{"id":2734,"date":"2014-10-17T03:03:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T03:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=2734"},"modified":"2014-10-17T03:03:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T03:03:13","slug":"member-relationship-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/member-relationship-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Member Relationship Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Response to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, <\/em>Albert O. Hirschman states that individuals have three ways of expressing their dissatisfaction with an organization or situation. They can leave, voice their objections, or become disloyal to the situation.[1]<\/a> The concepts he presents are simple, and well known within the business world. In business, we monitor the relationships with our customers very carefully. Their voices are listened for and heard. I often wonder why we fail to see this within a ministry context. People within the pews of a church are often treated like consumers, yet we fail to recognize when they behave like consumers. In America, we often make church (buying decisions) based on our satisfaction with the church and we are quick to leave a failing organization. When a church or Christian organization is declining, people often leave, voice their objections or complain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My wife worked with a large organization and spent much time in customer relationship management. The company adjusted their product based on the voice of the customer\u2026and the customers were heard through reporting on the number of customers disconnecting service and leaving, calling in and complaining, or getting on social media sites and making disloyal comments. More customers would leave in areas where there were more options \u2013 i.e. comparable competition. In those areas where customers had fewer options for the same services, they were more likely to call and complain or to be heard through social media versus exiting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recently, I sat in a church conference of a medium sized church that I consider to be in a failing state. The staff doesn\u2019t connect with the community or congregation. They want to be the next mega church and trendsetter, yet the congregation is largely over age 55 and they are located in an older community. The church is not growing, nor has grown in many years and they are struggling financially. At the conference, people didn\u2019t feel free to express their opinion. The few that did speak up were quickly put down. The trends reveal that people are exiting the church (leaving), not giving financially (voice using their money), or are gossiping and complaining amongst themselves (disloyal) contributing to a toxic environment.\u00a0\u00a0 This same church has been able to hold on despite their issues, in part, due to the fact that many large families attend the church. If people leave, then they are also leaving their family and tradition. Hence, the principle seen here is that there is less ability for exit, so the voice is used more profoundly. Now, this church is also part of a large denomination. There are those that are loyal to the denomination, therefore there is some brand loyalty contributing also to their decision to exit or not. Overall, the church is not healthy. Yet, to read the statistics that are published each year the story tells something different. I\u2019m not sure why so many churches strive to cover up their issues or fail to recognize these types of problems. In the business world, the customer state and satisfaction levels are constantly monitored\u2026the idea is to build relationships with the customer. Given that we are to build relationships in churches, why is it that we brush our problems under the rug as if they will go away? Very few churches monitor the members that are exiting or complaining\u2026yet they will eagerly share the number of new members or baptisms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If organizations spend time to carefully monitor their customers, they will see exit, voice, and loyalty at play. For church denominations, a study across their individual churches will reveal quite a bit about their level of health overall. Churches need to adopt some of the same practices and business reporting that will help them to accurately capture the heartbeat of their organization. The reality is that people are speaking, and speaking loudly\u2026yet we don\u2019t want to listen. Unfortunately, too many churches avoid hearing the truth and delay acting to correct issues until they are too late. Instead, they could be proactively ensuring that their ministry is effective by actually monitoring the signs and symptoms through which their people are talking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States<\/em> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Response to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Albert O. Hirschman states that individuals have three ways of expressing their dissatisfaction with an organization or situation. They can leave, voice their objections, or become disloyal to the situation.[1] The concepts he presents are simple, and well known within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[251],"class_list":["post-2734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hirschman","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2735,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2734\/revisions\/2735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}