Breaking the Blueprint

Customers remember the break up, not the journey

• Vinay Parmar & Iqbal Javaid • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Are you taking your members for granted without even realising it? In this revealing episode of Breaking the Blueprint, Vinay Parmar and Iqbal Javaid sit down with Mel Sallis, Co-Founder of Agentic Consulting and a seasoned expert with over 30 years of experience in membership and subscription sectors. Together, they peel back the layers of membership models, uncovering the hidden pitfalls and massive opportunities lying untapped in your organisation’s data.

Mel, who has transformed membership strategies for some of the UK’s largest associations, shares her insights into the crucial mistakes membership organisations consistently make. You’ll learn how outdated approaches to member retention can harm loyalty, why hyper-personalisation isn't optional anymore, and how your legacy systems might be costing you more than you think.

Get ready to explore game-changing strategies powered by AI—such as predictive retention and real-time engagement—that can revolutionise the membership experience. Mel also explains why the breakup experience can define a member’s lasting impression of your organisation, turning potential detractors into future advocates.

If you run or oversee a membership, subscription, or retention-driven organisation, this episode will equip you with the mindset shift and practical strategies needed to stop the churn and boost long-term loyalty.

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Show Links:
Vinay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinayparmar/
Iqbal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iqbal-javaid/
Melanie Sallis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-hj-sallis
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Vinay:

Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Breaking the Blueprint podcast. I am your host or one of your hosts, Vinay Parmar keynote speaker and managing director of customer whisperers, and my co-host is

Iqbal:

Iqbal Javaid I am the director of Evolved and glad to be here. episode six, I think.

Vinay:

Yeah, episode six, halfway through our commitment for the year. That's good. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we're

Iqbal:

halfway there. Exactly.

Vinay:

So listen, Iqbal, we had a really great show last time with, James from Zoom. talked a lot about metrics, sparked a lot of conversation. We got some great comments and questions, coming into us. and yeah, I think James really shine a light on some really interesting areas. and it definitely sparked, some good thought in my network at least. I dunno, how did you find it?

Iqbal:

Yeah, it's a quite a contentious issue'cause everybody has a different opinion on, metrics and what, it means for people within that. Within that space. And, it, it definitely for me just sparked a load of conversations with lots of customers and we're always learning from each other. And, for me, work when working with organisations it's,

Vinay:

yeah,

Iqbal:

trying to, as I said in the last episode, it's trying to figure out what, can we try and achieve with the data that we've got? The data's all there. Yeah. Let's just try and figure out what we're trying to achieve as a business.

Vinay:

Yeah. and the, for me, the big takeaway was, the metrics. And the metrics and we talked a little bit about measuring what's right for your organisation But really it was what's beyond the metrics and the value, in the data. You get the ability to mine it deep understand, Deeper issues in, what's going on, and use those to shape that forward conversation and how to have that conversation at the C-suite level and present. the data in a way that holds people to connect with it. And you're not just putting up a dashboard that says, Hey, here's our NPS and here's our csat, but there's meaning in, and there's actually connection to the bottom line with it. So that was a, good conversation. Yeah. Anyway, today we have a different topic. Today we're talking about membership organisations and, in prepping for this episode, we were scratching our brains about the membership experiences we've had I've had the archetypal sign up for a gym in January and then let it run for the year, but only really use it between January and probably the first week of February. but you were sharing an experience that you had? I. With a, with an organisation where you had a subscription membership type thing.

Iqbal:

Yeah. look, as you say, we, all experience it. And, you talk about your gym membership last until February, that's pretty good. generally by the end of Jan, I'm done. but the, I think the one that perhaps many of us have had some experience with the, likes of HelloFresh, for example. being a subscriber and have had a pretty good experience with the service and everything else, it just, it got to a point where it just wasn't fitting our lifestyle, just with the way we, the kids eating at different times and wanting different foods and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I won't go into the details, but I think what the, what kind of let me down in the whole process was me disconnecting from the service. They made it bloody painful. Made it really difficult. And and that's all I remember now. That was a lasting experience with hella freia. Now actually, my wife and I were discussing that we could do with going back to something like that, but we're a bit reluctant to go back to them just because of that. And we spoke, about this, the experience that we've had. and it just, that's just one example of, actually, maybe we'll cover this in our topic today, But It's all well and good, maintaining a good service. when a customer was to break up with you, make it as painless as possible. Yeah. Because actually they may wanna come back. I, would never encourage anybody to go back to their ex-girlfriend or, anything like that. But it's, yeah. it's always possible.

Vinay:

Yeah. It is. and people often forget, a key touch point in the customer experience is the breakup. and, they don't pay enough attention to it. because a good breakup can leave a good story, and there's always the possibility of. Coming back. But even when people break up with your organisation it's what they tell their friends, family, loved ones, et cetera, about how the experience was. So anyway, look, before we go off into a tangent about relationships and all that kinda stuff, let's, let's introduce our guest for today. Mel, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to tell our viewers, listeners, who you are, what you do, a bit about your background, and then we'll dive into the topic.

