People Helping People: Arizona State Credit Union Helping Arizona

Today’s economy certainly presents an opportunity for credit unions to emphasize the ‘people helping people’ philosophy.  But while many fail to gain traction by simply communicating the people helping people message,  Arizona State Credit Union has put the philosophy into action with its new initiative, appropriately named ‘Helping AZ’. 

At the center of Helping AZ is a website that leverages social media to create an online community where people can ask questions, find answers, and help others dealing with everything from unemployment benefits to money saving tips.  

Where some companies have posted an FAQ section to their website to answer questions, the Helping AZ site is worth looking at because:

• The site is all about you, the visitor.  It’s not about Arizona State Credit Union.  On a website that is intended to offer real help to visitors, it’s refreshing to not see sales messages or product promotions.  In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a link to the Credit Union’s website on the page.
• Rather than using an existing social media platform (e.g. Facebook), ASCU has found a way to incorporate social media in way that’s relevant in today’s marketplace and meaningful to today’s consumer.
• The site is dynamic.  It offers people the opportunity to post questions about today’s challenges and share ideas with real people.
• The site gives visitors the opportunity to submit comments and questions as a Guest, or to register with an email address to receive email updates to their posts.  This also works to give ASCU a database of users.
• The site asks for feedback and suggestions right on the homepage.  Using this kind of feedback can only make the site better with time.

On another note, the tagline for Helping AZ is “Your Voice. One Community.”  This certainly captures what the site is all about; it will be interesting to see if ASCU incorporates this with the Credit Union’s complimentary tagline “One State of Mind.”  Coincidence?  I doubt it.

Helping AZ is the most timely and relevant example of people helping people that I’ve seen in recent months.  It’s also one of the better examples I’ve seen of a financial institution finding a relevant way of incorporating social media into its efforts.  It will be interesting to see what kind of response this site gets, and how the concept may be applied in other markets.