Episode summary

Members hand their organizations a lot of information about themselves. Career profile, specialization, event history, courses taken, years of service. Then they get an email back that reads as though the relationship started this morning. Neil Gray used to write those emails. He hated it, and he never forgot how it felt to receive one.

Neil is CRO at Datascout. He came at this from two directions: 25 years in B2B sales and marketing, mostly financial services, and years of volunteering with food banks, Meals on Wheels, and as a mentor for business associations. What the volunteering taught him about membership organizations is the constraint behind everything else in this conversation. A small number of people managing a very large remit. Everyone wearing a lot of hats. Almost no room to specialize.

Underneath all of it is Neil’s definition of brand. Not the logo, not the colours. How people feel about the interactions they have had with you. Which makes every renewal notice, every chatbot reply, and every welcome email a brand decision, whether anyone treats it that way or not.

In this episode

• Your brand is not your logo. It is how people feel about the interactions they have had with you, which means everybody in the organization owns it. Earn that trust and you stop getting nine seconds of attention. You get eleven or twelve.
• The first 90 days is a buyer’s remorse problem. Set the standard for what being associated with you feels like. Start on your back foot and you spend the rest of the relationship making up ground instead of adding value.
• Chatbots route, they do not deflect. Tie the data sources together first. Name a single source, tell it to escalate rather than invent, and program your brand voice into it. “When does my membership expire” is a chatbot question. Anything unusual is a person, and reaching that person should be easy.
• Segments before cleverness. Do not drop everyone into the same campaign. Pull what is relevant to them, watch the length, put the call to action where they can find it, and answer the next question before they have to ask it.

Hosts & Guests

Riley Miller – Host

Host of The Modern Membership Org and part of the Client Success team at Bursting Silver, where he helps associations, unions, and regulatory bodies modernize the systems behind their missions. Riley runs the interview on this one.

Neil Gray – Guest

CRO at Datascout. Neil has spent 25 years building a career in marketing and sales for a number of B2B organizations. With extensive experience in both profit-oriented and non-profit organizations he understands the realities of how teams need to operate to be effective with the resources available to them.

Resources

• Datascout — Neil’s team. AI driven engagement and segmentation for membership organizations, sitting on top of the CRM you already run.
• Neil directly — [email protected]. His words: “I’m always available to have interesting conversations.”
• The Personalization Paradox — Neil’s webinar for the iMIS Users Group, which is where the idea in this episode was first laid out. 
• Ep 16 — Your Best Analyst Is Already on Staff — the Jeff Spring conversation Riley references on air about synthesizing member data.
• Brand Is a Verb by Chad Hanson — the book Riley was gifted last year.
• Come on the show — [email protected], or Riley directly at [email protected]

About Bursting Silver

Bursting Silver is a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America. We’re a 3-time Great Place to Work Certified company that helps associations, unions, and regulatory bodies modernize legacy systems, improve data quality, and deliver better experiences for staff, members, and registrants.

Our unique ability is finding the simplicity in the complex.

Learn more about Bursting Silver

The Modern Membership Org Podcast

Full Transcript

Neil Gray (00:00): …your membership has lapsed, let’s see about bringing you back. Those are helpful to a degree, because life gets busy. I won’t always remember when my membership expires, so it’s great to have some reminders. But with all the information you might have on hand about me, that’s not the best use of it. Basically, you just give me a “hey, don’t forget to pay me,” when the reality is I might be reconsidering. Is this membership right for me? Is this association with this organization still the right one for me?

And I think every touch point is when you have the opportunity to convey that to your audience. Remind them of why they’re associated with you. And then the conversation about, in this case, renewing becomes an easier one, because you’re always demonstrating value.

Riley Miller (01:12): How’s it going today? My name’s Riley, here with the Modern Membership Org podcast, and I am here with another guest to give you some tools and techniques on how to engage with your members more on a personal basis.

Every membership organization knows that a good member interaction is one that is personal and doesn’t speak to them like a number. Coming from a marketing background, even the communications department, when you’re trying to reach out, you can fall on deaf ears if it just feels like a generic open letter. And that also degrades a member’s experience.

An invitation that points someone to sessions they care about. Interactions that follow up first thing when they register, or that know where they are on their membership journey. Those are all very, very important touch points and can really drive home a positive member experience at your organization.