Mel:

thank you. Thank you, Vinay. Thank you Iqbal. Thanks for me having me. my name's Mel. I am the director of Agentic Consulting. we're a brand new consulting firm, but we work specifically with the membership sector. I've done 30 years in membership from leisure memberships to professionals, charities, all kinds of experience, and have seen all these problems, challenges and opportunities at the membership, et cetera. Firsthand. so we are looking at seeing how we can help organisations to, to bring this customer experience to life with them and look at their whole journey. but using things like AI and new technologies, there's lots of opportunities to, to take this technology and make it work for the membership organisations we are hoping to be the translators. We're hoping to help the membership organisations'cause we speak membership.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

But help the tech companies to make that connection.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah. great. Look, I'm sure we'll get into some really interesting conversations, but I think we'll start off with the first question is, because a lot of people will be familiar with customer experience in a traditional B2C organisation or a B2B, but just help us paint a picture of the membership landscape. What do we mean by membership organisation A little bit about some of the organisations that work in there and, yeah, just give us a bit of a whistle stop tour of the landscape, if that's okay.

Mel:

So the land landscape is broad. You've been talking about HelloFresh and subscriptions from the commercial side. you can go right through to your gym Memberships, you, most people have a membership of some sort. you may be a member of your professional body by the Charter, charter Institute, marketing, or the accountants. Yeah. you may be a member of a medical charity, the BMA or a, an organisation like that. You, lots of people are members of National Trust. There's 6 million members in the uk or you are a member of a union. Huge number of people are members of unions. These are all organisations where you have, a relationship with them and it's normally a paid subscription relationship. So either annual or monthly. and you expect to have some services back in response for that membership, or you're doing it altruistically, but you still wanna make feel, you want to know that you're making a difference if that's a charity membership, like the Wooden Trust.

Vinay:

Yeah. So if you are giving, for example, I think other memberships I've had in my lifetime are things like the national trust. I'm a member of the local Chamber of Commerce here in Birmingham. Institute of Directors I've been a member of, and people like that, as well as gym memberships and services. So this is really, I'm paying a regular outlay to an organisation to be part of something in exchange for a value that they're driving. or they're delivering for me. is that's the basis.

Mel:

Absolutely. And the, idea around membership, it, it is gold dust. It is the golden goose because you have a recurring membership or recurring payment happening all the time. so for organisations that's just gold dust compared to other organisations who have to have a transaction every time.

Iqbal:

Yeah.

Mel:

You've committed to that for a year or longer.

Iqbal:

So just on that then, like you, you talk about paid membership. If we start off perhaps with. your kind of basic free membership, there's a lot of that, right? you're aware members of loads of things that we probably don't remember, but they don't really add much value to us. The question is, why are organisations doing that? What benefits is there in having somebody be a member when actually they're not? There's no real commitment on either side to, in all honesty, but I see more of that then, perhaps before we delve into the paid membership,'cause that's quite obvious. if I'm paying for something, I expect something, back. but if it's just like a, I dunno, Tesco club card, you know what you're getting without a real commitment there. But it doesn't cost me anything as a customer. Yeah.

Mel:

and the benefits for the organisations are that you have a relationship. You, you get a brand and loyalty to that organisation You,'cause you feel part of that organisation You feel that they're listening to you, you feel that they are, they're doing something slightly different and you are getting a benefit in another kind from them. and so quite a lot of organisations will start off with a free type subscription. And the idea is then they take you. Maybe onto that first level. Maybe not a loyalty scheme, but another one and they will take you on that area. It's a good hook in for an organisation to make you feel that you're part of a community,

Vinay:

you're part of something. There's a feeling of, I guess a bit of exclusivity. Yeah. Costco for example, I'm a member of Costco. Yeah. and I don't shop there that regularly, but I shop there frequently enough that I feel I can gain in value for the membership. Yeah, but It is, you're a bit, there's a bit of an exclusive club. You're getting, a good deal and some stuff, and this

Iqbal:

friction as well, I find with Costco as an example to become a member. It's not as you gotta go in and you gotta queue up and

Vinay:

it's,

Iqbal:

it's crazy that in this day and age they still, but yet people still do it. It doesn't stop them from. From becoming a member.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

Yeah. But presumably they think they're getting that value, they're getting that community, or they're getting an extra discount or a value that something that somebody else can't have. Yeah.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

and that's where it's going. But lots of organisations have got to the stage where they just take that, they take the money at the beginning. And then don't think of that as a membership or as a relationship. They just think it's transactional. Yeah. And a good membership is both transactional, that you get a, benefit, saving money or saving time. Yeah. But you also feel like, ah, I've got my community. Yeah, I know where I'm going to be. I can talk to these people. They are my people. it makes people feel part of something. and if you've got a problem, you can go back to That organisation Yeah. Or that community and talk about it. Yeah, So that's where they, are losing a lot of that relationship at the moment because they are, oh, I've just gotta give transactional value. And they don't always achieve that.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's that part of being taken for granted that once the direct debit or the regular. Transactions being collected by the organisation and so I clearly the experience, whether you wanna translate as I feel the value that I'm getting or whatever is important. So what are the what does organisations get wrong from your perspective? you've spent a long time in that sector. Yeah. what would you say are the top three or four key guess mistakes or missteps, whatever you wanna call them. what would they be?

Mel:

I think the first one really steps where you take the money and then you don't think about that journey, that customer experience journey. You don't onboard them well. quite often an organisation will take the money and then send you a welcome pack. You might get one on time, you might get one late, you might not get anything at all. and then they'll bombard you. With communications, they'll then stick to you on, your mailing list and you just get everything. and quite often the organisations will send you the same email whether you've been there 25 years. yeah, Or whether you've just joined.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

Whether you've, you are, you're a student, or whether you are a retired member, you get the same information. We are time, short people time short. One of the benefits of being in a membership. Of an organisation is that you, you save that person time or money or you, you, make their life easier.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

And they don't make your life easier.

