A Folding Table, A Jug of Water and Thou Sweating In The Parking Lot

I am reading a book about customer service right now. My intention is to report some observations on the text as a whole at some point. However, I saw an illustration of one of the points made in an early chapter today. The book had noted the veracity of “time flies when you are having fun” pointing out that a well designed wait that is 30 minutes long can actually seem shorter than a poorly designed wait that is only a third as long. Because human perception is involved, you can ruin a relationship with a customer in the latter situation even though you significantly reduced their wait time.

Our campus is in a situation with many strikes against it. Budgets have been cut so staffing is down but enrollment is up adding an additional 1500 student to our commuter campus. Alas, the heretofore un(der) used overflow parking is now inaccessible due to long delayed construction projects.

There wasn’t much to be done about the parking unfortunately, but someone got organized this year and had information tables distributed about the campus with all sorts of hand outs and big coolers of water. There were also large color campus maps that someone slapped up on the sides of buildings so people didn’t have to seek out kiosks to figure out where they were.

I looked around wondering why no one had thought to do this before. People had always volunteered to serve an hour or so on the welcome committee but it was never this organized or welcoming. People stood around smiling, answering questions and engaging people who looked lost. Now there is a table identifiable as a source of information from a distance that is stocked with information—and most importantly after trekking in from that parking space in the hinterlands you stalked for 30 minutes–water to drink.

While I walked around comparing what I was seeing to previous years, I realized that tweaking your customer service up a level or two doesn’t just help your relationship with those you serve. It also sends a message to other employees about the commitment of the organization. Memos about improving service are useful and identify areas for improvement. In this case, there were no memos that went out about how things were going to be done better—it was just done.

I am obviously someone whose business it is to think about improving customer interactions so I notice such things. But I have to believe that others noticed the improvement, how it fit in the context of other recent changes and what it all says about the direction of the organization.

I also had some insight into the issue of providing volunteers with opportunities to feel they are doing important work. I have never really had much desire to volunteer for welcoming slots before. Today when I witnessed the increased effort at hospitality, I had a desire to participate next time around. (Just have to remember not to schedule sending the brochure to the printer, interviewing a ticket office clerk and starting internet sales on this day next time.) In previous years, my impression of the job was that it provided a pleasant first impression of the institution and directions to buildings. With the addition of tables, maps and water jugs, suddenly it seems like an important contribution to relieving anxious new arrivals.

We are planning a volunteer luncheon/training in a few weeks so perhaps I am in a receptive mindset on the subject. We have been thinking about how to design the volunteering experience so people have a greater feeling of doing something of value. We have been discussing increasing volunteers’ scope of responsibility and authority. I believe we also have to consider if these duties will allow them to feel they are providing a service patrons find valuable. Though certainly, people volunteer for different reasons and more authority may be a bigger motivator than being useful.

Stuff You Can Use: Board Ponderables and Resources

There were a couple board related pieces I marked on the old Google reader I wanted to share.

First was an excerpt from a talk Gene Takagi of Non-Profit Law Blog recently gave for an American Bar Association seminar this month. The portion posted on the blog site deals with common governance problems boards engage in. The six points he makes deal with how boards misunderstand their role in the organization and the laws governing non-profit organizations.

Part of the third point caught my eye because it is a common practice but I have really never heard it discussed as a problem. (My bold emphasis.)

A lack of attention paid to the internal laws of the organization. Is the organization operating in furtherance of the exempt purpose stated in their governing documents? Do the directors really know, understand, and govern consistent with their bylaws and other governance policies? This problem often results when a board adopts bylaws that it copied from another organization without careful thought and consideration about how they work under different circumstances. It’s far too common for nonprofits to ignore membership requirements they’ve inadvertently created, elect a different number of directors than is authorized, and not maintain officer positions and/or committees required under the bylaws.

Not knowing where to start with bylaws, a lot of organizations use those of others as a template. I suspect that people choose to leave in elements that sound important and potentially useful when they really aren’t that important to the organization. I say this because a board I sit on tasked one of the vice presidents with a bylaws review and he essentially reported this very situation. The bylaws had originally been copied from a closely associated sister organization and there were portions that really did not apply to our activities. Advances in technology made other portions unnecessary.

To be fair, it is likely a group starting from scratch would include rules dealing with anticipated situations in their bylaws that proved to be extraneous. Time and experience is about the only thing that will reveal this to be the case which is why it is helpful to periodically review bylaws.