My guest here today knows exactly what that looks like, and the struggle that modern membership orgs face every day in terms of trying to reach out at scale by keeping it personal and not generic. I’m happy to introduce Neil here, our CRO at Datascout. Welcome to the show, Neil.

Neil Gray (02:14): Thanks, Riley. Appreciate you having me on.

Riley Miller (02:15): Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time too. I know you’re a busy man, helping the world and all. Maybe for those that don’t know about you or your background, give us a quick summary of who you are and what brought you to where you are today.

Neil Gray (02:26): Fair enough. So I’ve spent about the last twenty-five years in B2B roles, in sales and marketing in B2B organizations, primarily in the financial services space. But I also have an extensive history with not-for-profits, both volunteering as a mentor for business associations as well as working for food banks and Meals on Wheels in my area. I like having a local impact. It feels a little bit more tangible for me to do something that has a direct impact in the community in which I live.

Riley Miller (02:57): Yeah, absolutely. There’s nothing that feels better than supporting Meals on Wheels. I know from our retreat, for example, we were helping the Boys and Girls Club by building lunches, and just being able to deliver that definitely drives home some feel-goods.

So being so close to it and working with nonprofits, what has your experience taught you about those organizations and how they really run, that you wouldn’t be able to pick up just from the outside looking in?

Neil Gray (03:19): What’s interesting is that some people take on a role because it’s a job, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But I find that a higher portion of people in the not-for-profit space and membership-based organizations believe a little bit more in the purpose.

Which is good, because they’re often a small number of people managing a very large remit. Whether it is a lot of members or a lot of volunteers, it’s invariably a really high ratio of staff to the folks that they help organize or they help support. So what that ends up being is that a lot of people end up doing a lot of different jobs. There’s not a lot of room for specialization there. Everyone has to wear a lot of hats just to cover all the bases, to make sure that everything is covered for the stakeholders that they support.

That’s been my experience throughout business in general, but primarily you see it most acutely in the not-for-profit space.

Riley Miller (04:14): So when we’re speaking to nonprofits, and the tight ship that they have to run in order to be able to serve their mission, you recently did a webinar for the iMIS Users Group called the Personalization Paradox. And alliteration aside, it calls to this idea that you want to be having intentional interactions with your members, but you’re kind of handcuffed by the amount of time that you have as a tight crew.

So maybe in your own words, could you tell me and our listeners here about how that webinar came to be, and the story that you told to the iMIS Users Group?

Neil Gray (04:49): We’re at kind of a weird, I don’t want to say necessarily crossroads, but the comfort with AI has changed relatively quickly. From awareness, and it was a novelty, to a little bit of hesitation, to okay, let’s get on board with this in both my personal and professional life, to I don’t want to be left behind.

And I think when you look at organizations, they want to make as many meaningful touch points as possible. But as I’ve described, for membership-based organizations or not-for-profits in general, they just don’t have enough hands to do all the work.

I’ve been in customer-facing roles almost my entire career and I really enjoy interacting with people. And the ones I like the most, the interactions I like the most, are the ones where I make a connection with someone, or I really help them out, or I just feel like they understand the value that the organization I work for or am associated with brings, based on my interaction. It’s very difficult to do that at scale. So people lean into things like email, or mass interactions using AI or not using AI, but it’s kind of difficult to replicate that level of connection with someone over and over and over again, especially when you don’t have those moments together.

So the paradox becomes that the most meaningful interactions are the ones that are personalized. But how do you personalize something when you’re a bit of an arm’s length removed from them? And how do you do it properly, where it feels genuine, sincere, instead of a generic interaction that pretends to be personal?

Riley Miller (06:22): Yeah, that’s a tough one. Coming from the side of someone who receives emails all the time, as everybody does, you can really sift through the emails that hit your inbox that sound generic or shallow, or they try to have some sort of rapport that never existed. You can really parse through the ones that make sense or are meaningful.

Neil Gray (06:44): Well, that’s just it. The way I manage things is that when I get emails from people that I expect to get emails from, they get more of my attention. But they really only get more of my attention initially. And if I find that they’re not adding value, they get less of my attention. I’ll still look at them, I’ll still respond, but they’re no longer the higher priority.

And part of that becomes when it’s a generic interaction. When I’m ten years with an organization and they talk to me as if I’ve just come on board. Or when they get the idea of, let’s talk about these subjects, but every interaction I’ve ever had with that organization has never been about those topics. And it’s not as if they’re suggesting, you might be interested in this. It’s just they haven’t taken the time to get to know about me.

