Communications Configuration

As the communications systems are either very ridged or very loose at this church it makes it tough to implement tools like email distribution lists, web site and configure things like the phone system.  Sometimes there are very ridged lines and committee/s oversight that only a few people know about, other times it is adhoc or the Vestry who oversee but they only meet once per month normally.  In developing a communications plan and simplifying the process for certain things like approving use of Church facilities by groups inside the church --  we need an online system that can function and handle facilities scheduling.

I created an org chart to try and make sure organizations fell under the right hierarchy but really need to have it blessed and get some additional feedback so I can help make sure I configure things to help facilitate better communications.

I did create a distribution "Action List" that send to the Vestry Ex-Com, Judy and for the short term myself so that we can clear out and take to a point of resolution long standing complaints/issues/ideas people in the church have so we can track them to resolution which in many cases will be the "why" we can't or are not able to move forward but in an official response.  My hope is that this will help clear the deck of baggage so that we can help people begin to move forward.

Another day, another system

The 8x8 phone system is now partially configured.  All the extensions are up and running and Fr. Williams iPhone has the 8x8 app running on it.  We need to continue to configure the ring groups, auto attendant and then record the VMs.  We need to finish configuring it and record the outgoing announcements then it will be ready.

The office PC continues to be problematic that yes it is "newer" but it really is bottom of the barrel in terms of spec and especially since it is running Vista -- it seems dog slow.  Turning all the bells off -- it has been running better until I tried to install Outlook 2007.  It continues to "fail install" but Outlook is there and working but VERY slow to load.  However being very slow to start makes it frustrating as Judy's normal method has been to open / close email vs. leave it running for the day.

To fix, I need the install disc for the version of Office currently installed so we can uninstall and I ran reinstall without Outlook 200X and then install Outlook 2007 again fresh -- hopefully that fixes the problem.

We really need at least a second PC in the office so that Judy or the volunteer or even the Rector if he does not have his Mac can connect.

I spent a few minutes tooling around with Wordpress Mu to now understand you do not make changes to the root blog - deactivate or delete.  Also had issues that some setting in my Chrome browser is keeping me from being able to log in properly -- it just reloads the sign-in page.  Firefox works ok but need to get to the bottom of this one.

Community Calendar

Community calendar for our site and area sites that interfaces with existing ones and can layer those events on/off into and out of.  For hyper local able to have things no-one else is listing and be the distribution point/tech out to the wider community. 

Moving towards an ideal solution - longer term

Currently reviewing several Church Management Solutions (ChMS), CRMs, Broadcast Email/Campaign Marketing Provider, Broadcast Voicemail, Google Apps, Workflow Automation, Automated Customer Service, Survey Solution, etc. to develop an integrated solution for a denomination of churches to handle day-to-day process management of their offices, develop automated or standard work flows, etc.

Specifically preparing them to handle an increase of contacts directly or funneled through a separate web site/phone system that will be backed by a sizable and ongoing community outreach & advertising campaign.  Goal of the campaign is to develop interest and feed/assign prospective members/leads out to local congregations and have them be able to route, process, follow up and be accountable – all online enabled.  This includes tracking and follow up with people with both fall out of the process as well as people who then are transitioned to attendees and later members.

We may specifically need assistance in integrating one of the online SaaS Church Management Solutions (Fellowship One, Community Church Builder, etc) with a CRM and Google Hosted Email apps to track communication/touches out to members and record that to their record.

We are potentially looking for a partner to handle development work to bridge a possible ChMS with a more functional CRM and then automate some workflows in between.

Another Church Specific ChMS / CRM Option

http://www.faithhighway.com/church-management-software-and-other-church-software.php

They also do the Sermon Connect service.
http://sermonconnect.com/

Fun with database fields & data tracking

Membership status?


We have a lot of options here that we probably need to discuss, define and decide which terms and who they apply to for the database (our use) and need for reporting under Parochial rules.  So there is a toss-up having too few options does not give us a clear picture of where we are at and having too many tends to leave people lost between the cracks.  We can juggle other fields/lists as well if that is a better option i.e. split contribution and steward info separate from membership so there is less of a hierarchy of Steward, Contributor, Active Member, Attendee, etc.  

• Active member
• Inactive member
• Member Non-resident
• Prospective Member (or Returning visitor or Seeker or Visitor 3 or more times)
• Visitor (1 - 2 times)
• Active Participant (or Active Attendee)
• Inactive Participant (or Inactive Attendee)
• Active Contributor Only
• Inactive Contributor Only
• Active Pledging Member (Pledging / Financial Steward - Same or separate form contributor?)
• Relative of Member/Participant
• Deceased?

