Member Service Centres

Association member service centres bring all transactions and inquiries related to products and services into one contact point.

Expected results of a member service centre:

• Increased member satisfaction

• One telephone, fax, and e-mail contact point 

• One-stop shopping for registrations, purchases, questions, etc.

• Faster and cheaper processing

• Better controls

  • use of personal answer vs. voice mail

  • tracking  and managing call, e-mail and fax volumes

  • reporting of call type/purpose to further improve service

• Reduction in number of staff

• Reduction in errors in processing and data entry

• Focused customer service training and standards

• Consistency of image, service and information

• Less disruption with staff turnover

• Individual staff vacations or absences do not affect service access and delivery

• Open longer each day (especially when membership is in different time zones)

• Enables compilation of product and service documentation to support better member service

• Better able to handle fluctuations in volume from various programs and services

These are just some of the positive results from implementing a member service centre.  Of course, for the centre to bring benefit to members, the focus of the results must be better service...and not because it is just easier or cheaper for staff.

The practices described in this area are described as Better Practices for a very good reason. We have a great deal of difficulty with the term best practices used in any other context than to refer to the results of benchmarking exercises involving real and relevant organizations with tangible results.  We offer Better Practices related to areas where we feel that change is needed in associations. Better Practices are intended to provoke thought, and to encourage organizations to think about what they are doing and how they are doing it.  

 

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