And if they’re going to collect information on me, then I think the general expectation is that it’s used. Obviously in a contextual way. Information about our interactions, information about our relationship that it’s been. That’s information that would be useful to how we’re going to move forward together.

The one that drives me the most nuts, and I used to do this for years and I hated doing it, but it was a means to an end, is starting an email with “dear valued client.” It made my skin crawl every time, because if they were a valued client, I’d know their name. And it wasn’t that we didn’t know the name, we just had some limitations to our data that prevented us from inserting their name.

But that, to me, immediately when I get stuff like that, I’m like, I’m not valued if you don’t know who I am. And that’s just the easiest way to turn me off. If I’m going to give you any kind of attention and you immediately show me that you’re not earning my attention, then it’s harder for me to come back to you.

Riley Miller (08:26): Yeah. And so we just recently had a conversation with Jeff Spring, head of product management at ASI, and he mentioned how we have an opportunity, having all of this data, to be able to synthesize it in a useful way. I think you speak into that too, where members have given us information, or registrants have given us information in the system, that we could essentially use to optimize their experience and the delivery for that.

Making sure that that is still a personal touch point, I think, really drives home that this is worth my time. I’m going to keep opening this email because I keep getting value.

When we look at email interactions, there’s several. You can talk about somebody registering for a continued professional development and they want to be able to sign up for courses that they enjoy. Those are all fine and dandy. But I think from an organization standpoint, and it was part of your presentation too, you draw the line between a renewal reminder versus a renewal argument. From an organization looking at sending out dues renewals, that’s kind of part of the system that they need to get that information out there, and that’s important. Not necessarily a personal approach. You need people to renew.

So could you walk me through the difference between those two types of emails, those two types of approaches, and what an organization has to know about a member in order to effectively write a renewal argument?

Neil Gray (09:48): I think this is a good example of where a lot of organizations don’t get it right.

Too many times I think people lose track of who the audience is and what the audience wants. They spend their time communicating the things they want the audience to know, versus the things that the audience is likely going to want to hear. Now I don’t mean pandering, I just mean give them the information that makes the most sense to them.

So in this case, membership renewal would be: your membership expires in six weeks. And then another email, your membership expires in three weeks. And then your membership expires tomorrow. And your membership has lapsed, let’s see about bringing you back.

Those are helpful to a degree, because life gets busy. I won’t always remember when my membership expires, so it’s great to have some reminders. But that is, with all the information you might have on hand about me, that’s not the best use of it. Basically, you just give me a hey, don’t forget to pay me, when the reality is I might be reconsidering. Is this membership right for me? Is this association with this organization still the right one for me?

And I think every touch point is when you have the opportunity to convey that to your audience. Remind them of why they’re associated with you. And then the conversation about, in this case, renewing becomes an easier one, because you’re always demonstrating value. And it doesn’t mean selling, it means demonstrating value.

Like, were you aware that these courses are being offered in your area, or for your specialization, because it matches your career profile that we have on you? Or, I saw that you attended this particular event on this topic. If you have an interest in this topic, please consider these other ones that people in similar circumstances might be interested in.

Or even as something as just a different frame of a point I brought up earlier, when I’m getting information about something that’s never been a part of my relationship with you. It could easily be, I know we talk about this, but did you know we also offer this and this and this? And give them an idea of, you’ve already paid your membership dues, here’s the value you’re extracting from it based on the information we could tell about your interactions with us. You could get even more value if you took advantage of these things that are all included within your membership relationship with us.

That’s a whole different kind of interaction than just tugging at someone’s sleeve and saying, by the way, you’re going to owe us money in six weeks, three weeks, tomorrow. It was due yesterday. Do you want to come back? Like that is an entirely different thing.

And for me, if I’m offering as much information to an organization as I typically do in a relationship, I’d like you to know me a little bit. I don’t expect you to have one-on-one interactions with me if there are thousands of us and there’s only dozens of you, if even dozens of you on the staff side. But I do expect that if you have information about me, every interaction I have with you should not be like we’re starting from zero. You should have some level of background for me, and then present that information to me so that we’re always moving forward.

