How Membership Organisations Benefit from Self Service Portals

Having worked with membership organisations of all shapes and sizes for many years we’ve learnt a huge amount about how a new CRM can dramatically increase efficiency.

The biggest opportunity that a modern CRM brings, is the ability to implement an intuitive self service portal where your members can self-serve to perform many of the tasks they might have previously contacted your team about.

Not only can it reduce your administrative burden, but its value-added features will lead to greater member engagement. Valuable insights on your members' online activities can also be collected, helping you to make “data driven” decisions.

For any organisation offering services to its members, a self service portal is almost a must.

What is a self service portal?

Before we dig into the benefits, let’s start with the basics.

A self service portal is the natural extension of IT Service Management (ITSM) practices that permits users to solve their own issues without the need for directly contacting a support helpdesk. This usually takes the form of a web page users can log into and resolve basic questions relating to their interactions with your organisation. It’s also a fantastic way to provide valuable additional services to your members for minimal extra resources.

Your members want one!

If you don’t already have a self-service portal, it’s probable that your members might be looking for you to have one. According to research done in 2018, 88% of people expected brands to have one. 81% of people will also look to solve an issue themselves before reaching out to a live representative. There is clear demand for automated solutions which empower people to solve their own problems.

Let’s consider why there’s such a high desire for these sorts of platforms. One simple answer is efficiency. Voice-based support is decreasing in popularity and avenues such as email will frequently result in a delay to solving the issue. With the many concerns modern life brings, being able to resolve a problem quickly is highly valued.

Another massive reason your members may want a self-service portal is personalisation. 33% of people have abandoned brands who haven’t offered them a tailored enough experience. Giving members a specific area where they can address concerns and see personalised content is a surefire way to boost engagement and make them know how valued they are.

Self service empowers your team

One of the most limited resources to any nonprofit is time. As your membership organisation scales, the number of queries your staff will have to field will inevitably increase. This makes responding efficiently to these issues increasingly more complex. Self service portals can offer much needed relief to this problem by eliminating very basic enquiries from your team’s inboxes. Setting up self service infrastructure is an excellent proactive step in more efficiently supporting your members.

Such portals also offer an excellent opportunity to provide value added services. You can, for example, share member specific content you might not want on your public site. News or member specific events can be shared in a way that previously was unavailable for minimal extra effort. This extra communication channel can make it much easier to spread your messages and will be an asset to your communications team.

What features are on offer?

So now we understand why so many organisations build self service portals, let’s have a closer look at some common features. We’ll be using the example here of the self-service portal we’ve built up alongside CiviCRM over the years. Built from multiple customisable components, this has been implemented for global membership organisations such as WHF.