Vinay:

And, I guess, being a member of an organisation means that I've exchanged some data that gives you some information about me in a way that if I've just walked into your store, paid via contactless and not exchange any data, you could forgive the organisation for not knowing enough about me. as you were saying that, I was thinking about a couple of, there's an organisation I won't say who they are, but I've been a member of for two years, and they sent me a welcome letter two years into my membership with my card that I'd never received before, saying, welcome to X organisation a, month before my membership was about to expire. Now I was already thinking about not renewing. But what do you think I did when I received a letter saying I've been a member for two years and welcome to my welcome to ship. no apology

Iqbal:

for forgetting

Mel:

it. it. is that they are, a lot of all these organisations have got stuck in the systems. They, the system is running them and they're not thinking about the member, but that's what the system says I need to do and I can't change the system, so I'm just gonna send it out regardless of what's gonna happen. and they'll just not, they're not joined up. They're not thinking it. through.

Vinay:

Yeah. and I think that. that, we talk often in CX about this drive for personalisation Yeah. For doing that And as you were saying, the comms as well, I noticed that the newsletter that will come out from said organisations will be exactly the same to me as to anyone else, they'll make no, basic Curation or personalisation to make it feel different for a member that's two years in or one year in, or maybe the kind of business that I run versus the, kind of business that somebody else runs. It's all very standard and generic. I think generally marketing or marketing campaigns for lots of organisations is just a male blast of the same email. to everyone. A lot of the time that happens, it's,

Iqbal:

but, I think just going back to your point, it's, you've gotta differentiate between members and non-members first of all. Like sure. Use the generic marketing strategy against those that aren't, a member, but a member that's shown you loyalty. You've got data on these people, you can see what they're buying behaviors been like. maybe what they're doing on social platforms to do a bit of social listening and really Build a picture of what your, what this member looks like, and then build a personalised offer that really meets that person's kind of concurrent needs. and surely, like I, I, feel like the data's there for us to, figure out. But it just goes back to systems. I think that's a hundred percent true. Yeah.

Vinay:

So, the first one you shared was, The lack of personalisation treating everyone the same. What, are other mistakes do you, feel that they make

Mel:

So I think they are complacent quite a lot of the time. this is what we've always done, this is what you've had. and I, think expectations are changing what young people want versus somebody that was there who's been there for a long time, is very different. And so they're still pushing out the same sort of benefits. in the same way they say, oh, but we do email now or we do a podcast. and you, they're still using the same content and they're still not thinking that content through. They're making it hard for people to access the services. if you go onto their website, finding content, can be a mire. You can't find it. when the internet came in many years ago, lots of membership organisers said, oh, that's the end of us. That's the end of what we do. I said, no, it's not. Because people want you to create the best content. You want to be able to go to your professional body or to the national trust or to any other organisation and know that they give you what you need. Yeah. That you know it's right and it's good. Yeah. So content curation and, making sure that they surface really good content. Yeah. That's relevant. Is something that they really struggle with. Again, partly down to systems. but again, using their, the behaviors, their con their data to understand what are people looking at, what are they look interested in? Can we do some active listening? Oh, that's coming up. They don't, they get into this mire. and that's partly driven by a lot of these organisations in this sort of not-for-profit sector are. Managed by boards and, quite heavy governance. So you may be a brilliant engineer and you may have a brilliant marketer, or you might be a brilliant accountant or you might be a really interesting camping caravan, member. but you don't know how to necessarily run A membership organisation and, they quite often will drive the agenda. Because they are quite often the skew, they have the 10% on the end. They're not the 90% the middle. Yeah. So you get stuck in that rut of just the same thing and not moving the times.

Vinay:

Yeah. Okay. yeah. Okay. Anything, else? Maybe a, third one just to, to wrap this bit up and then we can Yeah.

Mel:

I think they, they aren't doing enough with their data. You, started off this podcast thinking about data. They have a lot of data, but it's in systems and they're not joining it together.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

So that's one of the biggest challenge. Maybe from them, it's a challenge for them, for the members. They're not using the knowledge they have to personalise

Vinay:

Yeah. what's interesting about what Mel's saying here is, actually if you take membership out of it and, you look at organisations personalisation Listening to your customers and understanding them, it's the

Iqbal:

same rule to apply

Vinay:

and using that data Yeah. To build stronger connection. Relationship the same, yeah, the same challenges apply, right? Yeah. Yeah. and actually your observation about boards and maybe, in organisations similarly, you have people that, think they have a typical customer or typical segment. you see a lot of these memes going round, in marketing posts where they have, marketing segment and they talk about, born, both born in 1945, both this, both that it looks exactly the same. And one's I know, one's Hitler and one's somebody else. so it's only when you show the picture that you see that they're different. But actually the demographic things, and I think there's a, there's this, without going off on a tangent, that's why we're moving to Beyond those typical market segmentations of just social economic indicators to other behavioral segmentation as well, which is an important, I wouldn't say it's emerging'cause it's been ran, but that kind of that behavior or psych, is it psychographic? Yeah, I think so. Psycho, yeah. Those kind of things that that kind of come into it. Okay, great. So they're The kind of key problems. So what's the route to solution here? I'm, your consultancy, works with these organisations and is focused on ai. So what is the role of ai? What's the potential that AI has for these membership organisations in solving some of these issues and problems that you've set out?

