Picture a new member service rep in week two. The phone rings. It’s a card dispute with a small twist. They open a binder, then SharePoint, then chat with a supervisor.

The answer exists somewhere, but not where they are.

The call takes longer than it should, and the next call waits. Nobody’s bad at their job. The system just isn’t helping.

Do Credit Unions Have a Knowledge Management Problem?

Most credit unions we’ve worked with have no shortage of information. If anything, there’s simply too much of it.

No, they have a find-and-use problem. Policies sit in long documents buried in dusty folders in dark corners of disc-based hard drives. Steps live in people’s heads (or on sticky notes). Training happens in big blocks and then real life drifts away from it.

After a merger, every branch thinks they do it the “old way” or the “new way,” and both are half right.

If two people do the same task two different ways, that indicates a knowledge management problem. And if one person doesn’t know how to do that task? And doesn’t know where to figure it out?

Then that’s an even bigger knowledge management problem.

Is Knowledge Management the Answer?

The short answer is: Yes, kind of.

People search for “knowledge management” to address problems with siloed expertise. That’s fair. But the goal isn’t to store more knowledge. Rather, it’s to help someone do the task correctly while they’re doing it.

In that case, it’s not so much managing knowledge as operationalizing it. So, taking knowledge management a step further, you might look at Knowledge Operations.

Here’s what “good” looks like in practice:

When a rep takes that card dispute call, they type a few words and a short guide opens. It shows the steps in order. It pictures the screen they’re on. It tells them what to say to the member and what to click next. If there’s an exception, a small branch in the guide covers it.

When policies change, the guide gets updated, and the team sees the change note the next morning. No hunting, guessing, or asking “Jim” because he’s the one who knows how to handle the issue.

This turns credit union knowledge into something that can be used and put into action immediately.

Where Do Knowledge Operations Help?

Where doesn’t knowledge help?

Okay, but seriously, think about the areas credit unions feel pain:

Getting new hires productive, upskilling people who move between roles, and smoothing out post-merger differences.

It also makes change less scary. When you add a product or change a rule, you update the guide, confirm people saw it, and move on.

The hard part is not technology. It’s agreeing on the “way we do this here,” recording it in a format people can actually follow, and keeping it current…

Oh, and keeping it easy to find and use.

What We Learned from ScreenSteps

ScreenSteps wants to help credit unions go beyond knowledge management into Knowledge Operations.

They see that trainers are stretched thin, training costs are high, and new hires get overwhelmed with new information. These back-of-house issues show up in the front-of-house, too.

Wait times increase.  Member experiences vary from branch to branch. Sometimes, leaders get burnt out from getting pulled into daily operations, and they can’t focus on growth.

These are all symptoms of tribal knowledge that lives in expert’s heads…

And not in a central, accessible, and searchable repository.

ScreenSteps solves this by recording expert knowledge and making it available to everyone. The results are:

• Employees with answers at their fingertips, freeing up leadership’s time.
• Consistent member experience across the board.
• Faster training and cross training.

Central and searchable knowledge means anyone can find what they need without fail. Turning expert knowledge into a resource to level up the credit union is a pro move.

Especially if growth or mergers are on the horizon.

Want to learn more about ScreenSteps?