Riley Miller (12:51): Yeah. When we look at these different camps of how member-based organizations run, an association obviously would look towards that argument as, here’s an opportunity to kind of codify this member in our organization, because they’re taking advantage of all the benefits. Or they didn’t know about it and now they do, and that’s something that rings true and they’re going to renew.

When we look at our regulatory bodies or our unions, they are a part of the organization. They look towards the organization for professional enablement and ensuring that they’re being compliant, or they’re organizing and representing their values. And those are different reasons why I think they would look towards an email, why they would open it, and they’re going to be looking for different things that kind of drive home that value too.

I think all three of them, it’s kind of that Venn diagram, can come together on one experience, which is that the membership experience feels natural, it feels personalized to my needs, and that helps you coming back to open it.

I know that I had this conversation with Al when we were talking about unions, based on the fact that you’re competing against this attention economy from organizations and corporations that have really refined their communication approach. They know how to deliver that value. Or the Netflix or the Disney subscriptions that come in, they’re not sending out a generic email. They’re sending, hey, we saw you’re interested in this, these are some things that you might like. And you’re going to start to open those emails because it’s speaking to you.

And so when we look at these massive-scale interactions with companies that have huge budgets, there’s some techniques, I think, that we can glean from that. Instead of opening with a dear member, you mentioned it before with your emails, a dear valued client. A simple switch, I mean Mailchimp and even email aggregators now can place a first name. But there’s a couple other things that I think we can pull in from that. I would love to hear your thoughts on it, just in terms of competing with these mega outreach approaches.

Neil Gray (15:01): Yeah, it’s interesting that you frame it that way, because you really are competing. The world in which Datascout operates is, as you said, primarily unions, regulatory bodies, and associations. And we’re not competing with Amazon and Netflix in terms of what our operations are about. We are competing with them for your attention.

Because in your personal life and your professional life, which often blend together when it comes to communications, you’re inundated with messages. And the messages that prove themselves to be worthy on a regular basis are the ones that get attention. So we are definitely competing against organizations that are very good and can throw a lot more resources at personalized outreach.

I think the more frustrating thing might be that. Why is it that Netflix knows more about me, which is just me watching entertainment, than my professional association, that has a lot of information about me? Why do those engagements, something that is probably more meaningful and profound and has an impact on my life, why aren’t those engagements more personal?

If Netflix has a similar type of information, like, this is how you use the thing that you’ve purchased from us, i.e. say your membership or your Netflix account, we have the information, why not help us get more value out of it?

Similar to what I was saying earlier. These are the things you use, you might also be interested in this and this and this based on your profile. Or, people who are similar to you are also doing things, we haven’t noticed you doing these things, if you’re interested here are a few options for you. Whether it’s an email or a chatbot interaction you have, either on your publicly facing site or behind your membership sign-in, where we’re drawing specifically from the profile information we have on you.

Like, why collect the data if we’re not going to use it? And it’s just really underscored by something again like the examples you’ve used. You are competing for attention just with a whole entirely different product.

Riley Miller (16:52): Yeah. Looking at the broader scale of how we interact with emails these days, or how people’s attention economy works, you cited some research that the regular individual opens up their emails and they give a branded email about nine seconds before they’ve made their decision whether they’re going to read it or they’re going to close that away, archive it, delete it, any of those in between.

So based on that research, is there any techniques that we could look into on how to design an email that can take advantage of that nine-second decision, without turning every email into a BuzzFeed, clickbait, over-engineered subject line?

Neil Gray (17:36): I think there’s an overall strategic approach that I’ll touch on, and the actual individual interactions.

I am certainly not the marketing person that invented this theory, but one that’s always resonated with me is that your brand is not your logo, your brand is not your colors. Your brand is how people feel about the interactions they’ve had with you.

If you are an organization that is slow on customer service, regardless of what your product or service is, then that is your brand. Your reputation is that customer service isn’t your thing. If you are an organization that always invests in tech and is always pushing the product forward, then that’s your brand as well. Any kind of thing where people form a perception about you is your brand. So your brand is everybody in your organization is responsible for it.

Getting back to sending out emails, or having, in our case, chatbot conversations as well. I choose the interactions where I feel like they’ve earned it. If they have a reputation, if my perception from them is that most of my interactions with them are positive or productive, it doesn’t even have to be positive, it just has to be helpful. Was it informative? Did I get the information I needed? Did I know I needed this information, and what they presented to me was likely to be interesting to me? They’ve earned my trust. So when I give, they don’t get nine seconds, they get ten, eleven, or twelve, or whatever it is, because they’ve earned it and they continue to earn it.