Mel:

I think, one of the biggest, potential is, that data, that insight. So they've got lots of systems, lots of insight. AI can bring that data together and it can start to look for patterns and it can start to preempt to one of the things that's really exciting from the a for the membership sector board is wouldn't it be great if we could take that data and we see where somebody does lapse. And we go back and look at the data and we go, ah, those are the trigger points. That's interesting. And you can map that against other data. So you. can actually preempt somebody that's likely to lap. So if you're with HelloFresh, you suddenly start to order slightly less, or you extend your period. Or it could be with a national trust. You can see they're not visiting the sites anymore. They're not opening the emails. Yeah. They're not engaging. Wouldn't that be fantastic that I could actually red flag those members? Yeah. Before it happens. you go, ah. This person's at risk. Can I do something about it So data and preemptive, action is brilliant.

Vinay:

data is a key, part of the whole thing. Okay. but then one of the challenges that organisations will often flag up is the data sits in legacy systems. It doesn't talk to anything else. It's not connected in any way. how do you Think about that in this, context.

Mel:

You're absolutely right. that's one of the critical problems that the membership organisations and I'm sure other businesses have as well. So historically they would've had a membership database, which is really used to transact, would've, given you your, make sure the renewals went out. But now they've got an email database. and so the email information is held there and the events database is somewhere else. And webinar could be somewhere else. Social listening. You've got lots of different platforms. The real exciting thing around AI and the way data's working now is you don't have to have everything in one place. That's true. I worked for one organisation that had one database for everything, whether it was a mug. Or a woodland or a member, everything was in one database and It ended up imploding. It just doesn't work. You don't have to use one system. What you need is some clever tech underneath. So either a data layer. So a data layer. is really good, that it's the brain, it will transact and it will move the information around what needs it. and lots of organisations now putting data warehousing behind that. So as long as you've got a connection with a membership you have that connection. you have a membership number where they've logged in to do something. Yeah. Or you've got an email address, you can then start to track that information right across.

Vinay:

Yeah. It's like that gold, the golden record of, I think I referred to it as a A golden record as a key ident. A unique identifier. Yeah. Yeah. That means that if this is my member, everything that happens connects to this number. Ex

Iqbal:

Exactly that. and I think you, are spot on in terms of, there is a massive desire to consolidate a lot of the, data. But that's gonna take time because you've got different systems in place. that's why you do what, I'm seeing this with a lot of organisations They have a strategy around looking at Snowflake or Tableau to try and consolidate and, Create that layer of data that can be tapped into in any, which way. I think what's really exciting is, how we can start to build agents essentially that can go and access data from wherever. It doesn't matter where it is anymore, and that's why it's changing the landscape for some new software vendors out there, because you've got the ability to just drop an agent in. And it will just go and find that data. Yeah. And then it will trigger some follow up.

Vinay:

So just before we delve into the world of AI agents, because again, we've got a range of listeners and people that view that are super into AI and understand it, but just for everybody to get us sort on the same page, can you just very quickly explain the difference between what we call generative AI and an AI agent? What's, what are we talking about here?

Mel:

So this is an area where it's, understanding what your outcome is that you want to get to. So generative AI is getting information together. it's creating that knowledge base that you need, whereas you have an agent who's actually interpreting it and then connecting with your member itself. we have, we've been looking at, using AI to, to surface data, to learn, to insight, fantastic. the speed, the things can happen now. we talked about, you talk about Tableau, worked with an organisation gave'em some information on the Friday, they created a membership dashboard, was fully integrated. By the Monday, I was like, wow, it's amazing. but what's really interesting now is that you, can use an agent now to actually interpret that data and feed it back to the customer or the member in real time, so they don't have to wait for somebody to go look up something. It's immediate. So instead of having to ring between nine and five, you can ring it, 10 past midnight and go, I need to renew.'cause that's what I remembered how to do it. I remembered then, and actually I can't figure my way around the website, but somebody would just lead me through it. that's the exciting thing about how natural language Yeah. AI is now working as well.

Vinay:

Yeah.'cause they both use LLMs.

Mel:

Yes.

Vinay:

But generative is input in, in, output out. So it's an instruction to do this for me, do that. Yeah. Whereas Agentic is starting to think and reason. and do some decision making within what it's, what, it's, what it's capability is to, be able to go. I saw a really, a good example on stage. the other day I was at a conference and this guy, was demonstrating, said, who is, it was, Chris Hay, this, a chap called Chris Hay. And he put, who is Chris Hay? And he showed if he did that with a generative ai, the output that you would get, and then he did an agent and then the agent. talk through, this is the methodology I'm going To use. Yeah. To explore who Chris is. I'm gonna search this I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna a suggested methodology. Then it went and did it. Then it came back with the data, and then it analyzed that data and then came back and it just refined it through a process, which I thought was, really interesting. I know this, podcast is not necessarily about ai, that link into how can AI help these organisations In that data space, it feels like taking them beyond the, just giving me some insights from what's driven to take the insights and do something with it.

Mel:

Yeah, you're absolutely right and I think it's really interesting. I worked for an organisation years ago and we had a slightly, disruptive implementation of a CRM system. We had. Hundreds of complaints, hundreds and hundreds of complaints. and I looked back on it and I said to them, I need a, report on this. I need to know what, was going wrong? How would we fix it? And they came back with 42 complaints. I went, I've done more of That myself. And we, they weren't learning, they weren't doing that feedback. So you've still got organisations who are not taking feedback at all. they're not even using the feedback that's in their hands. The AI interpretive agents will now say, actually, I did that last time when somebody tried to join and they didn't work. Let me try this approach. Ah, if I do that approach. I get more recruitment. So you get, you can, they literally will learn on the job just like a human, but they're taking all that information in. it's classic, membership or call center stuff where you get a similar complaint or niggle that's coming in. Yeah. They don't quite record it anywhere.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

And then you have a meeting when it all blows up. Oh, I knew about that and I knew about that, but they don't. Our human nature, we don't share the same problem. Yeah. And our AI will do that. They'll figure that out.

