Process Documentation
Last week we established a baseline that might or might not
reflect the way things are done at your church.
This week we will be discussing how to improve upon the process that
churches currently employ to reach out to people who have asked for information
from the church.
Now to get this process nailed down we will have to use Mary
the receptionist and Pastor Ricardo the executive pastor. Both are sold out believers doing all they
can to grow the kingdom here on earth.
We will also have to use some sort of data management system because the
old way of copying the cards and praying that the contacts are made just isn’t
cutting it. So for argument sake we will
call this God send database Fellowship One.
We will by the way keep the prayer part but add in management oversight.
Here are the steps to process a guest registry card:
- Collect
the cards either in the offering plates or at a guest registry desk
- Cards
are turned into the member services department at the church (this is also
known as Mary the receptionist)
- Mary
then processes the cards
- Mary
never assumes that the person really is a first time visitor she always
searches for that person in the database.
- If
after searching for that person on the card and they are not found she
then adds them to the database.
- Mary
then checks off the same check boxes in Fellowship One that are
represented on the card. There can
be some variations of this that will be discussed in the First Time
Visitor section below.
- The
paper cards are then shredded after a week or two to make sure there were
no mistakes in the data entry.
- Mary
or even a volunteer does not have to worry about who the contacts should
be routed to because that was all handled by the church administrator
when they setup the contact card in Fellowship One.
First Time Visitors:
Now we have to understand how the church is currently
processing first time visitor cards. For
this example we are going to assume that every first time visitor gets a phone
call from Pastor Ricardo and they also receive a letter from the church
office. The letter varies throughout the
year and by the family based on demographic information and what events are
coming up in the near future. If the
summer is just beginning, vacation bible school is just around the corner, and
the family has kids that are the right age a first time visitor letter would
include information about VBS and how to register online. The family dynamics can easily be tracked
even if they didn’t mention their kids on the card if you are using Fellowship
One to check the kids in for Sunday school.
Keeping the contact items together on one contact is essential to proper
routing of the contact item. Even though
“My age group is X – Y” seems like a bad
data element to track because it is quickly obsolete it is key to making the
best possible impact by connecting that visitor to the proper staff
member.
Churches should step their game up when it comes to first
time visitors. Just because Pastor
Ricardo has always made the first time visitor calls doesn’t mean he should
always make every first time visitor call.
In our example “My age group is 18 – 25” was checked. Pastor Ricardo is 67 years old and thinks
youth is wasted on the young. Is he
really the best person to have called this first time visitor? How many kids does this first time visitor
have?
With the ability to track family dynamics in Fellowship One and
the functionality to transfer contact from one staff person to another Pastor
Ricardo begins to manage the first time visitor contacts in a whole new way. When Pastor Ricardo pulled up this contact he
noticed that they also checked off they wanted to know more about
volunteering. He also noticed that this
first time visitor has twins in the nursery.
Maybe the children’s ministry would be the best ministry to call this
guest. And if his memory serves him
right Lucy who runs the nursery had twins a few years back.
Service Level Agreements and intelligent routing become
critical to making the first time visitor call have maximum impact. More on that next week…