeholders in the organization and also conducted independent research to learn more about North Shore Credit Union's core members. We then segmented the population based on key attributes that would define each group's unique needs from their financial institution.

We created fully rounded personas that would act as stand-ins for the target audience groups. If North Shore Credit Union succeeds in meeting the needs and goals of these personae, they would set new standards of excellence and create long term, mutually relationships with their members. While it is good to have lot of information to work from, the challenge for us was to not only be realistic as to "who" we were targeting ut also "how" they lead their lives. After all personae are archetypes and these archetypes have to be believable to be useful. The teller who works with members everyday needs to be able to "see" the life of the member they are helping, so they can best meet their needs.

Due to obvious confidentiality restrictions we are unable to show any portions of the document that was provided to North Shore Credit Union