Iqbal:

Exactly. and I think it's what it leads to then, isn't it? It's you've, got this agent in there that's, potentially detected a trend or something that's going on, across. different conversations. and then it's, and I think this is where people are failing, organisations are failing, is They might still be deploying AI and then they're uncovering stuff, but they're not actioning it. They're not triggering it in the right way, because that takes a lot of. Thought design and obviously execution to ensure that yes, the agents can self-learn and do stuff, but you've still got to guide them in the right way. You still need human in the loop at some point, potentially.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah. and I think this kind of gets us to the next stage of the conversation, which is that practical implementation because there's lots of talk about what AI can do. everybody's, I think I heard, civil service have implemented, Microsoft co copilot and a 20% saving. And time, right? But the question is, what are you doing with that time that you're getting back? If it's just filling up with the same stuff, what happens to it? so you hear all these cases around productivity, but really the application of AI is not just app. It is not just implementing the technology, but it's implementing the culture surrounding the technology that people use, the time, space, and outputs from that technology in a different way to what they. Do today. That's part of the implementation. It's not just a, we're gonna put some tech in and then leave everyone to it and hey presto, it will all work.

Mel:

Exactly. And I think a lot of organisations will still be thinking, oh, we'll put tech in 20% saving, or that's, is that 20% staff saving? Shall I get rid of staff? That isn't what this is about. This is about releasing time to actually take the learning and do something with it. Because a lot of organisations are stuck with faf. It's my favorite term, faff. and it faff is just those things that are inefficient and people are doing them spend, and you get some bright people, bright young people are just spending time doing tasks that we could get, AI and other organ, other tech to do better. But that doesn't mean you lose those people. Yeah. You say, actually wouldn't it be great if they spent some time just with those members?

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

spending some time talking to them, getting to know them, spending time, creating great products, great solutions for their, for what they need. that's what it's about. It's about renegotiating how we use, resource. It's really important that culture change happens in the membership sector.'cause at the moment, they will see it as a cost saving. Yeah, they need to, not, nothing

Iqbal:

that way. I think it's, being seen as a cost saving everywhere right now. But I think the reality is, whilst we go through this transition, people are seeing some quick wins. oh look, I don't need as many people here, so I don't need to replace certain roles. But I'm seeing a lot of that in the past kind of year or so, and I think we'll continue to see that over the next couple of years. But there's gonna come a time where it'll be a level playing field. Everybody's efficient now. So what comes next? Yeah. Now, we can start focusing on actually being creative.'cause that's the bit that's missing from ai. And really start focusing on producing stuff. Yeah. Rather than being efficient, it's actually being productive and deli delivering actual outcomes. Yeah. but I think whilst we go through this, there, there is a lot of noise around, cost saving and getting rid of humans and all of that good stuff. and I think that we'll settle down I think in the next couple of years.

Vinay:

so it just Talking about the implementation of AI and what AI can do in that membership space. What kind of use cases, what kind of, improvements or, changes are you talking to? clients about? experimenting with what can, if somebody was to go, yeah. All right, we'll, take a look at agen. we will put some AI in. What kind of things would you be deploying this technology to do?

Mel:

Yeah, absolutely. I've got a few sort of ideas in terms of things that I would've loved to be able to do when I was at. I'm developing Mary, the library bot. So at the moment if you go into an organisation and you want to get some data or get some articles or content from there,'cause you've got a report to do and you just need this. These stats or you need, to write up some information, wouldn't it? Great. You can chat to Mary. Now that came back to me that I remember in my very early days as a student at the Charting Charted Institute of Marketing Cookham Hall. I could ring up the library there and I go, Mary, I need an article and such, and she'd go off, she'd find it, photocopy And send it to me. why can't we have that today? Why can't we have Mary going in looking at all The contents? And here's five great articles and actually specifically this paragraph, and this paragraph, I think is really relevant to what you're trying to do. That's brilliant. People say, I can do that on chat GPT. You can, but you go back to Worldwide web. You want to still go into your organisation and know that content's been. It's been. curated. it's correct. And that's where the actual expertise comes from the membership organisations But a accessing articles is really hard now, in, mo in a lot of cases. I think one of the big challenges that some of the charities and the sort of B2C memberships, national Trust, wooden Trust, wildlife Trust have is quite often that their recruitment is very much based on a one-to-one conversation. You've all seen them at shows. Yeah. Little tents. Somebody comes up to you with a. clipboard, that's really expensive recruitment for them. wouldn't it be great That you could go on the website and it go, oh, hi. Are you interested? Where do you, live? Oh, you live in Bristol. Brilliant. what you into, I'm really interested in, finding out how to volunteer and suddenly it would then have the, conversation. It would produce some stuff for you. Would you like to know how to sign up? Would you like to sign up now? And you can have that dialogue. Now with ai you couldn't. Other than that, yeah, you'd have to go to a page, wouldn't you, on a website And find your way through it.

