BEYOND THE OFFERING PLATE

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: How To Turn It Up In Church

What is customer satisfaction and how do you turn it up in church?

 How Every since I was a teen I’ve always loved management and customer satisfaction. Please understand that when I talk about customer satisfaction I am not talking about the cliche “the customer is always right”. When I talk about customer satisfaction I think about serving and excellence. While I served as Guest Services Manager in 4 star hotels we focused on operations and caring for the needs of others. The managers had a list that they went through daily and it was this list that helped us live up to the expectations of others. As a pastor where and what is your list?

It becomes very easy to neglect various flaws and problems in the church that guest see and many even become distracted by them. Pastors and church leaders are called to care for the flock and give of themselves but they are also called serve the needs of the church guest and members. When is the last time you did a walk through or visited your church as a guest? 

I can give countless stories that others have given me when they visited churches. The greatest problem that I ran into on one of my visits to a church was a church that had rats and the rooms had not been cleaned in a while. The youth building was horrible because you could see rats walking up in the wood above you and I was told the room had not been cleaned in months. As a parent I would have personally told other parents about the church and problems. The many issues gave a really bad report to the leaders because you could tell that they were not being good stewards. Like so many other people we left the church in dissapointment. 

One of my very best experiences was when we attended “The Sanctuary or Santa Clarita Canyon Country Foursquare Church.” The pastor had a deep understanding of meeting the needs of the guest and members. The pastor had the church service set up so that he could visit every children and youth room to spend time with each of them. He would then show back up in the adult service where he would express his love for them and what the kids were learning that day. Another great concept that he implemented was that once a year he would close the church service and encourage members to attend other churches bringing back bullitens etc. One of the greatest reasons he did this was that he wanted his members to fellowship with other believers and he wanted to know what God was doing in the churches. The following week he would celebrate what God was doing in the churches and in the community. 

I celebrate churches like the one in Santa Clarita because we should focus on meeting the needs of our community and celebrate what God is doing. Improving the church facilities and services will only help your members become more excited about attending and meeting the needs of our guest. Some churches have very little cash and the facilities may need a lot of work but we must continue as upgrade the service and facilities as time and funds permit. A freind of mine pastors in Arizona and his challenge is the property and the lack of funds because the majority of the members are not employed. However, he has made many upgrades on the property and he focuses on the effectiveness of the ministries.

I’ve attended churches that felt like attending a movie or a broadway show. The issue here is not about putting on a great show but meeting the needs of those attending. We must pay attention to details that our guest pay attention to. We need to train our members and those serving so that growth can occur. If you want to improve on meeting the needs of your members and guest and increase customer satisfaction you should do the following:

Implement a monthly walk through where you

TRAFFIC FLOW

• Inspect the parking grounds (Coming and Going)
• Note the effectiveness of the signs
• Look at traffic flow and write down troubled spots

BUILDING APPROACH

• Landscaping overgrown or messed up
• Any dangerous steps
• parking lot concrete have holes etc
• How are entrances and can any of them use a flower garden etc

YOUTH AND CHILDREN

• How is registration processes
• Staff and members friendliness
• Staff and members approachable 
• Wait time for childrens registration, service on time, time to get in and out

STAFF 

• Attitude of staff
• Attitude of people around you
• Members and staff knowledgable

Services and Ministries

• Do we meet need of our families
• How is our beverage area (anything missing)
• How effective are they

Gather a list of questions for customer satisfaction and have church leaders, members, visitors, and others answer them. The goal in gathering information is to find out what you are doing wrong and right. The best way to meet the needs of your guest is to find out what they are. Many churches only hit the surface when it comes to doing this and if they are detailed they do not do this regularly. Here are just a few areas to discuss:

How are the following? Were they friendly? What did you like about them?

TRAFFIC TEAM/GREETERS

USHER GREET TEAM

GUEST SERVICES TEAM

ATRIUM HOST

CAFE

BULLETEN ASSEMBLY

MEDIA

GROUNDSKEEPING

SECURITY

MEDIA RESPONSE TEAM

POINT PERSON

TRANSFORMING YOUR MINISTRY FROM ADEQUATE TO WOW!