I don’t think enough organizations focus on that. Because again, it’s not about the thing I want to say to you. It’s about trying to anticipate the thing that you want to hear, that your audience wants to hear. I think people lose sight of the audience. So start with the strategy of earning their trust.

Overall, at every interaction, nothing should be generic, nothing should be disposable. It should be, I am doing this with a purpose. And the purpose is to inform them and help them get value out of this interaction.

You’re not always going to be successful in that. But if that’s the starting point, your mindset, that’s going to get you closer to, I’m not just skimming this, these folks have a reputation for always offering value. So even if they’ve missed the mark here, I’ve got enough trust with them that I’ll give them more of my time. So that would be the mindset I’d start with.

The actual interactions, that would depend on the situation. You want to avoid sounding like clickbait. Again, you want to avoid dear valued client. Those are just a couple of rakes you do not need to step on. These are just easy things you can avoid.

Where it becomes difficult, and again, the personalization paradox, is, well then how do I make it more attention grabbing? How do I bring it in, even if I’m doing all of the pre-work where I’m thinking about the audience? You pull data from things that are relevant to them. You create segments so that you don’t drop every single person into the same outreach campaign, because the message isn’t going to resonate with those folks.

So be mindful about the thing that you want to convey. Be mindful about how the audience would want to receive information about this. And you structure everything, from who you put into the segment, to how you describe the situation, to how you frame it for the individuals, to even the length of the email or the interaction. Where do you put the call to action? How clear is it? Do they have the information resources that they need? Do you anticipate what the next step would be and offer it to them in advance, or offer it to them in that interaction so they don’t have to continue to dig?

You’re not asking them to do work. You are creating a space where they can self-serve as they would like, because you’re anticipating their needs. That’s how I think you could personalize an approach. It requires more effort, but in this day and age you do have the opportunity to keep that information that you have on hand with the person, regarding their relationship with you, and use that in a thoughtful way to offer them more value.

Riley Miller (21:23): Yeah, work smarter, not harder. Just using the tools at your disposal, given the day and age that we live in.

I want to touch on that one piece that you talked about, about your brand not being your logo. I was gifted a book last year called Brand Is a Verb, and it really speaks to that as well. It’s based on your actions and based on what you do. It’s a holistic representation of your organization, not just the pretty colors and the things you say about yourself. I think that rings true in your actions.

And when we look at that in terms of sending out emails, clickbait, outside of having a catchy subject line, clickbaiting to me is kind of that bait and switch, where you’re saying something that you know is going to get that open, but you’re not delivering what you’re saying. It could be any kind of headline on the subject line, and then when an individual opens it, it carries no weight. It’s not actually what you’re saying it is. That’s the bait and switch part of the clickbait, I think.

So when we’re looking at this approach to how do I create a more engaging email, I think it really goes back to the points that you’re saying too. Delivering those values, speaking to that individual, calling upon the things that they’re interested in. And we have some information from that member that they have provided, or they’ve interacted on your organization’s site, that you can really draw from to make that simple.

When we look at a member experience, I think for associations in particular, they have a high level of churn risk, especially with that example you’re talking about for the renewal. Associations can send out those renewal reminders, but if that individual has already made up their mind that they’re not going to be around, I think that’s an opportunity loss. And you can get ahead of that through proper onboarding.

Associations aside, you can look at regulatory bodies or unions. That is another opportunity, when you have a new individual coming from a candidate to becoming a full member, or inducting a new member into your union. You can look at those as opportunities to inform the services that they have available. You can encourage new opportunities, especially when you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

So I want to get your thoughts on just this importance of that 90-day period for the onboarding. What does a good welcome look like for an association versus a union versus a regulatory body, based on their needs and what those new members are expecting to see, or could look forward to seeing?

Neil Gray (23:48): I think it’s helping, at the end of the day it’s mostly just helping the person who’s agreed to have a relationship with you not have buyer’s remorse for the decision they made. And what that looks like is strong onboarding and intake.

Understanding what’s important to you, what would you be interested in. Have a healthy understanding of why they decided to go with your offering. Now I appreciate in some cases, especially with the folks we work with, being part of a union or a regulatory body might be mandatory. But that doesn’t mean you have less of a responsibility to earn their trust, to offer them value.