Vinay:

Yeah. You're almost curating it. I just remember when I, first joined the, when my daughter was little, we joined the National Trust, to have some extra days out. it's never something I'd ever thought about doing in my life, but I signed up for this thing. But what I found was I got this really thick book that came through the post, And then I, had to thumb through to figure out what ones are closest to me if I was going somewhere. Go and figure out where there might be a, particular property. And I, sat there thinking, wouldn't it be great if it would just curate for me? In a really simple way, here are the ones that are closest to you. We recommend starting with this one, and this one and then, if I was traveling somewhere, I could refer to the site and go what's closest to where I'm traveling? And it goes, oh, actually there's one on the way here. So I, I. I can, see where that would have a really strong application.

Mel:

Wouldn't, it be great then that your children are really into Henry VIII and they produce a worksheet on the fly for you Yeah. Yeah. that they could take around the property and that's the sort of area that this AI can start to do. it can be a one-to-one advisor.

Vinay:

Yeah. Actually, take it stage further the whole. And then when you've got young kids in The summer, holidays come up, you're like, God, what do I do with them during the summer to be able to do that And then it, it curates that kind of, here are three places to go visit. Here's three worksheets to go with it. Here's some activities and you get that is really great. what else are you, what else is AI helping with or GenAI helping? So it's

Mel:

definitely helping the data. We've mentioned that, the insight to be able to do that and hyper personalised communication. knowing what's gonna happen, and knowing what they're interested in.'cause as you collect that data together, you then go, oh, I know next time they go, they will want the next sheet on. Elizabeth first,'cause they've done it in the eighth, they're gone to Elizabeth first. So knowing that and preempting that is really, important. So not only can data help with your insight for predictive modeling to know where your growth trends gonna come, where potentially gonna lose people, but you can use that to then create those really personalised communications from your journey. that's really critical around ai.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

Yeah. Yeah.

Vinay:

And just linking back, I, you just reminded me of an example. Yeah. And so thinking, I was just thinking about an example, the other day, and I wrote about this on LinkedIn in the Post, there's a difference between knowing that somebody's traveled on your airplane, your bus, your coach, or whatever. and then knowing that they've had a good or poor experience. Because sometimes you see these things don't you when, okay, I know you, I know your birthday, so I'll send you a happy birthday card or something. That's personalisation People in the cost of living crisis, when people are going through their budgets, looking at where their money's going, if they don't see the value from a regular contribution that goes out, they're the ones that are gonna be prime for, let's cut that. Yeah. and, move on to something else. But if you've got value there, the stickiness, the reluctance to go, oh, I don't really want to get rid of that.'cause we get value from it. is important.

Mel:

It's really interesting cause you're absolutely right. So many, members, I told them about that when they joined. Yeah, but we've all got very short memories. We're never gonna remember that. So please keep reminding members that you are, that you, what value you offer. and also remind them about things that are relevant to them. lots of organisations I worked with one organisation many years ago, he said. I said tell me about your, what, you offer members. Oh, really excited. He went off and got me an a four page, two columns on both sides of all the benefits I read the first five and my. I ticked off. So there was a lot of benefits, but sometimes there's too many and you've gotta find the, right ones for the right people. So that's really important.

Iqbal:

That's, that's a great point. I was just looking at, memberships for the, Oval Cricket ground recently, and they've got literally. 12 to 15 different memberships and each one's got like a long list of features and capable offers that you get with each membership. And, I, lost interest halfway through. I was like this is too much. Yeah, just keep it simple. it should just be three tiers. Like it shouldn't be any more than that in, in my

Vinay:

view. Or there should be a way that. you can input some information about yourself and it tailors the benefits to what's important to you, right? Yeah, because, okay. Look, you can have the longest list you like of all the benefits. But the best of times, probably only two or three are gonna be relevant to you. And maybe at the time of joining, like for example, if you had lots of, some health companies now include as part of their membership scheme, include a virtual GP appointment, right? So during COVID ID that was brilliant because you couldn't get to see a gp, you could do that. Or if you've got young children, that might be more of a benefit as you see, you can get into see the doctor quickly, but. For some of us, it might not be that big a benefit because We might not be in a position where we need to have access to a GP at the a drop of a hat or something. so within those benefits it's again, personalising and learning about your database and learning about your members to go, okay, they haven't visited. We know this about them. Let's talk to them about this that seems relevant. To their lifestyle or this that seems, that might nudge them into, to using said membership or whatever.

Mel:

Yeah, The, it's absolutely that, and I think we're going back to that agent advisor, if you were talking to a one-to-one sales person, they, talk to you and say, yeah, so what's, interesting to you? what do you need? And then they personalise that conversation back to them. So why not use an agentic bot to do that conversation? That could have that same conversation with you?

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mel:

Online rather than you having to go to the website. With your 15 different categories. Yeah. Why don't they say, what are you interested? Actually, we'd recommend this is the best one for you. and help you to Do it. So there's so much we can get technology to help with it, but it does need humans. It needs us to think this through and understand what those are, and then use some. of that data to, ah, that's really interesting. We thought that was right. But now looking at it, those, that data's selling us something different. let's tweak, let's change. Nots all. that's the membership. We have that like that 25 years ago. and that's what gold membership is We're not changing it. Yeah, they don't. They're not. They're not. And they're, they find moving like the Titanic. It's very hard to move. Sometimes we need to be more flexible.

