EPISODE 9

“NH: Know that, hey, we’re here. We’re here to answer your questions, especially. We don’t call ourselves customer service. That’s not what we are. Is it that field? Sure, but we’re the member experience team, because we want to make sure that your experience, as a member of Text in Church, is that you are seen, that you are valued, that you are cheered on, that you are believed in. That’s why all of us that are members of the member experience team, that make up the member experience team, that’s why we’re on it, because we believe in you. We believe in the church, we believe in the church leader. That’s why we do what we do and that’s why we love what we do, truly.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:39.1] NH: Welcome to the Tech In Church Podcast, brought to you by Text in Church. I’m Nina Hampton and I’m here with my cohost, Jeanette Yates. If you are ready to make huge, long-term impact in your ministry, using technology the right way, then you are in the right place. In each episode, you’ll hear form church administrate leaders who will share their real life examples of how to use the right technology so that they can spend more time building relationships and doing the things that got them into ministry in the first place.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:03.8] JY: Yeah. So today, we’re doing something a little bit different though. That was a great intro.

[0:01:07.2] NH: Yes, we are.

[0:01:08.1] JY: But we’re doing a little something a little bit different. We’re going to be sharing some tips for connecting with your church guest to help them feel known, noticed and loved. Not only do we have tips to share from working with churches at Text in Church but we both have also served in our local churches. So we have personal experience with connecting with our communities and building those relationships.

So while this episode will give you some practical insight, we hope that we’ll also cast a vision for how you serve in your ministry to your guest. So first thing’s first, Nina, let’s talk about the idea of helping guest feel known, noticed and loved. I mean, it is a great tag line, I love it.

[0:01:44.8] NH: It is.

[0:01:46.8] JY: But it’s more than that.

[0:01:47.8] NH: It is more than that. It’s also our most popular T-shirt.

[0:01:50.3] JY: Yes, people do love it.

[0:01:51.7] NH: But there is a reason for that. Guest follow-up, which we talk about a lot here at Text in Church isn’t just about getting a phone number and inviting your guest back to church. Guest follow-up is not transactional, it’s relational. After all, they aren’t going to come back just because you asked them, they got to come back because they feel a connection.

[0:02:07.6] JY: So when we talk about your guest follow-up strategy, remember, it’s more than just about gathering information with a connection card, though that is an important step, it’s about more than that. It’s about truly knowing who your guest is, what they’re searching for and how you and your church community can meet them on their journey and walk with them. In other words, helping them feel known, noticed and loved.

[0:02:33.6] NH: And just to be clear, known, noticed and loved isn’t a strategy. It’s a result of intentionally connecting with your guest with a guest follow-up strategy that is intentional, relevant, and sufficient.

[0:02:44.2] JY: Yes and so one of the things I wanted to do in this episode today, Nina, is to go a little behind the scenes at Text in Church and talk more about the idea of known, noticed and loved. Like I said, it’s not a – it’s not a strategy and it’s not just a tag line. It’s more than that and so we do strive to help churches make other feel known, noticed and loved but it’s hard to do that when they themselves don’t feel that.

And we see that a lot in churches especially now, I think it’s always been there but that idea of burnout and whatnot and so one of the things that Text in Church does really well and you’re the perfect person to talk about this because you're part of the member experience team, but what do we do as a team but is specifically on that member experience side, what do we do that embodies that known, noticed and loved and what can churches learn from that?

[0:03:34.8] NH: Yeah, absolutely. So like I think one of the first things that we do is that we’re really big about showing you that we’re real people and I know that this is a little different because we’re, you know, we’re technically a tech company, right? And so we’re helping church leaders but we’re not far from that. So one, like, we try, we just reach out to you and we’re – we try to let you know like, “Hey, we’re real people, we’re here to help you, we want you to succeed, we want you to grow.” 

We try to make sure that all of our members and even our potential members, people who aren’t yet a part of the Text in Church family but are just kind of thinking about becoming a part of it know that. That hey, we’re here, we’re here to answer your questions, especially you know, we don’t call ourselves customer service, that’s not what we are, like is it that field? 

Sure but we’re the member experience team, because we want to make sure that your experience, as a member of Text in Church is that you are seen, that you are valued, that you are cheered on, that you are believed in and that’s why all of us that are members of the member experience team, like that are on the, make up the member experience team, that’s why we’re on it because we believe in you. 

We believe in the church, we believe in the church leader. That’s why we do what we do and that’s why we love what we do, truly and so we reach out to you. We try to make ourselves available to you, where almost all of us that new social media are in the Facebook group. We try to reach out, we responded every way that we can. We send personalized videos to people when they ask us questions, stuff like that, just to cheer you on. 

We want to make it more than just like, “Yeah, you're reaching out for like support and help with your platform?” Yeah, but we want to make sure that you are walking away from that happier and better and more champion than when you came to us.

