Transforming the member experience
I learned long ago that to get more you must give more. I look at service as a backstage pass with benefits that bystanders just don’t receive. I’m a soccer dad and not afraid to show it. We love traveling around with our “soccer family” to tournaments and games cheering on our boys, staying in moderate priced Hampton Inns and obliterating their free breakfast buffets. When our son made the varsity high school soccer team, my wife and I joined the booster club. For me, joining would be more than simply paying our dues, I wanted to get involved.
Our stadium was in need of a make-over so a bunch of dads and I descended on the Williams High School stadium armed with commercial grade pressure washers and a can-do attitude. As the pressure washer company taught us how to use the machines, I felt like I was gearing up for a paint ball game. We spread out and began to spray away years of grime, chewed up bubble gum, and spilled coke from the bleachers. After about an hour, my arm was about to fall off and I was burning up in the midday heat. I looked back at the 3 rows I had completed and the 27 miles of bleachers to go and realized this was a bigger job than I imagined. We would never finish. One of the other dads approached me with a bottle of water and I said “how are we ever going to get this job done?” He smiled and said “one row at a time”.
I often speak to companies that want to redefine their corporate culture or customer experience. I remind them that customer experience, or in this case member experience, is created one member at a time. So often it is easy to look at your members as just another account number or the next person in line, but to truly elevate your member experience, each member must be viewed as the individual they are. Each with their own needs, desires, and goals. Only by asking questions can discovery take place, and once that happens, needs can be met. When you meet the needs of one member then another, before long you have transformed the member experience.