Vinay:

So Mel people might be listening to, yeah, okay. We get the te we get that we gotta use technology. We get that AI is a thing, but there's a fear isn't there, of how do we do that? Is there like, I don't know, a step by step guide or some. Some key tips that you would give membership organisations or other organisations listening to this thinking, yeah, we've seen Agentic ai, our CTOs spoken about it, or someone went to a conference and came back all excited about it. But how

Mel:

AI's huge. You know when people say, oh yeah, we are using ai, we are using chatGPT as a virtual assistant. Oh, great. And they, that's what they can't see the potential of it, because AI is a bit like, I can't even describe anything that's in the world that we've had like this, but the web, but it's, huge that it, there's lots of applications for using ai. and I think. At the moment, it's so big and it's so nebulous that people go, oh, I just, I'll just move around it. I'll just avoid it. but we've actually got enough problem with our data, so I can't do anything because I've gotta get data sorted. I can help with that So I think what happens is it's going back to my f list. It's going back and just spending time viewing and exploring what you're already doing. And just saying, where are your pain points? Where's your pain points? Where you got trouble? is it the renewals or is it that you can't, that you've got members that you can't understand what they want And they don't need? What are those challenges? It doesn't matter if it's a or tech that's solving the problem. You should do a really good review. good. where are we now? Where are, where, what's happening in the business? What's good what's bad? What's, a pain point for us? And then take that pain point and then consider a small bit of tech. If there is, or it might not be tech, it could be something else, and. Look at that individually, because at the moment everybody's trying to get AI that it's so big. Just take off one little challenge, one pro, pain point that you have and see if you can, apply it. So it could be that actually, joining online on your website is a real pain. Nobody can find the right pages. We get a lot of attrition. Nobody really gets in there and we are not converting people online. sit back and see if there's a way of using an advisor that can start to have a dialogue with your members, or if it's people going, we always getting calls and, people can't renew and they want to renew at 10 o'clock at night and they can't, can you make it easy to renew online by using some AI technology that we'll send a, little advisor to the phone? One of the biggest pain points that membership organisations have is, obviously retention. Biggest reason why people don't renew. They didn't get round to it. They forgot. So if you are not on direct debit, and we'll, talk about some of the issues about automatic renewals in the middle, I'm sure. But if you're not on direct debit you, which automatically renews when you don't realize, oh, okay. That's gone through. Which is good for membership organisations not great for engagement. But if you're not and you are relying on somebody to fill that paper form. or to actually go on and do something, people forget. They don't get round to it.

Vinay:

Yeah. and It's interesting. It is gonna be my next point actually, because there is some change coming to the industry. that's going to force a lot of membership organisations to think differently. it's. Potentially their GDPR moment. just tell us a bit more about what's coming down the track.

Mel:

this, year there's been a, new act in, engaged called the D the DMCC act, the Digital Marketing Competition and Consumers Act. this has been developed over the last few years and, it's been initiated by some bad practice, within. Maybe membership made more often. The subscription market, those organisations that have caught you into subscription and you get stuck in it and you can't get out of It and that's created, a great deal of angst, around consumers. And so that has got to, government and they are, introducing this new a it was passed this year. it will be implemented next year. the critical things around that are, is that auto renewal payments. So whether you're a membership organisation or a subscription business, you will have to have much clearer, transparent, renewal and joining processes. You'll have to let people know much, much in a much clearer way that your renewals are coming. and making sure you give people a very easy opportunity to opt out. So you must have optout very, you can online, if you joined online, you need to be able to cancel online without having to ring fight through different systems. So there's that coming. you'll need to do all kinds of things in terms of the way you produce your offers and making sure they're very much more clearer. Now the membership is. sector predominantly does do a regular renewals. and so I think that's less of worries. But there's also, more cooling off periods. So there'll be cooling off periods right at the beginning, which you get with direct debit anyway, but every year you renew, you allow the renewal, cooling off period. Which isn't currently.

Iqbal:

That's new, isn't it That's new. Yeah.

Mel:

a lot of the bad practices, bad marketing that's been going on will, will come under micro microscope. and there's big fines. They're bigger than GDPR fines. Yeah. So there is a lot, but nobody in the membership sector knows about this. I only heard about it a few months ago. some of the big charities are very worried because they're worried that people will then join, use their services for a couple of weeks and then cancel them. Cancel, yeah.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

which it could happen now, but it's the raising the awareness of that. Yeah. lots of them, you can't, or to cancel

Iqbal:

this may, this will surely make it more difficult then, isn't it? Just going back to your point around, losing customers because they've forgotten to renew. Now there's more of an excuse to get out of that membership because we've got these policies and regulations that protects our consumer. Which is great for the consumer standpoint, but that's gonna have to change the way these organisations behave, the way they sell their services. the way they are more proactive in making sure that they're engaged to, to a level that, Guarantees That renewal, that retention, for, that particular customer. yeah, it's interesting to see. I guess with this now, is this, regulation in place? Is it, why it,

Mel:

it, so they've finished the consult consultation in February, although it's already been passed. and some of the big organisations like the English Heritage and National Trust are hoping there's gonna be some exemptions for them. on some of the, on some of the areas in the at, they've heard nothing. So as far as they're concerned at the moment, it's going ahead and it will be implemented by you. You'll need to be compliant by next spring 22, 25. Okay. at this point we haven't got any more, it's a bit like GDPR. It's all a bit vague. You're not really quite sure, but you're absolutely right. It's all about engagement. It's all about you being much more proactive and valuing your membership relationship. You need to give that benefit. Yeah,

Vinay:

it, makes it important. we always talk about, there, are two motivators for change, pleasure, and pain. It's either to move away from some pain or move toward, towards pleasure. And I guess if there isn't a motivation yet for organisations to do this, it's coming down the track. So they're gonna have to convey value more strongly, understand more about their customers, work harder. Because if customers have now got an easier way to get out, it's, when you think about mobile phones, you went back in the day when you first had your mobile phone, you get signed into a 12 month contract or a 18 month contract, and then sim only deals have come along and now it's become easy to just move from provider to provider. So organisations have to work harder to keep, people locked in. Yeah. to want to get'em to want to stay. I guess they have to try harder to capture them. Instead of having captive. Trapped customers who can't get out of stuff.'cause that's not loyalty. I, think sometimes people mistake the Oh, they're still with us as loyalty. Yeah. customers are with you because they haven't found a better option yet. Yeah. Or you don't have a way for them to get out and move to somebody else yet.

