June 2007 NEWSLETTER: Member Connections
"Member Connections"
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June 2007 Member Connections: Advisory Services
This month's "member connections" discusses advisory services as a means of serving and connecting with your members.
Advisory services can be a strong addition to your array of member services. They can add great value to your members, and provide strategic benefits to your association.
What are they?
Advisory services involve interacting with a member confidentially and one-on-one, to assist the member in his or her chosen field. For business, professional or medical bodies, this will involve advising the member in their professional practice. For clubs and associations based on interests, hobbies or similar activities, the assistance will be tailored to helping the member in that area.
The service involves offering advice or assistance on a specific matter. This could be a particular client or patient engagement for a professional service, or a specific project, task or activity for the hobbyist. The advice could be in person at the member's or the association's location, by telephone, or e-mail or chat.
Advisory services are, in effect, the ultimate in just-in-time, practical and focused professional development.
Benefits of Offering
For all associations, the advisory service is a powerful, personalized individual service that the member is unlikely to be able to access anywhere else, except possibly at commercial (and perhaps cost-prohibitive) rates. Offering such a service at preferred rates (or included in other fees) is a strong continuing incentive for membership.
For business and professional organizations, however, advisory services offer further benefits.
First off, because your members likely compete with each other, they may not want to turn to other members for advice of this nature. In addition to acknowledging that they need assistance with a professional matter, they may expose themselves and their client to the competition. An advisory service, even if at commercial rates, is more attractive in this setting.
The second benefit of professional advisory services is the promotion of self-regulatory professional standards. Allowing members to reach out for assistance in difficult or complex areas, or where they may encounter ethical dilemmas, encourages a higher standard of performance. Offering the service directly also allows the association to ensure the appropriateness of the advice being given. Even if an individual member does not use the service, its existence signals the value and appropriateness of consultation and support in a professional context.
Finally, advisory services also offer important benefits to the association itself: first-hand exposure to the reality of the member's practice and the kinds of issues they face. This is important to the association for a number of reasons:
- it gives the association all-important credibility in member dealings. Let's face it: managing an association generally has little to do with the actual practice or interests of the members. An advisory service speaks to the members in their language, and shows that the association is directly interested in, and understands, the issues they face.
- it provides the association with a deep insight into member challenges, allowing it to identify common needs that can be cost-effectively served through other means, such as publications, tools and resources (such as checklists), and various professional development offerings.
- it also provides a useful input into standard-setting and other self-regulatory processes, improving the likelihood that standards of practice take into account reality "on the ground" for the membership.
- finally, offering advisory services is one way the association can demonstrate its commitment to supporting its members' growth, excellence and, where applicable, adherence to standards. This is important not only to demonstrate to the members themselves, but also, for example, to governments, regulators and media.
How to Manage the Costs
Obviously, any one-on-one service will be expensive to offer. This is particularly so where you need to have specialized, experienced resources available for your members to consult with. There are a number of possible approaches to managing this cost:
- user fees. In order to make the service attractive, it may not be feasible to fully recover costs through user fees, but a portion may be better than none. The key here is to find a practical means of doing so, especially where the service is fairly short and casual in nature. One possible means of levying a fee is through the use of toll-based telephone numbers to access the service (for example, the "1-900" service).
- using volunteers, in a peer-based advisory model. This could involve volunteers working specific times on the advisory service, or it could be more of a matching service, where the association helps to connect a member requiring assistance with another member willing to offer it. In this case, the advisory service starts to take on the appearance of a mentoring arrangement, though focused on a single interaction rather than ongoing dialogue.
- limiting access. Members can be given a limited number of times to use the service, or limited time for each access. This may be inconsistent with promoting adherence to standards, however.
- some combination of the above. For example, members could be given one free access to the advisory service annually, with additional accesses being charged on a partial cost-recovery basis.
Managing Risks
Providing specific advice of this nature brings certain risks along with it. Proper protections should be put into place for those (particularly volunteers) offering the service and possibly giving inappropriate advice. The association will also want to protect itself, its officers and directors through proper means including liability insurance. Finally, the members themselves should understand the risks and limitations inherent in the service, and be reminded that, while seeking advice and consultation is a positive step in their own development, they remain responsible for their own efforts and work.
William Harper has broad experience in member services and self-regulatory professional matters. Please be in touch to discuss this or any other service offering you may be considering.