You may recall an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry is having his kitchen re-done. Whenever Jerry asks his carpenter what he should do, the carpenter offers all kinds of options and then says "I can do whatever you want me to." Jerry gets so exasparated that he tells the carpenter to do whatever he wants. […]
Tell Me What To Do! Read More »
I'll be speaking at ASAE's Marketing & Membership Conference in Baltimore next Wednesday, June 20. General information on the conference here. Program details here. If you're at the conference, please stop by and say hello to me after my session at 10.15am.
Don't Forget: ASAE's Marketing & Membership Conference Read More »
As I mention in this post, having an issue tracker is a key tool for managing all the different issues that arise during the implementation and live usage of an association management system. But for some reason, until just recently, most of the AMS providers did not provide any kind of online system for submitting
Came across this article in PC Magazine discussing "wilfing," a term coined by the British marketing research firm YouGov, short for "What Was I Looking For?". The concept is that as we go to the web to search for something, we're easily distracted by other things and then wind up far off from where we
Wilfing? "Now where was I…?" Read More »
A recent survey by Accenture found that the level of customer service that companies think they are providing their customers does not match what their customers believe. (See here for more info.) For example, in the survey, 75% of executives felt their customer service was moderately or extremely good, but 57% of consumers described themselves
Is Your Customer Service Really That Good? Read More »
I received a call from them today regarding this post. They assured me that all of their emails are quality-checked for good links. As noted, mine had a bad linke, but at any rate, kudos to them for following up with me. As an aside, I received another marketing email from them following the one
To Aptify's Credit… Read More »
I received an email from Aptify inviting me to attend an upcoming demonstration. I clicked on the link provided and was taken to a page that read "The resource cannot be found." Needless to say, this does not inspire confidence in their product. It's critically important to check all your links prior to sending a
This Doesn't Inspire Confidence Read More »
I was meeting with a potential client recently, discussing their need for a new association management system. During the conversation we talked about the services I would provide and the responsibilities they would have. One thing I emphasized to them was the importance of having an internal project manager. Frequently associations (especially smaller ones) want
The Importance of an Internal Project Manager Read More »
Consulting guru Alan Weiss frequently admonishes: "Move a few things a mile rather than a hundred things an inch." Simply put, it's better to have great success with a couple of things than being mediocre at many. The same is true when it comes to managing our databases. It's very easy to become inundated with
Fix a Few Things at a Time Read More »
While attending a users group meeting yesterday, I asked how many people in the room were using the baseline reports provided by the vendor. (Mind you, this is a system with literally hundreds of baseline reports.) Out of 40 attendees, three raised their hands. Fewer than 10% of the vendor's customers were using the baseline