Excelling at Member Service

All you need is good customer service.

Member service, as a discipline, differs from customer service in a number of ways (although member service is arguably a subset of customer service).

For example, in a traditional scenario, you typically try to make someone happy and then attempt to cross- and up-sell. With member services, however, you focus much more on making members feel like they’re part of an organization (typically, a non-profit one), and that the organization listens to and values their input and actively reevaluates how the organization can work better based on their feedback.

To put this another way: The psychology of the member services experience is focused not on selling, but on serving. Not only do you want to promote a sense of security and trust with the organization, but you want to reinforce the member’s self-esteem: I did whatever is necessary to become a member of this organization.

Improving the Member Experience

Serving your members well requires good data capture and keeping that information refreshed and up to date. To do this, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), an Innoveer client, launched a project a few years ago to ensure they can do just that and more.

Today, this insight helps CIMA support its students and members (all 170,000 of them in 165 countries), as they progress through the CIMA Professional Qualification to membership and beyond. They all experience considerable career development and change along that journey working in many differing job functions from junior level right up to CEO and ranging from within small to global organizations. Information which is diverse and subject to constant change as they move through the differing stages of their membership with CIMA.

• Student (studying and sitting multiple CIMA exams as they progress through the CIMA syllabus)
• Passed Finalist (having obtained the CIMA Professional Qualification- now needs 3 years of relevant practical experience assessed before being admitted as a CIMA Member)
• ACMA (Associate Chartered Management Accountant)
• FCMA (Fellow Chartered Management Accountant)

By understanding their students’ and members’ current career stages and professional development product needs — CIMA continually creates a better experience for its members.

CIMA designed its website to capture all of this valuable information, supported by data quality and business intelligence programs. CIMA is always trying to better serve their students and members, by knowing more about them. By using these programs to keep information current and combining with effective CRM principles and usage – CIMA is achieving very successful organizational results.

You Are Your Data (Quality)

In the pursuit of excellent member services, organizations typically face a number of challenges, but the biggest one I see, time and again, is poor data quality. Having quality data is a fundamental requirement for any CRM program. Otherwise, you waste time and energy pursuing outdated information. And customers — talking about the B2B and B2C realms — will think you’re sloppy.

In the member services realm, however, members often react much more strongly. They interpret poor data quality — such as outdated personal information, misspelled names and duplicate mailings — as “we don’t care about you.” And I’ve seen far too many non-profit organizations simply overlook data quality, thereby diminishing the membership experience. Untended, the problem only becomes worse, not better, and members feel neglected.

Typically, the first phase of a CRM project is simply putting the system in place. In the second phase, however, you’re mining existing CRM data and using marketing and analytics tools, and that can expose previously unseen issues. Again, if you’re trying to market to members and you have data quality issues, members tend to view it as sloppy, if not insulting.

Treat Members Right

How can a member association improve data quality?

• You need a plan. This is an important point: If you do not have a data quality plan, then you will have poor data quality. There’s no way around it. Data quality is not a given.
• Design a Roadmap. Data quality is definitely a journey. And the most successful organizations use a Roadmap. For example, a few years ago, CIMA wanted to create a business intelligence (BI) program, but first, it needed to address data quality problems, and then ensure that they did not crop up again in the future.
• Sell the big picture. Let’s face it: data quality isn’t sexy. And by itself, it doesn’t speak to what your organization wants or needs to achieve. Rather, data quality must be part of something bigger (such as a BI program in CIMA’s case).
• Create a data quality team. As part of its BI Roadmap, CIMA tasked a team of three people with combining, consolidating and cleaning all member data, and then implemented checks and balances to ensure that going forward, only quality data enters the CRM system.
• Keep on cleaning. Today, CIMA has achieved numerous goals, and its data quality team is smaller — one benefit of having a mature data quality program — but still in operation because maintaining data quality is a never-ending endeavor.

Learn More

Read our Q&A with CIMA to learn how BI can improve reporting and help accurately segment and target customer and prospect information.

The above largely focuses on member services for non-profit associations, but health insurers face similar challenges – and opportunities – with their members. Our white paper, “Becoming Member-Centric: Market Changes Drive Refinements of Business Practices and Pursuit of New Opportunities,” discusses many of the issues faced by the health insurance industry.

In addition, see our white paper, “The Call Center as a Strategic Asset,” which details how to use call centers to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.