Key Steps To Increase Your Presence On The Internet Called Optimization

“Key steps to increase your presence on the internet called optimization” was developed by Expanding Kingdom Ministries because many ministries have their sites developed from someone that do not know how to effectively place websites on search engines. The greatest issue is that your primary marketing task is to make your organization as visable as possible and increasing your presence on the internet which most information technology experts call optimization.

There are just a few key steps to increase your presence on the internet and you can begin the process and you must begin with the following research called search optimization:

PLACEMENT REVIEW is utilized to give you a good benchmark to measure your organizations success on the internet. 1. Begin with making a short list of 5 or 6 key words or phrases associated with your optimization that you would like to achieve high placement on. 2. Search the various search engines such as yahoo, google, msn, and others using the 5 to 6 keywords or the phrases in step one. 3. Make a note of where you appear on the list which leads to search optimization.

Key steps to increase your presence on the internet called optimization involve making basic changes to your web sites design. content, and in some cases basic programming behind the scenes. You can increase your presence on the web by implementing the following:  

1. TITLE TAG: The title tag in your home page should contain the name of your organization and 3 to 5 word phrase utilizing 2 of your key words.

 2. DESCRIPTION TAG: The desciption tag should have one to two sentice description of your organization. The goal here is to use as many key words as possible. It is mportant to understand that not all search engines use this.

3. <Meta Tags> This is a hidden set of tags in your web pages. One Meta tag called key words should contain most important keywords for your organization and post.

4. IMAGES TAG: Search engines can not read pictures but their is an area where you can put your organization key words in their box. Utilizing this will increase your web presence.

 5. The content of your post should have many of your keys words of your organization and post used throughout the content. Another key to increase your presence on the internet is to bold your title of the post. Many search engines utilize this process. These key steps to increase your presence on the internet or optimization must be followed completely.

6. RE-REGISTRATION must be implemented so that your work can be reexmined by the search engines. You can either go to each search engine and use a link to manually reset your site or you can use a commercial registration www.submit-it.com

You will want to complete your optimization by completing a Placement Review four to five weeks after you reregistered. One of the best places to learn more about search engines is to visit www.searchengines.com

A good amount of work must be completed to optimize your site and we offer a service that will optimize your web site and re-register your site with search engines for $99.95

Producing A Professional And Effective Ministry

• Be creative by implementing the services you want to employ
• Write down what it would look like in each area of your ministry if everything was excellant
• Develop guidelines for each role and for each ministry in your church
• Train each volunteer
• Celebrate their accomplishments
• Give reviews and evaluations

There are many great ways to obtain volunteers but there are sites that will help you obtain professional volunteers as well. plaxo.com and volunteermatch.com are two great places where you can obtain professional and skilled volunteers that serve in areas such as graphics artist, web development, and other areas.

DEVOTIONALS ON LEADERSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT

DEVOTIONALS ON LEADERSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT

GOD’S PLAN TO PROSPER YOU

The devotionals on leadership and development was developed to help leaders grow in the spiritual area of their life. Jerimiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come to pray to Me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.”

I find the Book of Jeremiah to be a very special book because the Israelites have been complacent in their walk with God and God used Jeremiah to give them a very special and unique word. Many times in our own life we neglect to do devotions and our growth in leadership and development is slowed. It must have been extremely difficult for Jeremiah because the word he was given was contrary to the many words that false prophets were given. It must have taken a lot of strength and conviction for Jeremiah to give the word. I even evaluate my own life and wonder if I could have given the word of judgement and captivity to the people. However, our call to Christian leadership calls us to speak the Word of God and do what the Lord calls us to do.

In my own journey I have seen the church expose the sins of others while neglecting the sins of their own leaders. I also believe that we are living in a time where the Lord is calling His people to be a people that loves the lost and confront the sin of complacency, selfishness, and to lay their life down for the lost and their brothers and sisters. How many times has a freind or loved one come to you for advice and prayer only to be neglected by our own selfishness.

