Case Studies
AAA Southern New England Case Study
AAA Southern New England (SNE) is one of the largest AAA clubs in North America, with nearly 2 million members. The largest source of revenue for the club comes from membership dues. However, the single most important asset of the club is its members, and at all levels in the club, Member Relationship Management (MRM) is among the highest priorities. This means that maintaining members and growing revenue from other products and services is critical to the long term success of AAA SNE. AAA SNE had been using a membership system called MPS for the past 6 years to transact membership business, and from a perspective of running the day-to-day membership department, it was working.
In order to operate more efficiently, and to be able to achieve MRM, AAA SNE needed a membership system to do more then just process member transactions. They needed a system that was flexible to their business rules, a system that would support their MRM initiatives, and a system that would allow better operational efficiencies (cost savings) for the club. For the past few years, the club has been forced into certain business processes that were sub-optimal, and sometimes very inefficient. The current membership system was an inefficient platform to support certain MRM strategies.
AAA SNE decided to partner with Ross Group to specify a new membership system called MemberzPlusTM. MemberzPlusTM with the integration of other systems utilized by the club, supports key initiatives at SNE for member retention, cross selling of services, and revenue growth through the linking of data to and from other club applications, as well as processing all membership transactions for the clubs. MemberzPlusTM was designed to be extremely flexible so it can be used by just about any size AAA Club even clubs with their own unique business rules.
“We decided to work with Ross Group on this major initiative because of our long, successful track record with them as an IT partner”, said Mark Shaw, CEO of AAA SNE. “We also wanted a membership system that could help us with our long-term Membership Relationship Management strategic initiatives”.
The MemberzPlusTM system acts as the central application for membership, and is integrated with other key systems such as emergency roadside service, and point-of-sale systems used by AAA motor clubs. It can also be used as a central repository for key membership information across many other applications and become the single point of membership information. MemberzPlusTM lowers the costs of transacting business with its members and improves operational efficiencies. There are some great features built into MemberzPlusTM that allow a substantial improvement in member service. The Web Self Service features allow members to go online and select key services at their discretion, at a time that is convenient for them. Members can renew a membership, upgrade their service, respond to a special offer sent via the mail, or request additional information about a travel destination—saving time and money through reduced handling costs. There is also a letter processingfeature that allows a customer service representative to automatically generate a letter to a specific member. This feature also allows clubs to do one to many letters, which can be used to auto generate letters for membership campaigns.
Now that MemberzPlusTM is live and in production, AAA SNE is getting tremendous benefits from the system. First, users are raving about how easy it is to use and how it has simplified their job. Branch personnel have the ability to print out a temporary card right at the branch in seconds as opposed the manual process of using a typewriter. Customer service reps that use POS Connect in the branch office will have their transactions integrated into MemberzPlusTM. This means that members are cashed out right in POS Connect, but the membership application picks up the transaction, the cash payment and everything is processed properly in both the POS system and membership without any additional entry of transactions. And all membership information is integrated with D2000, so service calls are not held up due to the two databases not being in sync. Because MemberzPlusTM is a browser-based, n-tier application, the cost of supporting the application is substantially reduced. IT does not have to touch any users PC ever, including installation or updates. In addition, members are going online to sign up, renew, and soon will be able to do just about anything they can via phone or in a branch office. AAA SNE is experiencing over 11,000 self-service online transactions per month. Not only are self-service membership transactions up dramatically which has reduced operational expenses significantly, all other online service revenues have dramatically increased as a result. “When people come to conduct membership transactions on-line, they have the opportunity to shop in the other areas of our site, and they are buying more products and services”, said Mary Wyatt, VP of Marketing. “And the efficiency of the member self-service transactions is a big cost savings for us. Our members love the enhanced service level and the ability to conduct business anytime day or night”, said Mary. Perhaps the most significant benefit of MemberzPlusTM is its remarkable return on investment (ROI). MemberzPlusTM will pay for itself in less than 12 months, and the same would be true for just about any size club.
And there is more to come. AAA SNE wants to take MRM to the next level. The next phase of MemberzPlusTM will be developed to put the appropriate information in the hands of AAA member service personnel and at other member points of contact. Putting actionable information in the hands of the appropriate member service representative at the appropriate time will enable them to dramatically enhance the way they interact with members. This is what MRM is all about, enabling the clubs member touch points to better service your members.
Please contact Richard Spanier at 800.652.4985 to discuss how MemberzPlusTM can help you manage your member base and optimize membership relationship management. Call today to schedule a web demo or on-site visit.