Tag Archive - service

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Changing the Customer Service Mindset at Your Church

I was having a conversation the other day with some friends of mine who work for Apple. We were discussing the unique layout and customer experience that’s provided at their stores. Disclaimer: regardless of whether you prefer Mac or PC, if you’ve ever been in an Apple Store you know what it’s like to receive great customer service. In the conversation I picked up on a phrase that they dropped. They said,

“At Apple we don’t repair technology, we repair relationships.”

Apple, seemingly a technology company, recognizes itself to be so much more than that. They understand that when a customer comes in and has a problem with their tech or just needs some help getting their email set up on their phone, that there has been a brand withdraw made. Something didn’t work right, the tech wasn’t easy to use, or the customer just couldn’t figure it out on their own. They trust Apple just a little bit less and now the customer has to come into the store to receive assistance. The employees at the store are intentionally trained that every customer interaction is an opportunity to rebuild that trust and “repair relationship” with the brand…not just with the tech.

What if churches began to think that way? What if churches changed their mindset and trained their customer service team, greeting team, guest experience team, connections team, or whatever you call it team at your church to think that their job is to repair relationship…because it is.

The scriptures teach us that in the beginning humanity’s relationship with God was broken by sin and that Jesus came to repair that relationship. When we join Jesus in this movement that He started we are participating in something very holy.

There is something deeply theological about providing a great customer experience at your church. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.


Posted in Leadership

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10 Principles to Building a Great Guest Experience at your Church

Do you know how to build a great guest experience at your church? Are you starting with the right building blocks? This top 10 list has been built from my experience of working with churches across the country the past couple of years with the Unstuck Group.

When we engage churches in a Ministry Health Assessment we help them gain a fresh perspective of their strategies, systems and structures. The process gives churches with a current snapshot of their ministry’s health and steps to best position your church to fulfill your vision. Here’s some of what I’ve learned along the way.

1. Stop Acting like a Church

Instead of learning from other churches, begin looking at other public space that people go to. Visit resorts, restaurants, stores and other public venues that have a great guest experience and have people coming back for more. Take your teams, debrief, and build a list of what you can learn and principles and ideas to transfer to your church campus.

2. Give people the Opportunity to Self-Identify

Guest parking, children’s check-in, a physical guest services location, and communication cards in the program/bulletin are all simple ways to create avenues for guests to self-identify. By a guest self-identifying they are essentially “opting-in” or giving you permission to speak with them. Instead of spamming them you are engaging them in a dialogue with their permission.

3. Ask, “What’s Next?”

It can be frustrating going onto a church campus for the first time. It can seem like everyone else (insiders) already know where to go and what to do. It can be intimidating. Make it easier for people by thinking through a “what’s next” exercise with your team. Imagine a guest drives into your parking lot…what next? Imagine they find the right place to park…what’s next? Asking, “What’s next?” moving through the moment a guest arrives on your campus to the moment they leave will help you create an audit of your guest experience.

4. Make it Personal

It’s a nice touch when I make reservations for my wife’s birthday and we show up at the restaurant to be greeted by a, “Happy Birthday Mrs. Alexander,” (and I don’t mind the free dessert either). The more personal you can make it, the more memorable it will be. Instead of a cookie-cutter guest follow up letter, could you write a personal handwritten note? Could the person who greeted them actually be the one writing it? How about a personal phone call to say thank you for visiting, instead of trying to get them to come back. Think: personal without intrusive.

5. Cleanliness IS Next to godliness

If you go into a restaurant bathroom and it’s filthy, how does that make you feel about what goes on in the kitchen? Build a team and give them responsibility for keeping the facility clean. Don’t just make sure it’s clean, (including the parking lot and sidewalks) for guests when they arrive but make sure the bathrooms get cleaned in between services and the facility is maintained during use.

6. Please don’t have a kid watching my kid

I’m not sure about you, but I have kids. And they’re pretty much the most important things I have on this planet. So when I go to check my kids into a classroom at a church and a young teenager greets me and asks me to hand over one of my kids, I get nervous. Now, do I think teenagers should serve at church? Yep. Do I think they can serve with kids? Sure. But have a responsible adult in the room with them coaching them and interacting with the parents.

7. Engage People BEFORE they come to your Church Building

The guest experience begins before guests ever get to your church campus. More and more people are checking out your church before they ever go to it. They’re church shopping online and gauging whether or not they will attend based on what they can learn about you on your website. So does your church website acknowledge and engage guests? Is it easy and intuitive to navigate? Is the Google map correct? Have you posted a short experience video or brief welcome video from the pastor so guests can know what to expect when they arrive? Can they check-in their kids and actually schedule their visit before they arrive on your campus?

8. Call things what they are

One of the worst guest experiences I ever had at a church was when I was wandering around trying to figure out where to check-in my kids. Fortunately I saw someone walking by with a lanyard on, “Finally someone who can help me,” I thought. When I asked where I should go to check in my kids they pointed and said, “The ‘B’ Building,” and kept walking. Great! What’s the ‘B” Building, I thought. Please call the nursery, preschool ministry, elementary, Jr. High and so on what they actually are. I know you’re trying to be cute and cool with your great church brands but it doesn’t help guests. Clear trumps cute or cool all day long.

9. Don’t Single People Out

There is a difference between acknowledging guests and singling them out. Having guests wear a special name tag, a rose on their lapel, or remain seated during the worship service so everyone else can come by and say hello singles people out. Very few people like to stand out. Remember your Junior High years? Most people will go to great lengths to blend in. So don’t single your guests out at church, or they probably won’t come back again.