Iqbal:

Yeah. And they take advantage. and you understand like just on the mobile example, like there's this huge shift to eims for instance now, there, there's no physical sim required anymore. So that that means there's, less friction to be able to move between different Yeah. Different providers. And that's why, again, goes back to that value point. It's how, do you provide more and more value? And it puts pressure on these organisations I feel for, I'll feel for'em because it's very competitive, when you're trying to, particularly when you're a business trying to sell a service, it's you have to think on your toes now. And, because the technology is just changing things for everybody. The way we consume information and services has completely changed the game, hasn't it?

Vinay:

I, I guess the good ones will keep doing great stuff and already complete, have things in place. But I think it calls out those that have been a bit less resting on the laurels have just taken the fact that people just pay out of a direct debit. That's, it's gonna bring into sharp focus and hopefully they will start looking at their data more to understand if there's a certain drop off or whatever. start thinking about what can you do now? Yeah. to start to really activate your membership base and deliver more value.'cause that's what people are looking for. and That then that creates a stickiness. So just to, to wrap us off,'cause we are, we're almost out time. Really quickly. What does the ideal membership experience look like in the next five to 10 years? I know we've covered bits of it now, but is there anything that you see that you? go here's another thing that we haven't quite talked about there. I

Mel:

think, nothing specific, but I think what's really interesting, a membership experience should be, twofold. It should be providing good value. Tangible value. You can say, this is this, I get what I need from this, organisation But you should also create that sense of loyalty.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Mel:

You want to stay with an organisation It's not always about everything transactional. It is about you feeling part of that organisation felt, listened, felt. Part of a community that you liked. I'm proud to have my National Trust sticker on the back, or I'm really proud to be a member of this organisation And I will tell other people about it. That is where we want the ideal relationship to go with. Not that it's, oh, I get this much back. there was a big period in time where people, were offering, discount programs, oh, join us and you get 20% off here, 30% off here and whatever. Everybody can get that anywhere now. that isn't why you join an organisation You join an organisation because you want it to feel it's part of you and you're proud to be part of it, not just for a transactional. I think that's where it's got to move to. You've got to feel that it's something that I go and you'd be proud to go and tell a friend about That would be the best, relationship You could have with, a member.

Vinay:

great. so just. Key takeaways and if there's one thing, that you could share. we've talked about data, we've talked about dialogue, all these kind of things. If there's one key thing you could share that somebody come, could come off this podcast and do something immediately, what would that one thing be?

Mel:

I think that one thing would be just map your membership journey. Just look at who your members are and what they're doing with you and what they're not doing with you. take, there'll be a number of different sort of personas in that, or different members doing different things. Just take one. Just take one with, as a student or a new joiner, somebody, and just look at everything they are getting through that journey. whether it's tech or not, what is that experience like? You know when you start looking down and, say, ah, they've received 322 emails from us this year, and generally they don't engage with us and, oh. They, rang, they had to give for 10 minutes to get hold of somebody to be able to cancel. going back to that, just every touch point needs to be good. and even if you have a member that wants to leave, let them leave in good terms. Make them feel that they, that, we're gonna miss you. Let's, we are gonna miss you, but we're always here. The door's open. We'd love you to come back. They will tell other people about a good experience. That's true. Even it's when they leave. That is true. Yeah.

Iqbal:

and I think for me, in terms of what I've learned is one of the key things where I think organisations can make a difference is just going back to your point around dialogue, is having an established dialogue with your member. that's, something I'm yet to see. Like sporadic communications, as you say, emails get stuck in junk, but actually have a. I know people don't have time, but you've got all these digital channels in a way that you can engage Yeah. Your members through social media. Of course, email is one of those, maybe even a phone call now and then, if they, if they're opt in, that is it's, I think if you do listen. And have that two-way conversation, then I think that can then, deliver the outcomes that you've just mentioned there.

Vinay:

Absolutely.

Iqbal:

Totally.

Vinay:

Great. Mel, thank you so much for coming today. If people would like to get in touch, how can they find you Where should they go? I. tell our listeners where to find you.

Mel:

Yeah, so please visit us@ww.agenticconsulting.co uk. that's our web address and you'll find some really useful resources on there. We've got some templates, we've got some great, articles and stuff around the DMCC Act specifically. So if you've not heard of that, that please go and visit that resource. and we've got any questions, it's easy to get on touch with us there.

Vinay:

Great. we'll include the links on the description to this podcast. Mel, thank you very much. Once again, thank you for, for joining us, for another great episode of Breaking a Blueprint. And, yeah, next up, what do we have? We've got a couple of exciting things in the pipeline, won't revealed that just yet'cause we're working on some, some really interesting conversations. but until the next time. subscribe. Don't forget, subscribe. Sorry. Don't forget, subscribe. I need to get this game, get together. Need to be a pro podcaster. yeah, don't forget to subscribe, share, tell your friends. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please send us your questions, comments, and until the next time, we'll speak to you soon. Thank you.