This past weekend my wife and I spent the weekend in the mountains and observed the goodness of the Lord. As I looked at the mountains and the beautiful view of God’s creation Jeremiah 29:11 came to me. God has great and wonderful plans for us and even if we are struggling or are in pain God is still thinking about His plans for us. I believe that this passage is an encouragement to us and the Lord is saying I know the things that you are going through and even if the things you are going through is causedby your conduct or by the mistakes that you made He still has a greater plan for us and if we seek Him He will not only show us what He has planned He will lead us to get there.

I had to learn about God’s plan to prosper me the hard way. I preached and taught using this passage many times but it was not until I was diagnosed with permanent nerve damage called “Arachnoiditus”. I obtained this condition due to scar tissue after my third back surgery. My condition was serious because the pain was so bad that I could barely get out of bed and I would fall when I walked. I gave up for a time and depression crept into my life. I eventually took this passage to heart and began fighting back walking, working in the yard, and praying Scripture over my body. Today I am walking in God’s goodness and grace and I have learnt that the plans of the Lord is to propser us.

I want to encourage you in the Lord because He has a great plan to prosper you and if you will seek Him and put the needs of others before your own God will bless you greatly and He will help take any of your sorrows away. To me this is what leadership and development is all about. Trust in the Lord and call out His name. He wants to do great things in your life and if you will follow in His ways you will live a life that is a blessing to others.

Can you point to times when the Lord worked miracles in your life? Write them down and think about all of the great things that He can do.

WE ARE CURRENTLY OFFERING 75% TO 85% OFF MANY OF OUR SERVICES!

Dear Pastors and Leaders,
My heart’s desire is to help pastors become more strategic in the way that they do ministry, focus on branding and marketing strategies, and increase ministry finances utilizing tools and capturing various streams of revenue. We are currently offering 75% to 85% off of many of our services!

1. Our program to assist ministries develop a branding strategy usually cost $99.99 but we are currently offering a branding strategy at $49.99 and if you add a marketing strategy to it total cost is $99.99 which is a savings of $450.00 to $700.00 pending on the job. BENEFITS: Communicate your identity clearly, Develop unity in vision and core values, Obtain increased funds through marketing, increase the amount of members and staff,   

2. Our Complete Strategy Package consists of branding and marketing strategy, 3 year Strategic plan, and Development Plan for $400.00 which does not cover my travel but plans can be completed by distance but they are not as good. Our cost for all 4 plans normally cost $1,600 – $2,000. BENEFITS: Communicate your identity clearly, Develop unity in vision and core values, Obtain increased funds through marketing, Increase the amount of members and staff, Increase funds through many avenues, Develop stronger leaders, Increase your volunteer staff, Create effective ministries that meet the needs in community, obtain free press, and so much more.  

3. Grant Research, 15 grant proposals sent to best matched foundations and 1 year newsletter. Cost is $2,400 and you can pay 12 months at $200.00. The normal cost $7,000.00 BENEFITS: Increase funds through foundations, Increased funds through corporations in the community, and Increase funds by becoming strategic in fundraising.  

4. Grant Research and designing 15 professional grants submitted to the foundations that best fit your ministry, 1 year subscription to newsletter that give tools and strategic insight, and the 4 plans in option 2. Cost $2,700 broken down over 12 months which is $225.00 BENEFITS: Communicate your identity clearly, Develop unity in vision and core values, Obtain increased funds through marketing, Increase the amount of members and staff, Increase funds through many avenues, Develop stronger leaders, Increase your volunteer staff, Create effective ministries that meet the needs in community, obtain free press, Increase funds through foundations, Increased funds through corporations in the community, and Increase funds by becoming strategic in fundraising.

Evaluating Your Brand For Transformation and Effectiveness

Having a weak brand is a serious issue in the nonprofit field because it not only fails to obtain the market’s attention it also decreases sales and revenue generation. Having a weak brand is a liability that fights against the work that the staff tries to accomplish. Warren Buffet states that a power brand is essential for sustained growth.

A strong brand establishes credibility and trust before they knock on the customer’s door. Strong branding in a church or ministry gives a great advantage over other nonprofit organizations because the community will look highly upon those that represent your church or ministry and it will also make raising funds far more productive and easier. Strong branding accelerates the ministry team or sales team and that’s just one of the many benefits that transforms your brand into an effective brand.