10. Follow Through

The easiest way to gain or lose trust is to follow through, or not follow through on what you say you’re going to do. If guests take a step and self identify, then follow up with them. This can be a simple email sent the day of their visit, a handwritten note sent on Monday or a personal phone call. If guests ask for help or information, then give it to them. Quickly.

Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it is probably a good place to start. What else would you add to the list? Leave a comment!

Interested in learning more about engaging the Unstuck Group and participating in a Ministry Health Assessment? Follow this link!


Posted in Leadership

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8 Things to Consider Before you Multisite

Currently there are more than 8,000 multisite churches across America and more than 1,600 mega churches (churches of more than 2,000 people in weekly attendance). While both are growing the multisite church movement has outpaced the mega church movement in America. What was once seen as only a Band-Aid strategy for space issues at mega churches has become a vehicle for growth in local churches of all kinds and all sizes (the average size a church goes multisite is around 850-1200). “Multi” doesn’t mean “Mega” anymore.

Your church may be considering going multisite. If so, that’s exciting news and I’d love to hear about it! But before you do here are 8 things to consider before you take the multisite plunge.

1. Get Healthy

Multisite is all about reproducing what you are. Not what you wish you were, or what you want to be. If your church isn’t healthy, get healthy first before you multisite. Do you have a culture worth replicating?

2. Go Multi-service & Multi-venue

If you can’t pull off doing multiple services in one location than you’re not going to be able to pull of doing services in multiple locations. And if you have the opportunity to do multi-venue (more than one service at the same time on the same campus) on one location that additional venue can be a great training ground and place to experiment for future multisite teams.

3. Do Image Magnification (IMAG) in your current Auditorium

If you plan on delivering teaching through technology like video then make sure you can do that well in one location before you attempt to do it in more than one location.

4. Determine the right Location

55-80% of your church lives within a 15-minute drive time of your existing church. The rest pretty much live within about a 30-minute drive time. That 15-30 minute drive time distance is the sweet spot. Build on an island of strength by identifying a location where you already have a high number of people driving from.

5. Decide who will be the Campus Pastor

One of the most important decisions you are going to make before you go multisite is, “Who is going to be the Campus Pastor?” Not only do they need to be a cultural fit, after all culture is transferred through people not systems, but they need to be a leader. They need to be able to turn followers into volunteers. Here’s more on “What Makes a Great Campus Pastor?”

6. How Consistent will our Ministries be between Campuses?

Before you launch determine how consistent your ministries will be between campuses. Will the new campus do every ministry that the sending or original campus does? If you’re not going to reproduce it than is it something that should be eliminated?

7. Determine the Cost

What is the plan for the new campus to be financially viable? Most multisite campuses become financially self-sustaining within 3 years. But how much will it cost to get there? A lot of that is determined by your facility choice, the equipment you resource the new campus with day one, how many givers are going to move from the sending campus to the new campus, and the growth rate of the new campus.

8. Launch Strong

It’s better to be strong in one location than weak in two. The average size of a multisite campus is 360 people. When launching a new campus ask yourself, can we send 200-400 people from our original campus and still be strong enough to keep moving forward and not cripple our sending campus?

Thanks to Leadership Network and Multisite Solutions for the research!

Photo Credit: kevin dooley via Compfight cc


Posted in Leadership

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top 10 reasons to go to church on saturday

 

We recently began a new Saturday evening service at Sun Valley Community Church. We were previously doing one 5:00pm service on Saturdays and the new service times are 4:30pm and 6:00pm. Here are a couple of the strategic thoughts behind the shift…

  • Doing two back to back services allows people to come to church one hour and serve one hour. Previously there were people serving in ministry at our 5:00pm service and if they wanted to attend a worship service they actually had to come back on Sunday. That needed to be solved.
  • Doing away with the 5:00pm service time and adding two new service times at 4:30pm and 6:00pm forced everyone on Saturdays to pick a new service time to attend. Otherwise if we had kept the 5:00pm service and simply added another service time, getting people to shift from what they were comfortable with would have been much less effective.
  • Saturday has been our fastest growing service time year over year. In fact this past weekend we were up 36% (year over year).
  • We communicated the change every weekend in the month of July, which led up to the launch of the new service times at the beginning of August. This gave us a couple of weeks to settle into 2 Saturday services before school kicked back in and the crowds were up.
  • For weeks we said, “All of the smart people go to church on Saturdays.” In fact that’s when my family attends. It’s easier to navigate the parking lots, getting the kids in and out of Children’s Ministry, and we don’t have to rush or fight to get the kids ready on Sundays
  • The video above is one of the creative methods we’ve used to communicate and encourage people to move to Saturdays.

 


Posted in Creative Arts

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“it’s my pleasure”

A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to have a couple of Operators from Chic-fil-A spend a half day training the Staff from all three Sun Valley Campuses on what they’re best at, customer service. When it comes to great customer service there are a few companies that consistently come to mind Southwest Airlines, Disney, Nordstrom’s, and of course Chic-fil-A. While I’ve always thought the Church should be hitting it out of the park on this one (after all it sounds an awful lot like Philippians 2), until we do I’m content to learn from the best. So here are some of my notes and thoughts from my time with the guys at Chic-fil-A.

 

Continue Reading…


Posted in Leadership, Volunteers
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