Relationship:

• Need to separate single adult from single youth/child.

Additional Contact Note types:

• Personal Crisis Event
• Health Crisis Event
• Alert
• Pastoral Counseling

Custom fields:

Adding some special fields into the ACS People Database for office use/tracking:

• 2008 Pledging Member (Yes/No)
• 2009 Pledging Member (Yes/No)
• 2010 Pledging Member (Yes/No)
• A-List Member (Yes/No)
• Baptised (Yes/No)
• Confirmation Status (Conf. Episcopal, Confirmed Other, Not Confirmed, Reconfirmed Episc.)
• Frequency of Attendance (almost never/moved, Al least once a month, at least quarterly, at least 2x a month, Every week solid, high holidays only, less than once a year, regular 3-4x month, yearly)
• Last time seen at church (2006 or before, 2007, 2008, 2009 Q1/Q2, 2009 Q3, 2009 Q4, 2010 Q1)
• List in Directory (Y/N)
• Membership form recevied (Yes/No)
• Preferred service or event (8AM, 10:30AM, 5:00pm, Special Event Only)
• Attending with whom (Adult child only, Friend, Other, Parent, Self only, Sibling, Spouse, Youth or child only)

For baptism and confirmation separately tracking in text:

• Date for baptism
• Location of baptism
• Denomination of baptism
• Date for confirmation
• Location of confirmation

Additional possible fields:

• Majority Faith Community (What denomination if any before now would you most identify with/raised in?)
• Marriage in the church, name & location of church, what denomination, when

As far as groups, organizations, skills, etc -- all likely to be handled in that subfunctionality and not direclty attached to the customizing user record fields.

Meeting with potential Champions

We had a meeting last night -- but I was off my game. I had my day disrupted by overlapping medical appointments in different places once I figured it out it and got them adjusted it was 4 hours of rushing between three buildings multiple times with kids in tow. So I was pretty frazzled. When that happens I'm stuck in "Marine Sargent" mode vs. good listener.

However, I did prepare a Call to Action document and tried to explain what it means and what I am doing now and then where things are at. The what I'm doing now is focusing on the "back office" stuff from the CMS, ChMS, CRM, etc. While learning the process we do stuff. Hopefully we can whip a few things into place in short order.

Then I am looking at deeper issues and come back with some information and choices in regards to improving welcoming on a short time line i.e. Holy Week/Easter Week. This means collecting information, documenting and then coming back with recommendations for process changes, training people and web & software improvements. So that this champions group could reconvene and then have a second meeting with others interested once a direction has been set.

Topics besides welcoming and "back office" came up and I let them know Ed's Survey had been compiled and sent on to the Rector and Sr. Warden. Specifically the music program came up and while I definitely think it needs addressed that issue is outside my personal focus at the present time -- but that I had made a recommendation to Rector & Warden on how & what to survey separately on that.

Using Pentecost Sunday as a Re-Welcoming Day / Second Push

Besides an early target for using Holy Week for potential kick start to welcoming efforts the next major day in the church Calendar we could sync up and do a second outreach using the lessons learned would be Pentecost.

Pentecost (May 23rd) could be our big push to get Welcoming done right and do a real marketing campaign with follow-up survey.  Format could be to focus on that Family Reunion, Re-welcoming / Revitalizing the Church / Raise the Spirits.  Not sure if we ar near any specific anniversary year or not but that too could be a theme/message.

Sunday... 1 Week into the "unpacking" process...