The other bit of information I wanted to draw attention to was a entry on The Nonprofiteer noting the availability of BoardSource videos on “the ten responsibilities of nonprofit Board members.” She also links back to her earlier entry on the Board Member’s Bill of Rights which bears reading.

Admittedly, the entry I link to is from February. I hadn’t the time to review the BoardSource videos until now. The video’s short, episodic structure make them faster to review than I thought. The way I see it though, many boards have likely taken a hiatus over the summer due to a lack of enough members to establish a quorum. This is probably an advantageous time for me to urge people to revisit the NonProfiteer’s entry to review the materials in preparation for an increase in board activity.

Stuff You Can Use: Tech Soup

Ah, technology! Today I was sitting in my theatre attending a meeting. A few rows ahead of me was a woman who I was supposed to meet in my theatre after the meeting. About a half hour before the meeting was schedule to end, the woman texted her assistant asking her to call me and let me know she couldn’t make our meeting. I am not quite sure why she didn’t just get up and talk to me. The room was only 1/4 full so it wouldn’t be hard to find me. People were moving in and out to use the restrooms so there was no unstated prohibition against getting up during the meeting. But I suspect this is the sort of technology use I need to expect in coming years.

With that in mind, I wanted to point out a webinar Arts Presenters held in June about non-profits using technology. Arts Presenters had a representative of Tech Soup, Becky Wiegand, talk about non-profits using technology.

Tech Soup is a non-profit which, among other things, administers technology donations and reduced fee programs to non-profit organizations for companies like Microsoft and Adobe. If a company has conditions like only wanting materials to go to health services and after school programs for kids, Tech Soup distributes the products to people who qualify. Registration with Tech Soup gives you access to these programs and require you verify your tax status and purpose.

Once your organization is set up, you can go “shopping” for software. Their web interface apparently advises you if are eligible to receive the software or not. If you don’t qualify or don’t see something you would like, you can make a request for a donation.

Tech Soup also offers articles and webinar classes to help you discover how to use technology and what the potential value might be. So you can learn about low cost donor management software and what an effective use of Facebook might be for your organization. The site also has forums upon which you can ask other members things like their experiences using software you might have or be considering.

I strongly suggest investigating Tech Soup’s site to learn more. It is probably worth listening to the webinar. It is an hour long, but this particular piece actually has a video of the slideshow/web navigation that accompanies the talk. You can see where to look on the Tech Soup site to find various resources. Ms. Wiegand also mentions a lot of other technology resources that provide information, services and software either for free or more affordably than generally available and visits some of those sites as well.

Waiting For Tickets And Healthcare

This weekend I happened upon a few websites and stories which I felt were interesting enough to expound upon. However, under the harsh light of Monday, they didn’t really excite me much any more.

There were two tidbits I liked that explain themselves well enough without any help from me.

First was a letter reprinted on Producer’s Prospective by Ken Davenport from a woman who expresses her amazement that tourists go to NYC and stand online at the TKTS without an idea what any of the shows are about. “They were going to buy tickets and they had budgeted the money, so they were going to spend it. It didn’t really matter on what.”

She makes some suggestions about why tourists might not completely trust the young people who provide those in line with information and how things can be better handled. Probably some lessons there for all of our ticket office operations.

The second thing I wanted to point out in case it got lost amid all the other static on the topic is that Americans for the Arts was joined by a coalition of 20 arts organizations in advocating the federal government for better health care for artists.

We call on Congress to pass:

* A health care reform bill that will create a public health insurance option for individual artists, especially the uninsured, and create better choices for affordable access to universal health coverage without being denied because of pre-existing conditions.
* A health care reform bill that will help financially-strapped nonprofit arts organization reduce the skyrocketing health insurance costs to cover their employees without cuts to existing benefits and staff while the economy recovers. These new cost-savings could also enable nonprofit arts organizations to produce and present more programs to serve their communities.
* A health care reform bill that will enable smaller nonprofit and unincorporated arts groups to afford to cover part and full-time employees for the first time.
* A health care reform bill that will support arts in healthcare programs, which have shown to be effective methods of prevention and patient care.

One of my earliest blog posts was about artists exchanging their skills in a hospital for health care. The rancorous debate raging about health care should concern a lot of people because the plans being discussed in Congress represent the best hope for artists to get health care since Fractured Atlas came on the scene.