[0:05:10.8] JY: Exactly and I see that I get to see the results of that all the time because of my work in the Facebook group and I hear from Text in Church members, you know, potential Text in Church members that they do feel that connection, they know you all by name, which is really cool and they give you shoutouts all the time, which is super fun.

[0:05:32.1] NH: I do appreciate being shouted out, I’m not going to lie, it does make me feel good. Jeanette, I do have a question for you. So as somebody who is a member, before you ever joined the Text in Church team, like, as a staff person, what insight do you have about how this all kind of like actually works? Like, being on the member side of that?

[0:05:49.6] JY: Yeah, so you just told like what the member experience team perspective is and then, I’m glad you asked me that because this is my favorite sortie to tell because, I was a communication director at my church. I stumbled in there, just stumbled into that role, just fell flat faced into it, didn’t know what I was doing.

[0:06:08.9] NH: I feel like that’s how a lot of us start at, we all just kind of stumble into the – Yeah and I found myself doing youth ministry.

[0:06:15.3] JY: Yeah, like, what happened? And typically, whatever you started doing, you're doing more, your job changes and so I was in a place where I was learning all of the different technologies to be able to communicate with our members, our guest, our community, all that kind of stuff and I came across the tool, Text in Church and I heard about the guest follow-up, workflow and my pastor was really struggling, you know, with how to do guest follow-up and we just – we really felt like we needed something and I was able to use that free trial period to sign up for Text in Church and within just a couple of like, a day or two of signing up, I was getting emails from Caleb and Rachel because back then, the team was, I think, only two or three people.

[0:07:06.7] NH: It was more of a duo.

[0:07:07.9] JY: Yeah, it was – and they were emailing me and texting me and saying, “Hey, you know, we’re so glad you signed up, do you have any questions?” and then, like, of course, like most people, you know, in the church space, we sign up for something, we’re very excited and then, like, all the other stuff comes in our face that we have to do every week and so I hadn’t just created any groups and I hadn’t sent out of my first text message. 

So I got an email from Rachel that was like, “Hey, we noticed that you haven’t set up a group yet, can we help you add people? Is there anything we could do for you?” and I really was like,  “Oh wow, you know, this is really, they know what’s going on with me, they know I’m overwhelmed” you know? Or they want to make sure that I’m not overwhelmed.

[0:07:50.5] NH: Because you're just busy, you got a lot to do, you might have a lot on your plate.

[0:07:53.3] JY: Right.

[0:07:53.3] NH: And it’s a matter of speaking to that and so that’s what we try to do. We try to check up on everybody. You know, “Hey, is there anything we can help you with?” because that’s the thing. At the end of the day, I saw on the member experience, we want you to win.

[0:08:02.6] JY: Yeah, right. 

[0:08:03.4] NH: That’s what we want. We want you to win, we want these stories, I mean, our favorite thing, and we truly like share these in our team meetings of like when we get a response from somebody that’s like, “Man, I use this the other day and I was able to connect with my students in a new way” or “I had a new guest that came and they were able to make a real connection because I’m texting with them all week.” 

Like, that’s literally, we share those stories with just our team because that’s our “Why”. That’s why we do this and that’s what we want you to walk away with is feeling like – is winning at your church, impacting your community.

[0:08:33.0] JY: Well, so here’s the funny thing though, this is the funny part of that story. As I was getting Caleb and Rachel from member experience, reaching out to me and they were helping me and then I would connect with them in various ways and they helped me get setup and they help me setup my first template and all that kind of stuff and then after we were using Text in Church for a while and I was getting messages, not all the time.

You know, they weren’t hounding me but I was getting periodic touch points and I was also using the guest follow-up automated workflow with our guest, the light bulb went off for me and the light bulb was, “Oh, what they are training me to do by using this guest follow-up plan is the same thing they’re doing with me, which is following up with me.”

[0:09:22.5] NH: Right.

[0:09:24.0] JY: So you know, like I said at the beginning of this episode, the whole – we know that you can’t help your guest feel known, noticed and loved if you aren’t feeling known, noticed and loved and so this follow-up as part of our member experience, whether it’s we’re following up because you express interest in product or we’re following up because you just signed up for our product, that whole idea of following up with intention, walking you through, removing those barriers, that is something that I saw as a person that has signed up for Text in Church. 

I saw that in action and I knew that if they could use text and emails to help me feel known, noticed, and loved, then I could do the same thing with our church guest every week and so I love telling that story because I was like, “Oh wait, it’s working” I know it’s working because I’m feeling it because of the way they’re treating me and then when I started working on the team, when I actually met you guys, it was like fan girl situation. I was like, “Oh, it’s a member of your team.” You know? I was so excited.

[0:10:26.9] NH: I think that’s one of the funniest things for us is that like, people, I think, when you reach out to what is traditionally thought of as support, right? When you reach out, like, you always think that it’s like a robot or somebody that’s in a call center somewhere and it’s like, all that stuff is outsourced and you’ll never actually like, meet those people.