• I estimate I've put in around 60 hours this week to begin to get a handle on things.
• Hit my limit with Windows 7 and its wireless network wizard -- tried to use the church office WiFi and somehow it saved some incorrect settings somewhere hidden.  So yes, even I experience tech problems that are at least 50% user error initiated.
• Talked with 50% of our seminarians, she is only technically with us until May but would like to keep a relationship with the congregation and involvement with activities a few times a month but has to serve back in her home church.  We set a time to get together and talk about what I'm proposing.
• I need to talk with our other seminarian and see how he might be able to contribute and/or how we could help with the new Sunday 5PM alternative worship.  
• One idea I had for it was "Work-Ship" which is at least one time a month doing some concerted outward/community facing volunteer effort after a brief service, do the work on-site (like assemble bags of groceries from the donations & distribute) and then to come back together again. Something like a food drive or community dinner & kids movie for the community in the churches zip code.
• Another idea I really would love to explore is a kid inclusive and friendly service that is supportive & inclusive of all kids including autism and learning disabilities, ADHD, etc..
• Sent the Worship Survey results with "literals" i.e. grouped and simplified comments on to Sr. Warden and Rector with some recommendations on three areas that may need more focus to understand the issues and communicate better.
• Spoke with Leslie D. about her interest in contributing to help off load updates/maintenance to the churches web site from Ed.  Explained were we are at in an ongoing discussion on how to split the duties and simplify the systems -- it is not a hand it over type thing and Ed has gone out of his way to not drop any balls.
• Current 1 person design, write/edit code, maintain server, create collateral marketing, copy enter, copy edit and reply and help organize things -- are dead.  We need to split all of Ed's responsibilities to the right group of people who are cross trained and simplify the systems to do all the most pressing things that he does.
• Exploring new CMS systems and coming to agreement on those in the next calendar week though as of right now WordPress is my favorite.  Recommended she check out setting up a free blog with them to see the system in action and to pick up a book from the library on WordPress.
• Separately I am still exploring navigation / hierarchy of the new site and need to graph out a bunch of good looking easy to use church sites to find some/all commonalities of what makes them good.  
• Once those two (CMS & Nav) are locked down -- then we will need lots of help moving text into a dummy site which can then be edited and rearranged further before being styled and then imported into the public server after it has been configured.  During this step is also the perfect time to train someone on how to enter, edit and style the text within the CMS as the site won't be public so any mistakes can be caught and catastrophe's reversed without the public seeing anything.

More resources / sites to check out from Ed

http://healyourchurchwebsite.com/ -- pretty good blog

http://www.churchmetrics.com/  -- this one looks AWESOME!!!

http://groups.drupal.org/node/24494  -- this is a pretty specific page outlining the possible features for a Drupal for Churches distro. i refer to it constantly for ideas about possible features to add.

http://www.onthecity.org/ -- commercial SaaS from Zondervan

Tools: Flow Charting Software

When documenting web sites, user experiences, processes and workflow -- a very good tool to have is Flow Charting software or Online Service.  It can go hand and hand integrated in project management software or totally separate.  Some tools exist for helping writers scaffold their ideas visually while others are more specialized like manufacturing or software development.  A good one can create useful visual representations from a org charts to Venn Diagrams to Mind Maps to standard business planning like SWOT to wire framing user interface.  These pieces of software have various names and functionality -- Outliners and Diagrammers also fall into the category.

Representing complex systems visually really helps you find drop outs, dead-ends and bottle necks and give you a much simplified way to explain and keep people who are not process oriented within the logic of a process so you can really discuss and improve it.

Good sites for doing this online are:

• Gliffy.com
• Mindmeister.com
• TheBrain.com
• DropMind.com
• List of several "free" options

Traditional Software:

• SmartDraw
• Mind Jet

There are also several iPhone/iPod Touch apps that mostly fall into organizer or mind mapper.

Tool & Process: Automating/Simplifying news item submission into a Blog/News post

Email Automation for News Items
I'm not sure how well this would work as setting up a public email alias posted for submitting news item to then (spam cleanse somehow) and then forward to the "secret" email address as well as the news editors email address and then the blog software would auto create a draft blog item in an unpublished state.  Editor would get his/her notification and would log into the blog software to edit and publish the item.  Obviously SPAM cleanse before bothering the blogging software is CRITICAL if this was to work.

Voicemail Automation for News Items
Adding a custom phone number with google voice and linked account to send email notification with transcription of the callers messange that then inside google voice could be set to forward as email and use the above email automation for and email which would contain the transcripted message to be a new unpublished news item in the system to be actived/updated.

Looking for Champions

On a process level to actually get something done we need some internal champions.  These would be people on the the Vestry as well as long term key members.  The champions would be the ones if in agreement to help pursue the resources including financial to support the effort and sometimes more importantly to provide air cover and support for the disruption/change that needs to occur.

I'm starting that process to reach out facilitated by another key champion in our case the Rector.

Refining and wording of goals, objectives and solutions -- as well as presentation materials for the rest of the Vestry & Congregation are another critical area for champion support.

Tool: Contact Scraping

Sometimes people come in back doors, go sideways, use personal accounts, email some address outside the normal process and capture.  That is when you want/need contact scraping tools. 


