CUSTOMER STORIES
About Patelco Credit Union
Patelco Credit Union is a not-for-prot credit union committed
to serving the nancial health and well-being of its 350,000
members. Based in Pleasanton, California, Patelco ignites hope
and opportunity for its members by oering personalized
solutions, advice, and expertise that empower them to achieve
nancial freedom. Founded in 1936 with $500 in assets by
employees of the Pacic Telephone and Telegraph Company,
Patelco is in the top one percent of U.S. credit unions with
currently more than $6.7 billion in assets.
The situation
Communicating with its members is vitally important for
Patelco. The credit union used an omnichannel strategy to
reach its members, including traditional print and broadcast
advertising, billboards, and direct mail; online media like
websites, email, and social media; and digital signage in its
branches. Most of these channels worked well for Patelco, but it
had ongoing problems with its digital signs, which oen resulted
in the failure to launch the credit union’s messages according to
Patelco’s expected schedule. The signs oen went down, which
• Business needs - One of the nation’s
leading credit unions needed dependable
connectivity to power their digital signs it
uses to communicate with members.
• Networking solution - AT&T connectivity
and end-to-end management deliver digital
messages to credit union members, freeing
Patelco’s IT and marketing teams to focus
on their core responsibilities.
• Business value - The easy-to-use solution
gives Patelco the precision to customize
messages by location and individual screens
within its branches, enabling deeper
connections with its members and helping
them satisfy regulatory requirements.
Remote monitoring tools help ensure
uptime and avoid branch involvement in
troubleshooting.
• Industry focus - Credit union
• Size - $6.7 billion in assets
Patelco Credit Union educates
and empowers members with
messaging driven by highly
reliable connectivity
Customer Stories:
Patelco Credit Union
CUSTOMER STORIES | 2
meant that branch personnel, the marketing team,
and IT sta had to divert time from more productive
work to troubleshoot the problems. Patelco
needed a turnkey solution from a dependable
communications provider.
Solution
Patelco turned to AT&T to supply the highly reliable
connectivity to power its digital signage. The AT&T
team focused on getting the digital signage to
communicate the correct messages at the specied
time. Besides communicating key messaging with
their customers, it would free the IT and marketing
sta to focus on their core responsibilities. Remote
monitoring tools enable AT&T to detect and rectify most
issues before they are seen and avoid any need to involve
branch colleagues in the maintenance process.
Making life better for members
Optimism is in Patelco’s DNA. The credit union was
founded in the depths of the Great Depression with
$500 in assets by employees of Pacic Telephone
and Telegraph Company. Today Patelco is in the top
one percent of U.S. credit unions, with more than $6.8
billion in assets.
“We are denitely on a path to $10 billion, and we’re
making great strides to get there,” said Rina Johnson,
Patelco’s Vice President of Marketing. Johnson
believes the authenticity and genuineness of the
credit union’s sta is responsible for the organization’s
continuing growth. “Everyone from our executive
leadership to our frontline and back oce sta really
believes in our mission and cause, and we’re on a
journey together,” she said.
Part of that journey involves helping make life better
for credit union members, which includes activating
a disaster relief program for members facing crises.
“Living in California, unfortunately, we tend to deal
with wildres and other types of disasters. For
instance, we enacted a disaster relief program to
help members whose lives were aected by the
government shutdown,” she said. “We try to take
some of the burden o our members who are already
experiencing hardship because of things that are out
of their control.”
These programs involve special loan products at very low
or even no interest, and waiving fees if members have
to use another nancial institution’s ATM. “We have
also deferred payments on hundreds of thousands
of dollars’ worth of loans,” Johnson said. “It’s denitely
something that we’re really proud of. We’ll always
continue to support our local communities.”
A higher standard
Because credit unions are not typically as well-known
as most banks, Patelco sta spend a signicant
amount of their time educating consumers. “We talk
a lot about the value proposition, but as a nonprot
CUSTOMER STORIES | 3
we don’t have big dollars to spend. It’s tough for us to
compete from a traditional marketing perspective,”
she said.
Patelco works hard to create awareness of the benets
of membership because there truly is a dierence,
she said. “As a credit union, we’re a member-owned
nancial cooperative. Our shareholders are our
members, so for us it’s all about giving back to our
membership,” she said. “We hold ourselves to a higher
standard. We care most about people and that’s
deeply rooted in our mission. We create and design
products and services with our members’ nancial
wellness in mind, not our bottom line.”
The strategy is working well for Patelco. “Once
someone becomes a member of Patelco, they tend to
stay a member,” Johnson said. “We have about 350,000
members right now and membership is growing year
aer year. The exciting thing about our business is
that there’s still so much opportunity out there.”
Support at every life stage
Last year Patelco decided to revitalize its brand by
moving from an emphasis on rates and fees to a
mission and purpose-based brand. “We’re all focused
on the goal of improving the nancial health and well-
being of our members,” Johnson said. “We want to be
the lender and nancial institution of choice for our
members through every stage of life, to help them
manage day to day and whenever they need support
and help. We want to be there to provide them with
the counsel, guidance, products, and solutions that’ll
get them there.”
