I recently attended a major league baseball game in a city where I was speaking. I purchased the tickets online a few weeks before my trip. What happened after the purchase was a great lesson in the power of follow-up.
The day before the game I received a thank you for the purchase and the team’s best wishes regarding my experience at their ball park. I attended the game, which was enjoyable, but then the most interesting part of the experience unfolded. The evening of the game (it was an afternoon event) I began receiving a series of very positive emails from them. The first one was a great recap of the game, along with video highlights, which served as a reminder of the pleasurable experience they had provided. The next was another thank you for attending the game and asking if I had any suggestions for how they could improve my next encounter with them – service, food, parking, etc. The third was a link to their ticketing process, enabling me to buy tickets for upcoming games.
Using the simplest of technologies (e-mail) the team helped me to feel like they wanted to take care of me and was willing to go beyond taking my money. They provided a sense that they cared about my experience and gave me with some nice post-game benefits (the recap and video highlights, not to mention a discount on team merchandise). Sure, it’s all marketing but it was done in such a way that I would not hesitate to return to that city and attend a game next time I’m there.
It made me wonder how well we use the technology available to us when people attend or visit our churches. Do we, as the leaders of the church, take the initiative to engage people in an ongoing sense of community and dialogue about the church experience? How tough would it be for a church to pursue feedback, or to send an e-mail with highlights of the sermon (or, if copyright restrictions don’t come into play, the worship music)? How many teachers invite congregants to participate by sending ideas for forthcoming sermons? The list of possibilities for such engagement is endless.
I don’t see many churches doing this. Granted, it’s more work and could be construed as intrusive. You’d have to get contact information. Tech-driven marketing never makes up for the absence of the personal touch. And maybe it doesn’t add a sense of value to people’s experience. How has your ministry used technology to facilitate meaning follow-up? How have people responded? How do you figure out whether it’s worth the effort? What are some approaches you hope to try in the future?
June 8, 2010
Charlene Li has a new book called Open Leadership on a Wiley imprint. She argues that businesses should use social media (facebook, twitter, linked-in, etc.) not so much to sell something but rather to start and build relationships. The ballpark did that by reaching out with a few e-mails. Imagine a church taking a few steps starting a conversation with a visitor, not shouting a message but inviting a response. Great idea.
June 8, 2010
George,
Thanks for presenting this.
It is because most just don’t care.
The baseball experience follow up is money driven.
I have gone to churches for decades where the visitors sign a guest register in the foyers and have never gotten any reply.
Analysis- Most churches gear their sermons to promote a selfish, meist, gimmee, gimmee mindset rather than a mature, altruistic one.
How to tell??? >>Just listen and count the “you” , “we”, “our” words in sermons. To those who do not go to church, listen on Christian radio.
Until the clergy catch a vision of the truth in EPH 4:12, where their job description is to equip the saints FOR the work of the ministry, they will continue to play theological troubleshooters and therapists , treating their spiritual mental health patients.
Notice that JESUS did not reform the old wine skin approach of the Pharisees and Saducees..,He started His own group.
June 9, 2010
I would say that we also must factor in the power of incentives. For the baseball / sports fans there is more of an incentive to return to the game than the follow-up. It’s a sensual / cerebral / auditory / tactile experience which results in great pleasure and a visceral sensation of competitiveness.
Certainly, the follow-up (customer service) side of the experience enhances connectivity and left you with a favorable final memory. However, if someone had spilled beer down your back, a fight had broke out next to you, the hot dog had made you violently sick, and the stadium security had asked you to leave because they thought you were the guy throwing stuff on the field during play I doubt that the follow-up would matter much.
The presupposition here seems to be that the church experience has been a positive/valuable/relevant experience. How often is that the case?
Seems to me like putting beautiful tasty chocolate frosting on a cake made out of wormy dirt.
I like the correlation you’ve made here…I believe it’s a critical component to building bonds and creating links within our circles of influence. (Thankfully, my wife never fails to send “thank you” notes). And I certainly think the lack of such methods within American church culture is a glaring reminder of how desensitized the institution continues to be toward the individual person. But I hate putting the cart before the horse and my fear is that the more time and effort that is put toward the “marketing” of the product – the less of the same is budgeted for the product itself. Great marketing + crummy ingredients = wasted time and effort.
I can promise vast amounts of weight loss, but when the meal replacement bar is made out of lye soap customer dissatisfaction is inevitable.
June 9, 2010
Here’s the problem that I have with this line of thinking: I don’t want church to feel like a corporation. I know that a church has income and expenses, just like a business. But businesses need customers, and customers have the expectation of being served. Churches need servants,and servants have the expectation of serving others. There is a HUGE difference there. And once the line becomes blurred and church members become church customers, everything gets out of whack (the customer is always right, right?) I feel that this is exactly what happened at the church I left – a church I loved very much. “Growth campaigns” at that church revolved around increasing the membership and raising money to build bigger and better buildings. I felt very strongly at the time, and I still do, that if the growth campaigns focused instead on increasing the spiritual strength of the existing membership we would become such a powerful force in the community that we would attract new members without even trying. If churches were doing what they are supposed to be doing they wouldn’t need to market themselves at all.
I don’t have a problem with churches taking advantage of technology to touch base with their members. It just seems that the point of the great follow-up after a baseball game is to keep trying to fill up all of the seats. I want church to be about more than trying to fill up all of the seats.
June 9, 2010
Brooke, for the most part I agree with you; we have to be careful about how we use any technology. But I also believe that even though we are attempting to raise up servants, it’s okay for servants to be served, too. Can that get out of hand? Yes. But is it one of the functions of a viable community of faith to know and address the needs of its own members? Within reason, yes.
So the kind of connections I am describing can be sterile and manipulative, geared toward relatively meaningless ends – filling seats, building buildings, instituting more programs, etc. But there are so many tecnological tools in common use today that it seems reasonable to deploy them as means of connecting with people, adding value to their lives, and even strengthening their relationships with the community.
What struck me was never having received a personal communication from a church as a follow-up to my attendance at an event, dealing with my needs or interests or anything that provided me with a chance to offer feedback that might help the church advance.
June 10, 2010
Mr. Barna,
I definitely agree that a viable community of faith must know and address the needs of its own members. I also agree that it’s okay for servants to be served. Unfortunately, my experience in church leads me to believe that the servants actually rarely get served. I fear that a very small portion of many congregations is made up of worker bees – people who will sign up to fill any need expressed by church leadership. It seems that the larger portion of the congregation has a “customer” mindset and expects to benefit from church events and programs in exchange for the check they drop into the collection plate. This disparity does not necessarily seem to be discouraged by church leadership. I would guess that this is what you mean by “Can that get out of hand?” In church, as in life, there are givers and takers, and I can accept that. I have trouble accepting that the church leadership allows this dynamic to continue.
I think I may have veered off-topic a little. The church I have the most experience with was actually very, very good at follow-up. When I joined, they didn’t use a lot of email for official church communication, but they followed up by phone, in person, and through the mail. Over time, they began to use email more and more and it was a very effective tool. So my perspective in my reply was based on the (obviously false) assumption that all churches do that. I was shocked, and more than a little disheartened, to read that you have never received a personal communication from a church as a follow-up. For these churches, their connections to their congregation and community would almost certainly be improved if they would take advantage of available technological tools. I have to wonder, though, if this failure stems from a reluctance to embrace technology or if it actually indicates a deeper problem within the culture of church leadership. A complete lack of follow-up seems to indicate the lack of desire to connect with people.