Are you in a good relationship?

January 26, 2012
Categories: Billing & Collections

I was pretty excited this week reading Club Solutions Magazine’s spotlight of Club One’s President & COO Bill McBride this week. Now, I’ve already been riding high that Club One recently selected our MoSo suite for their member management software solution. But I was more excited about the way that Bill mentioned Motionsoft, and spoke about the importance of their new club software in their efforts to engage and improve their member experience. Because in my recent conversations with a few potential customers, I’m discovering that far too often, companies in our space are actually hurting the relationship the clubs have with their members. Which makes me ask, why are you still in yours?

This is a hard blog to write because as you know, I prefer to save this space for 80’s TV jokes, fast food menu items and the occasional elementary school memory. I don’t like to seem as though I’m pushing my product or talking negatively about my fellow software & billing companies. But I figured this might be a great forum to see if I’m missing something.

Does this sound familiar? You select a software and billing provider. They structure the program like this – they make money by doing ___. IF they customer doesn’t pay, they do this___. IF they still don’t pay, they put on more fines and do this ____. Now, my guess is your software doesn’t cost a lot because they make their money in the collections side. But if they make more money for themselves, when your customers fail to pay, then what’s their incentive to make your business run well?

So, when someone like Bill McBride discusses the importance of the right software in connecting with members, and actually mentions it in a magazine article about his company’s strategy, then that gets me excited. Because software shouldn’t be an afterthought to billing & collections. Software should be the central tool that makes billing & collections take care of themselves. It should be the core of how you get, keep & know your members (sound familiar), not a “value add” for a seemingly low cost service that badgers, harasses and bleeds your members dry. If your software & billing services provider does better for themselves by making your customers experience worse, don’t you think there’s something wrong with that picture?