The nonprofit world is a wide range of unclear and weak brands which occurs mainly because most nonprofits are spending most of their effort and time raising funds and service delivery. Unfortunately, most ministries miss out completely because they spend all of their efforts in developmentinstead of strengthening their brand. One of the reasons why this occurs is that they start their organization without promoting a professional consultant which causes them to fall short in communicating a clear and consistant message and they fail to communicate with the correct target audiences. This causes the ministry to play in catch up mode while they continue to lose customers.

Asset brands can play a major role in deciding strengths and weaknesses. Asset brands are executed with three principles which are values, consistency, and trust. Asset brands stand for the core values that flow through your entire organizations and is consistently communicated through the service and the sale. Asset brands build trust and delivers value through:

• Pricing
• Accelerated Sales
• Strong Competitive Positioning
• Trusted Customer Partnership
• Differentiated Products and Service
• Protection VS. Public Perception
• Improved Bottem Line Valuation

Evaluating the overall goals, positioning strategy, identity, and experience will aid in declaring the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and brand. If the identity or brand in its clearest sense is a confirmation of who you are then branding is the systematic way we establish identity for ourselves. For years tribes and eskimos have been branding themselves to distinguish who they are and why they are different from others.

One of the earliest symbols designed by humans was the wheel of life or swastika. This symbol is found all over the world including the earliest of artifacts among our native indians. Unfortunately what was used by Native Americans so many years ago became a symbol of hate when the Nazis used it. What was first known aspowerful and good became evil. In India the swastika means well being, and luck and they even place it on their swords. If people can be confused on the swastika they can be confused on your identity. To help decide whether your branding is strong or needs help you can evaluate your brand by answering the following questions.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICE

• Is your clients satisfied with the product and services and by how much?
• Will your customers use the product again?
• Does your current product or service support the message given out?

TARGET MARKETS

• Does your clients perception align with how you want to be percieved? How does it?
• What is the overall brand awareness among customers?
• What is the overall brand recognition among clients and prospects? What is it?

 MESSAGING

• Are you accurately positioned? How can this approve?
• Does your organization meet up with your marketing? How can it be more effective?
• How do you feel about your marketing communications and corporate strategy? What needs to change?

COMMUNICATIONS

• Is the message in the marketing material clear and concise?
• How progressive is your marketing of products?
• Are you utilizing the correct marketing methods? Do they reach the correct target audience?

There are many effective elements that you can integrate to make your brand effective. I encourage you to view our post of developing brands such as “developing brands on a tight budget”. We are highly effective in helping organizations grow their ministry through strategic planning and branding. Over a short period of time we can help you develop a strong brand that will help you become more effective. Call us at 706-631-2525 for a free consultation. We are currently offering consultation in brand strategy for $49.99 and if you want to add a marketing plan the sales price in $25.00. We are also offering our complete service which is a strategic plan,branding strategy,  marketing plan, and development plan without website development (package is on services page) for $300.00 down and 12 monthly payments of $250.00.  

Developing A Brand Strategy On A Tight Budget

Developing a brand strategy on a tight budget can be a serious problem; thankfully ther are many ways to work your brand on a tight budget. One of the greatest things that you can do to increase your brand is always lead customers and potential customers to your brand or identity at every contact. One example of this is placing a core value and mission statement in your bullitens and mail. One of my favorite churches to visit has an exceptional care ministry which utilizes church members in giving visitors tours of the church and share a core value with examples of how the church accomplishes them.

Building a branding strategy is a process that begins with a team developing a designed brief. A well designed brief will help provide a solid foundation for the construction of your brand and help everyone involved to remain focused staying on the same page. Your team should include those you think will contribute to the process such as the director of the board and an outside consultant. It is extremely important that you never allow a consultant to be in full control of the process because only those involved with the organization can give effective imput. The consultant is to help with the flow of information, revise information given to them, help the organization keep focus, and help with the completion of the brand and marketing strategy.