Johnson said she and her colleagues are proud of the
credit union’s unwavering focus on members. “We
don’t look at them as customers. We really value the
relationship and trust that they’ve put in us,” she said.
“Everything that we do from a marketing perspective
is really from the lens of sharing information about
how our products and services and a relationship with
Patelco can improve our members’ lives.”
Whether members have a need today or tomorrow,
it’s important for Patelco to understand them and
deliver information that is important to them, she said.
Patelco uses a variety of media to reach members
and potential members, including traditional media
and new online channels. The company also used
digital signs to create custom messages for its
members in branches. However, its digital signs were
unreliable, and oen failed to launch the credit union’s
messages on the schedule that Patelco’s marketing
team had created.
CUSTOMER STORIES | 4
“There was a real lack of reliability. We didn’t have much
faith that what we were posting was actually getting
published on the schedule we set,” Johnson said.
“There was a lack of transparency, so when things were
down, we didn’t know about it. And we had limited
customization options,” she said. Patelco needed a
turnkey solution with rock-solid connectivity from a
dependable, professional communications provider.
Engaging and educating members
Patelco Credit Union chose AT&T to deliver the
connectivity its digital signs required. Thanks to the
services provided by AT&T, the credit union now
disseminates the correct messages exactly where
and when the marketing team wants them to be
delivered.
The credit union considers the digital signs an
important tool for engaging members, so they’re
oen used in high-visibility spots behind the tellers.
“As members are walking into a branch, we want the
signs to be one of the focal points that draw them in,”
Johnson said.
Patelco provides the content imagery and a schedule,
which AT&T puts together and publishes. The content
varies from advice on nancial health to product
and service promotion to community events. “Right
now we’re supporting the March of Dimes ‘March for
Babies’ walk in Pleasanton, so we might promote that
to let members know that we’re a proud sponsor and
ask them to join in our eorts to support that cause,”
she said.
“Delivering relevant content is really important,
so we’re excited to be evolving in digital signage
platform customization and personalization,” Johnson
said. “The fact that we’re able to do that through the
support of AT&T really helps our marketing eorts to
be more relevant.”
Collaboration engages members
and partners
Collaboration is important to Patelco, Johnson said.
“We don’t have standard vendor relationships as far
as I’m concerned. If we’re going to invest the time
and energy into a provider that’s going to help grow
our business and achieve our goals, it has to be a
company that is truly invested. There’s got to be a
mutual level of understanding and time investment,”
“Delivering relevant content is
really important, so we’re excited
to be evolving in the digital
signage platform customization
and personalization. The fact
that we’re able to do that through
the support of AT&T really helps
our marketing eorts to be
more relevant.”
Rina Johnson,
Marketing Vice President, Patelco Credit Union
CUSTOMER STORIES | 5
she said. “Otherwise I think you get a standard cookie-
cutter solution. When people are really engaged—and
that includes the providers that we have—I feel like
we denitely can achieve better results together.”
Johnson said she’s happy with her team’s
collaboration with AT&T. “It’s amazing. Really fantastic.
I think our AT&T account team is very engaged in our
business, which is denitely important.”
AT&T provides Patelco with mobile broadband and
location connectivity and provides the credit union’s
digital signage virtually seamlessly. If there are
questions or concerns, Patelco has one vendor to
work with, which greatly simplies operations.
The AT&T solutions are also easy to use, Johnson said,
which is important because of regulations with which
credit unions must comply. “For example, we oer
nancial solutions, products, and services that aren’t
insured, so we’re not allowed to promote these in the
same area where we promote insured products such
as the teller area,” she said. “It’s really great because
we can customize the content in our branches with
multiple screens to highlight our nancial solutions
services on at least one screen.”
Customizing messages to build
connections
The ability to target its messaging makes the
communication more personal, Johnson said, so
members and guests that walk in can get a deeper
connection with the people who will be serving them.
“I think that’s always comforting and reassuring. It
makes us a little more approachable,” Johnson said.
The AT&T Digital Signage solution is able to associate
the right expert name and photos with the right site,
requiring very little eort from Patelco marketing to
create site-specic messages. “We didn’t have that
before and the ability to make customized changes is
something that we can now do much more easily.”
The AT&T platform also helps with compliance eorts
by enforcing business rules on what messaging
types are allowed to play in specic areas of the
branch—especially, avoiding investment messaging in
transaction areas.
Patelco is pleased that its digital messaging has
become a stronger part of its overall marketing
eorts. “People constantly need to be reminded and
the message needs to be reinforced,” she said. “We
send someone a direct mail piece, they go online and
see the message again, or walk into a branch and see
a digital ad that supports that same message. That’s
what it’s all about for us.”
Patelco will continue to invest the time to nd
ways to educate people on the credit union’s value
proposition. “We’re not trying to lure people away
from banks; we’re just trying to be an option. If
someone needs a loan or another type of product
or service, we just want to be considered,” she said.
“Repeating our message helps us to continue to get
our brand out there.”
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