By: Alonda Hill
I first began working at Partners In Association Management in the Member Services Department in late July. I’ve always enjoyed working with people and my role as a member services coordinator allows me to connect with our members while providing great customer service.
When I tell people where I work and my title, they always ask “what is member services?” Our member services department is comprised of five full time staff members and we are involved in almost everything that defines association management in some way each day.
Let me share what a typical day in our member services department might look like as well as tips that we use to succeed in this role.
Phone Management – The phones are turned on every day at 8:00 a.m. and the calls immediately start rotating to all available team members. The team gets ready for this influx of continuous calls by arriving early (to give us a little time to get settled in) and by utilizing the client cheat sheets that was developed to help answer almost any question a member may have. Being able to answer the customer’s questions correctly and professionally is a major component of the member services department responsibilities.
Payment Processing – As we’re fielding phone calls, we are also prepping member payments for processing. While one staff person is typing up the credit card charges, another is sorting and processing checks, the third is cross checking everything to ensure accuracy and the last two are entering all these payments into our client databases. We have procedures for every task that we do which helps ensure the highest quality service from all team members.
Team Interaction – The member services department is just one of the many departments within Partners In Association Management and we interact with all the other Partners employees on a daily basis. Many times while we are on the phone, working on data entry and cross checking our work, another team member will come up and ask us a question. While we can’t always stop what we’re doing to help them right then, we do strive to offer the same quality customer service to our in-house peers as our customers. So after we complete the phone call and finish up our payments and data entry, we always contact that team member back and find out what we can do to help them. This teamwork across the entire company ensures that we give each other and our customers the highest quality of service and professionalism.
And while this might be what a typical Monday looks like, there are no guarantees that this is what Tuesday through Friday might look like. Every day brings something new. And this is one of the best things about working in the member services department and for an association management company. Each day I get to experience new tasks, new challenges and new learning opportunities.