I think that the first interactions are going to set the impression of what the audience thinks of you. So you don’t want to start with something generic, especially when something is very personal to them, like in their professional lives. Whether it’s, I need this to be part of a union, or I need this because this is how I get my credits for education that allow me to move forward or allow me to network. So this impacts my life in a pretty important way. So I want to make sure that the organization that I entrust with this understands how important this is to me.

So they get a sense of, well, what do I need? Why did I make this decision to be part of this? What benefits would I most get out of this? Do people realize that you also get this with your membership, or that with your membership? Or sometimes even use cases that people hadn’t thought of. Like, yeah, I know I get this, but setting it up as, this is how and why people use it, this is the value that it brings. It might dawn on your audience at that time, like, yeah, I can get all of these benefits from my membership.

Doing that early on builds the trust, enhances your reputation, gives them more comfort with, every time this organization reaches out to me I’m going to have a relatively meaningful interaction. Not everything is obviously going to be groundbreaking, not every email, not every chatbot conversation, not every thing along those lines. But it should always offer value.

And the more that you offer value, the more you demonstrate that right from the get-go, the more comfortable they’re just going to be with assimilating you into their day-to-day life.

So the first 90 days is about demonstrating that effort, showing that this is who you’re going to be throughout the relationship. Now, obviously, that doesn’t mean after 90 days you can loosen your effort. It just means you’ve built up the reputation enough where you become, this is my expected interaction with this organization, and I’m comfortable with them. They’ve earned the right to continue to talk to me, so I’m going to continue to give their information.

You want to start strong so that you have momentum to continue that on. You don’t want to start on your back foot and then always have to be earning that trust going forward, because then that’s what you’re going to be trying to do. Earning trust, making up for any mistake or shortcoming from before, instead of just continuing to offer value, instead of just being part of their normal daily interaction.

I think that’s how you focus. Focus the first 90 days. It’s just set the standard of, this is what it’s going to be to be associated with us.

Riley Miller (26:47): Yeah, totally. You really set that tone. I really like what you said there.

So you did mention earlier as well, I know it was part of your webinar there, but you touched on chatbots as an interaction point for getting to know your members. But there is some sentiment, I think, in the day and age that we live in with AI, that chatbots can feel like deflecting members. And when we talked about your brand, if there’s a sentiment about deflection, you worry that erodes that trust or that connection that you’re trying to build.

But there’s definitely a way to approach this that enables your members, and I want to hear from your perspective, what does getting it wrong look like and what does getting it right look like? Or how can you effectively roll that out so it explores a new opportunity while still emboldening your organization to do more with less?

Neil Gray (27:40): So from a chatbot perspective, I would start with the back end, to make sure that the data sources that your chatbots are pulling from are properly tied together. From our perspective, that’s something we do on onboarding and it’s a thorough process.

But again, it’s just going back to the idea of, how dedicated am I going to be to making personalized interactions? How much of the groundwork am I going to do? Because once you lay a foundation like that, it becomes much easier to build. So we start with drawing from information that is contextual to their relationship with you, making sure that it is accurate information in the first place, so that when they are getting those interactions from you, it is based on things that make the most sense to them.

They should not have to be like, my frustration is when I contact an organization that has all this information on me and then, like I said before, it’s like starting from zero. Like they haven’t learned anything about me.

If you use chatbots, train it on their information and say, this is the information you’re drawing from, this is the only source, and here are the rules by which you can operate. If you don’t know the answer, you escalate. You don’t make anything up.

You also put in your brand voice. You kind of give the chatbot the personification of your brand. And I don’t necessarily mean to sound like a human, like a person. AI should be, this is AI, know that you’re interacting with AI. But that doesn’t prevent it from being very familiar with. Yeah, that’s what, when I think about this brand, I think about these kinds of feelings, these interactions.

Your brand voice should come through even on your chatbot. And you can program it that way, with this is how we talk, this is the manner in which we talk, the tone in which we talk, the statements that we use. All those types of things can all be programmed in. So take the time to do that, so it’s not a jarring experience from, this is what I thought this association or membership or regulatory body or union would be, this is how they presented themselves, versus this is my interaction and it just doesn’t quite line up.

