Membership Service System for Non-Profit

Many organizations still use outdated tools for their customer service needs, such as e-mails, attachments, spreadsheets, and even pen and paper. This may be fine when an organization first forms, but as it grows and scales upwards, this approach causes an array of customer service challenges.

One of our clients, a large religious organization, found themselves in such a situation. The organization grew from a small group to over 100,000 members, putting the member support staff on overload as they relied on e-mails and spreadsheets to manage a deluge of requests for counseling and other ministerial services.

The growth of our client’s non-profit organization, while a positive, resulted in a more challenging customer service environment as requests were inadvertently delayed, dropped, and ignored, resulting in member dissatisfaction and poor service. Eager to turn things around, our client asked us to implement a system capable of digitizing and automating its service request workflows.

The solution needed to address the following requirements:

• Accurately track all incoming requests and assign them to the right people
• Auto-send notifications and alerts based on configured triggers
• Reporting and analysis capabilities for real-time and historical request data
• Match requestors with users within a membership database
• Retrieve member details and display within the Membership Service System

We decided that the best solution would be to modify our Customer Service platform for SharePoint into a Membership Services System. Once put in place, this system replaced legacy methods with modern digitized processes that automate requests and provide full lifecycle visibility.

Instead of spreadsheet entries and e-mail threads, the system uses electronic tickets to represent member requests. Tickets are self-contained sets of data that contain key information, such as member name and details, date/time stamps, request categorization, request content, prioritization, related documentation, and so on.

The Membership Service System uses workflows to automatically route incoming member requests to the most appropriate recipient based on pre-configured rules. This had a significant impact on staff productivity, as incoming requests were now automatically routed and escalated without the need for manual processes.

Integrating Membership Database with SharePoint Tickets

Our client had a large membership database that we integrates with our SharePoint-based Membership Service System. When a new request is received, the system queries the client’s membership database for the requestor’s details and fills that information on the ticket. Essential member details (pulled from the database) are associated with the request tickets. The client’s support staff is able to easily view detailed member information for every ticket, empowering them to provide a more personalized level of customer service.

For every ticket, from inception to finalization, the Membership Service System meticulously records all actions. Over time, this produces a rich source of valuable operational information that can be used for real-time and historical reporting and analysis.

An intuitive dashboard interface allows our client to quickly view core metrics, such as the number of outstanding member requests and ticket status breakdowns. The reports include robust filtering capabilities. The organization’s management team can build out reports based on metrics that matter to them, such as the average time spent for request resolution.

Our highly configurable notification framework helps our client stay in-the-know when events and activity trigger alerts. The level of sensitivity, alert types, delivery mechanisms, and triggers are entirely customizable, enabling our client to maintain and adjust the system to maintain the level of member service excellence that the non-profit is striving for.

Conclusion

Our client was able to discard outdated methods and embrace automated workflows to reach its member service goals. It now provides better service with a smaller staff. We turned our Customer Support for SharePoint application into a “Membership Service System” which allows the organization to significantly improve response times and accuracy.

Requests are no longer dropped or delayed; staff workload is eased and the work is done more efficiently. The client is now able to provide outstanding customer service, driving up member satisfaction and enabling it to focus on providing a deeper level of ministerial care to its membership.