Information scraping tools: Contact Capture or LinkedIn that scans the emails in a users desktop and addresses listed as contacts in your account and automatically batch add them to the system.  Ministers, office staff and all other church computers could have this done a semiregular basis.

• Broadlook Technologies - Contact Capture, Eclipse, etc
• LinkedIn

Tools: Closing the Phone and Voice Mail Loop

Incoming Voice Mail Transcription and call routing: Using Google Voice and linked email account to suck data into the system and route to a user record and into workflow.  There are some other providers out there but for the time being Google Voice is free.

Outgoing Voice Mail Forwarding: Record automated messages with a key response from live user to connect to church/volunteer.  "Offline" version of an email campaign/blast.  Notation of each call out could ideally be batch recorded to user record. (OneCallNow, Phonevite, etc.)

Possible Outgoing VM/Automated Calls:

• Event reminders
• Cancellation of events/services
• Weekly/Monthly Pastoral message
• Missed service call - do you need any help (illness, etc.)

Need for Surveys / Feedback Points

Ok so in an "unhealthy" customer service environment -- the need for feedback points is critical.  Most decent CRM/customer service software has a mini-satisfaction survey link built into most outgoing communication or it can be added to the templates.  Separately, a simple sentence asking if their needs have been met or are unhappy with a linked feedback@xyz.com address that can be incorporated into email footers/templates.

For those that haven't notices -- even good to great customer service folks regularly include a link to a satisfaction survey in every customer interaction.

If there is no survey system / form -- then you may need to setup an online form that can post into your customer database and insert a link to an outside survey (i.e. survey monkey) or even a link to a hidden web page that posts into a Google Doc can work for simple capture.  One critical piece you want to make sure is included is a source code from which link did they get to the survey (email footer, email template, web site, etc.) -- this can expose if one area is generating most of the feedback for good or bad reasons.

The issues with surveys either ongoing or specific timeframes is that you need to compile them, analyze them and act on them.  If you use a disconnected system from your CRM - getting those survey results attached to a customer record may take some work -- but even knowing who has not completed a survey (so someone can reach out and ask for feedback) is important.  Plus knowing that someone who regularly surveys their experience poorly -- needs a higher level intervention.

Contact Manager vs. Customer Relationship Manager

One thing I think a lot of the Church specific solutions create is a Contact Manager and think they've created a true Customer Relationship Manager.

Basically a CM is a glorified shared address book with the potential to enter notes in one field and/or attach multiple text notes (of one or more types - i.e. prayer requests, group membership, etc) to a person and give them some type of status.  It ends up being a pretty manual process.

A CRM actually enables and documents an entire workflow, and includes the actual associated communication if electronic and attaches it to the customer record to more easily tack issues and follow up. A lot of CRM software is targeted at sales people so there are pipelines and status changes and analytics built-in.

We are definitely looking for more CRM functionality and less straight/simple CM.

Trouble ticket / Customer Service better than CRM?

Would Customer Service / Tech Support Trouble ticketing solution with strong email integration be a part of the solution?  It has several strengths...

• Routing
• Email Integration / Workflow
• Follow Ups
• Queing
• Reporting and Key Metrics
• Automatic processing, reassignment
• Escalation
• Trouble tickets
• FAQ systems
• Customer Record, User Records and Individual Contact Item records

Depending on the CRM or ChMS solution -- this a separate internet/email savvy trouble ticking solution with automation, logic, queing and reporting might be interesting "plug-in" to fill gaps.

Importance of Facebook, Twitter, Texting, Email and Online Calendaring

Besides voice calls and bulletins -- what are the ways people are communicating and the church needs to move towards communicating in:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Texting
• Email
• Online Calendar Updates

Both the church site and the ChMS/CRM tool need to be moving to be more inclusive of the above methods of communication and preferences for certain users / use cases.  

At a minimum new content added to web site auto posted/syndicated to Facebook and Twitter.  Email groups and email campaign management are all key.

Tools: Broadcast Voicemail

Ok so sometimes people need a call and a letter and an email.  Sometimes you just want to create another touchpoint to reach out to your customers to invite them back in.  A decent Broadcast VM solution is superior to Phone Trees and can give you reporting and funnel someone from the Voice Recording to a human.  Used well and targeted it might help close the gap in some dropped communication.

Vendors include:

• Dial My Calls
• One Call Now
• Voice Shot
• Call Fire
• Phonevite