You should have a sense of who you are, and how you are your best, and what your audience wants, and then bake that into your back end, into your chatbot. I know it might sound difficult, it really isn’t. There is some trial and error. It’s just about being thoughtful, and then trying it out again, and working with someone that could help you out. So like, okay, this is how we tweak it. But these things are all things that you can program in, so that your interactions are trustworthy.

Riley Miller (30:12): Yeah. So to kind of break it down there, you’re programming the nuances of what would be a genuine conversation with the administration. So the strategy there still stays quite human, but the interaction is still authentic. You’re being truthful about this being a robot.

And if it needs to escalate, I think that’s something there too, that it’s not just a hundred percent chatting to an AI. I know the chatbots can be built with some steps and procedures and things that they can recognize as ways to escalate to a team member when it’s valid.

Neil Gray (30:52): Yeah, there are certainly, this isn’t about deflecting all the interactions so that you never ever have to speak to a human again, any of your members again. This is about being thoughtful about what your membership wants and how they want to interact with you. Again, back to what does your audience want, not what you want to do for them or say to them.

So for me, there are times when I’m interacting with a brand that I’m a customer of, and I’m like, I don’t need to talk to someone, just show me the information as quickly as possible. I know what I’m looking for, but your site is large. Or I have a specific question, I need a little bit of nuance, and I don’t want to press one six times in a row before I speak to someone, for what’s essentially a thirty-second answer.

I think that is the mindset. The information that people probably don’t need an interaction for, that’s great for chatbots. And that should be readily available. And think about what that would look like. Whereas the interactions that require a personal touch, those shouldn’t be so well gate-kept that it’s difficult to talk to someone. So there should be that escalation point.

When does my membership expire is a question I would hope a chatbot could answer, because they have that information. But what do I do with this specific thing that’s happening to me that is unusual, and I have questions that aren’t otherwise listed on the website? That’s a personal interaction. I should be able to get to someone relatively quickly, so I can raise my hand and say, could I have someone contact me back, because I’m not going to get this from the chatbot.

And I think that type of thing just comes with smart programming, comes with thoughtful management of the tools that you have. Because again, you’re putting yourself in the shoes of your audience. There’s a lot of interactions they don’t want to speak to me about, they just want the information. And there are other ones where they most definitely want to speak to me. So they can either reach out to me directly, but the ones where they’re like, maybe I need to speak to somebody, maybe I don’t, start with a chatbot, and then you get to a human interaction.

Riley Miller (32:46): Absolutely. I’m just looking at the time, we burned quite a bit of time here. It’s always a pleasure talking about engagement.

I do want to leave the audience here with kind of one big old summary, and not just focused on Datascout specifically, but I want to explore if there’s three or five key things that an organization, or association or regulatory leaders, can look at when it comes to adopting proper engagement tools or engagement systems, or even AI, to enable them to use their systems more effectively.

What does it look like when they get it right? If you had to summarize that into three or five key steps to adopting this, to speak to your members on a more personal level, what would that look like when it’s being run effectively?

Neil Gray (33:31): Always number one, be deliberate and thoughtful. Like we touched on a few different points here, anticipate what your audience is going to want and then set yourself up to deliver for them. Get a sense of what interactions can be automated versus which ones require a human.

Make sure that when you’re reaching out to someone that you’re offering value at every step along the way, because that is your brand. That is how you earn more time. That is how you earn their trust.

Make sure that you understand that your interactions are your brand. Again, not your logo. It is not your color scheme. It’s how people feel about you when they interact with you. And bake all of those things into how you set yourself up, and then how you operate, and what the team culture you have is. This is the expectation of how we present ourselves to the market.

Riley Miller (34:17): Heck yeah. I appreciate that, Neil. It’s been fantastic talking to you. If people want to reach out for more information, where would they contact?

Neil Gray (34:24): Well, they can certainly start with [email protected], or go to our website at datascout.ai. I’m always available to have interesting conversations.

Riley Miller (34:33): Awesome. Thanks so much, Neil. I hope you have a fantastic day.

Neil Gray (34:36): Thank you. Thanks for the time, Riley.

Riley Miller (34:37): All right, bye.

All right, that is a wrap for the Modern Membership Org podcast. My name’s Riley, and that guest there was Neil, our CRO from Datascout, offering us all the tips and tricks on how to engage with your members more effectively on a personal level, but at scale.

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