What does a membership organisation do when the Government announces it is removing the traditional reason for members to renew their membership? That was exactly the situation the British Psychological Society (BPS) faced recently.
After many years of discussion with the BPS, and after several consultations, the Government announced in a White Paper in February 2007 that it would introduce legislation to make psychologists subject to independent regulation.
This was a role that the BPS had performed since it received its Royal Charter in 1965. Suddenly it was faced with the prospect of a significant proportion of its 45,000 members no longer needing to remain members. The Society had until the next annual renewal in January 2008 to persuade its members to stay on board.
Fortunately, the BPS had already begun working with Hall Associates in April 2007, and so the foundations were already in place to deal with this potentially difficult situation. The story of how BPS coped is one that is certain to be of interest to anyone working in a membership organisation.
Making a fresh start
The story begins back in early 2007 when the BPS brought three staff teams together to form a new membership team, as part of wider staff re-organisation. With this fresh team in place, it seemed an ideal time to review the way the Society dealt with membership enquiries, applications, services and renewals. In short, to look at the interactions it had with its members, and to see how they could be improved.
The then Chief Executive, Tim Cornford, explains the reasons for this review: “One of the most frequent complaints we had from members and would-be members was that it was difficult to get information and answers to their queries because they were passed from person to person in the office. Our processes were fragmented across three groups of staff based in two different departments with no overall management oversight or agreed standards of customer service”.
Tim Cornford and his team were keen to bring in an external consultancy to help with this process. He explains why: “The value of an external consultancy should be that they have specialist skills and expertise, broad knowledge of the sector and therefore experience of what works and what doesn’t. I talked to several consultancies with a track record in membership development and retention. Hall Associates had a good reputation with some strong testimonials. What I particularly liked was their working style. I wanted a firm that would work alongside my staff, developing our skills as well as pointing to problems and advising on solutions”.
Mapping out the ground
The work began in April 2007 with a team of three from Hall Associates working on site at the BPS head office in Leicester. Phil James, Senior Consultant at Hall Associates, describes the activity: “The first stage involved sitting down with the membership team and mapping out all the interactions they have with members and the internal processes that lay behind that.”
He continues: “We spent a lot of time in this first stage challenging the way they did things, questioning established processes, and really testing their assumptions. Like many organisations, they had long-held beliefs about why people become members, what members want from the organisation, and so on. We wanted to bring these assumptions to the surface so that we could find out how accurate they really were.”
The next stage was to review all of the communications that the BPS had with its members. It quickly became clear that the Society was heavily reliant on postal communication. John Hall, founder of Hall Associates, comments: “This happens at a great many membership organisations. You can very easily fall into the trap of sending repetitive renewal forms to every member, every year, even though you know that many won’t renew or even respond, and then just passively wait for the inevitable outcome.”
Proving the case
So, the next stage was for Hall Associates to carry out pro-active telephone contact with BPS members considered to be at risk of not renewing their membership. James explains: “If we were to get the BPS team on board with our programme, we needed to prove to them that contacting members in this way would make a significant difference.”
In fact, the difference it made was startling. The objective of this initial activity was to encourage the renewal of 3,500 late payers. Hall Associates contacted 2,593, and 1,175 renewed as a result. This generated £97,796 for the Society, and meant that subscription income was 6% ahead of budget and over 20% ahead of the 2006 figure. At the same time, the activity had updated 448 members’ contact details, and also gathered crucial intelligence about why members renewed or lapsed.
The evidence was incontrovertible. The team from Hall Associates had laid the ground and were preparing to move onto the next stage of their programme.
Coping with the crisis
In the light of the earlier white paper and of continuing discussions with the Government, Tim Cornford and his team recognised that the 1st January 2008 renewal date was critical. If the BPS failed to communicate effectively with its membership before then, it risked losing members. He recalls: “There had been considerable uncertainty about the timetable for the legislation and therefore the timing of its impact on the BPS. It was the Government’s plan to introduce registration during 2008 that made this renewal date so significant”.
So, Hall Associates was called back in to help cope with this urgent situation. James and his team began by refining the BPS message to its members. The Government was putting out mixed messages and so the BPS was proving a reliable source of information for psychologists around the country who were concerned about what these changes would mean for their livelihoods. At the same time it was looking likely that being a member of the BPS at the time of the changeover would automatically qualify psychologists for registration. So, the message was that members should stay with the Society during this time of uncertainty.
Hall Associates then profiled the BPS member database to identify the population who were most likely not to renew. It looked at member grades, specialisms, length of membership and other factors, and picked out 2,689 high risk members. It then phoned and spoke to 1,644 of them, explaining about the changes to statutory regulation, and how remaining with the BPS was the best option for them.
A bright future
A remarkable 1,434 of those 1,644 members renewed. This raised £215,607 in subscription income for the BPS, but, most vitally, secured its position at a very difficult time. It was also the final piece of evidence that the BPS membership team needed of the value of direct contact with members. It meant that in the following months the team was highly receptive to the training and coaching Hall Associates provided.
James says: “Since we first went into the BPS in early 2007, we’ve seen a complete transformation in the way that the membership team approaches its work. They’ve developed a New Member Pack, they see their role as providing customer service rather than administering applications, and they’re willing to pick up the phone to members rather than just posting them a renewal form.”
He concludes: “In the last year or so we’ve transferred our skills to the team there, so that looking ahead they’re superbly equipped to grow their membership and offer an ever better service to those members. Crucially, they’re becoming an organisation that people want to join, rather than one they have to join. These may be challenging times for the psychology profession, but the BPS is well set to survive them and probably thrive in them.”
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