The design brief begins with asking questions that will help in developing:

PROFILE: What the organization does

CONTENT: What makes the mission relevant

POSITIONING: What is the organizations relationship with others

AUDIENCE: Who are we reaching

BRAND PERSONALITY: What is the personality of the organization

CURRENT SITUATION: What is causing you to implement a revised or new brand strategy

BUDGET: The amount of money you are willing to spend

SCHEDULE AND DEADLINE: Date and schedule to complete design media which includes the materials you need for website development, making and printing brochures and letterhead etc.

TECHNICAL: What are the practical requirements needed such as graphic designers, photographer, etc.

There are many great ways that can help in cutting cost while having a professional brand design. Once the brief has been completed you can cut the cost of a designer by going to sites that will help you in the design of web sites and logos, graphics, styles, and so on. Some of the sites that will help you are www.commarts.com, www.printmag.com, and www.graphics.com

Developing a brief is the first step in brand development. There are key elements that you can implement in sharing your brand once you feel comfortable with the brand. The more opportunities that you create the more customers will know your identity. Here are some examples

• Place your core values on the walls in front of the pullpit so that everyone sees the values of the church
• Place mission statement and core values on every thing that you print
• Develop a care ministry that gives tour of the church and shares a core value weekly and how the church is accomplishing them
• Bumper stickers which is a great way to market
• Share a core value in each service and utilize them in your message
• Build a meeting room which has the core values, mission statement, and ministries placed on walls and place projects and any other things in room including models for building projects
• Share a core value in weekly small groups
• Place core values on web site
• Produce more services that fits your identity
• Focus on serving your current customers
• Get more involved with your community such as park projects and adopt a street or community (You can mostly get free advertising if you take on a project in the community
• Leverage the relationships

Cutting the cost of marketing and branding is a bad decision because it is extremely difficult to catch up when you lose ground. However, there are some key markers in knowing if you have a brand problem or to ensure that you are headed in the right direction. . The four branding markers are:

Reputation: How well known is your organization?

Esteem: How highly are you thought of?

Relevance: How important are your organizations mission and activities to the concern of your audience?

Differentation: Are there other organizations that do what you do and how are they positioned compared to you?

Establishing and Ensuring Your Brand Beyond Marketing

• Develop a ministry or organization philosophy
• Maintain Brand Consistency
• Implement Brand Guidelines

DEVELOP A MINISTRY PHILOSOPHY: Developing a ministry philosophy can help you greatly because it helps guide and lead everyone involved within your ministry while helping each person remain focused on your product and service. Answering the following questions will aid greatly in developing your philosophy and brand.

Step One is to create what your ministry personality is according the the information you obtained from the above questions. 

Step Two is to define how you will develop a relationship utilizing the personality that you created in Step One.

Step Three is to create a profile of your brand from the information you obtained from the questions above and the first two steps. Please be creative in writing your profile as if you were writing a personal ad. 

MAINTAIN BRAND CONSISTENCY: Utilizing your research can develop brand consistency by educating your staff and members of the quality of the product and service. The most important step in this process is developing quality control and have non members visit the church and fill out specific things about your ministry or services. Developing a document that has various things that they would experience and have them number it 1-10. You can use categories such as customer service, greeting and ushers, freindliness of staff, cleanliness etc.

IMPLEMENT BRAND GUIDELINES: Guidelines should be developed for each area of service or ministry. I use to serve at a church called InFocus and they had guidelines for the care ministry, youth ministry, childrens ministry, worship ministry and so forth. The guidelines helped first times servers or staff know what to do step by step while helping leaders to fulfill all aspects of the ministry. There is nothing like working for a place with no guidelines because it brings confusion to everyone involved. I once worked at Starbucks and they have a detailed system to ensure their product. Unfortunately, the Starbucks that I worked at did not follow the guidelines so staff were writing different initials for sugar, vanilla, and so forth. I once had a supervisor confront me in how I wrote the drink and when I showed them that I was using the guidelines given she said that they do not go by them. Unfortunately, every barista had their own way in writing a drink and you had to figure it out what they wanted.   

There is far more involved in branding but if you utilize the process you will go a long way towards ensuring customer satisfaction. If you are interested in developing a branding strategy or utilizing our services for $49.00 you can contact us at 706-631-2525.