[0:10:42.3] JY: Right.

[0:10:42.7] NH: So a lot of times, like, whenever people reach out, they talk to us and they’re like, “Hey, can I talk to a real person about this?” and I’m like, “Yeah, here’s my calendar, pick up a time that works best for you” they get really confused and I’m like, “Yes, I am a real person and I would love to talk to you. Also, my interests are barbecue and I live in Kansas City” you know what I mean? But that’s like the whole, that’s the whole goal of it, you know? That’s the whole reason kind of why we do this.

[0:11:06.2] JY: And we do those live calls, you and I do the live calls every week.

[0:11:09.9] NH: Right.

[0:11:11.3] JY: You know, a lot of times when I’m doing those for new members and we’re training them on you know, not only how to use the product, you know, how to use the dashboard and all that but also how to utilize the resource that is member experience, I pull up the thing, the little chat bubble and I say, “See, this is a chat bubble which in your brain, probably means to you, it’s a chat bot but I’m here to tell you, these little circles right here that have these people, those are not stock photos from Unsplash, that is Cory, that is Nina, that is Caleb” you know, all that kind of stuff.

[0:11:43.7] NH: We took those pictures at our office, that is the actual Kansas City backdrop in the background.

[0:11:48.7] JY: I’ll say, “You know, when you message in, tell them that you are here at our live training today and that you talk to me, that I’m also a real person” you know? You know, that we want you to develop that relationship with our team through not only our member experience side and that support side because you know, it is support. You are also a supporter, you know, yo do help with trouble shooting and things like that but you we also have the community on social media and things like that and so I wanted to make sure that we took the time today to kind of peel back a little bit of the onion, I don’t know.

[0:12:28.2] NH: Right, look beyond the curtain.

[0:12:29.2] JY: Yeah, behind the curtain.

[0:12:29.6] NH: Look behind the curtain.

[0:12:30.9] JY: Yes and let you guys know, you know, that known, noticed and loved, it is a good tag line, it is a popular T-shirt.

[0:12:37.5] NH: It’s a very good tag line, honestly, it’s very catchy. Rolls of the tongue well.

[0:12:42.0] JY: Yeah, it’s also, you know, like, the way we do our thing.

[0:12:45.6] NH: It’s what we do and I think one of the reasons why we invest so much into making our members feel this way is because we, as a team and as a staff make each other feel this way and I think that’s why we’re enabled, you know, in the same way that like, you can’t do that unless you are. You can’t give that away unless you are, which is we’re getting into a whole other conversation.

[0:13:05.7] JY: She’s going really meta because what she’s saying now is, “Okay, we want to help you feel known, noticed and loved so you can help your members feel known, noticed or your guest feel known, noticed and loved.”

[0:13:17.4] NH: Right.

[0:13:17.9] JY: But we also let each other know that we are known, noticed and loved. So I want Nina to know that I know what’s going on in her life. I care about, you know, and she does the same thing for me and that’s the way our team works.

[0:13:29.2] NH: Literally, like very much so. That’s getting into a whole other thing but, really, you know, that’s the whole goal here is to, you know, we want to truly equip churches with the technology and the skills that they need to connect with their members and guest, bottom line but we also want them to actually experience that connection as well, right? So relationships, business or personal, you know, are built in the community and we strive to help our members feel like a part of one.

[0:13:55.4] JY: Yeah, speaking of community, you know what I’m about to say.

[0:13:58.6] NH: I do.

[0:13:59.2] JY: If people have been listening to our podcast so far, they know as soon as they advise those community, I’m like, “Oh, speaking of which.”

[0:14:06.0] NH: Right.

[0:14:06.8] JY: Speaking of which, I’d like to join you to be a part of the Text in Church community Facebook group which is – I mean, I kind of feel like I – you know, like, it’s my group because like, that’s part of my job is to manage.

[0:14:16.4] NH: I mean, it would be an honest, it kind of is.

[0:14:18.9] JY: But really, it’s a group of our Text in Church community and again, just like we talked about the member experience team is not just for you once you become a member, it’s really for you, like even if you’re just, you know, kicking the tires and the same goes with the Facebook group is we want you to feel like you can come in there and connect with other church leaders, talk about communications, talk about texting and talk about email, talk about all that kind of stuff. 

Talk about guest follow-up, all that kind of stuff with other churches that are just like you and so I’m going to officially invite you to be part of the Text in Church community Facebook group, meet other church leaders who are helping others feel known, noticed and loved. We have a great time in there, tons of practical tips and funny gifs, kind of rhymes.

[0:15:04.7] NH: Those are the most important things. Truly and honestly. All right, so that is it for this episode of the Text in Church Podcast. I’m Nina.

[0:15:13.5] JY: And I’m Jeanette and we’re going to talk tag line.

[0:15:17.3] NH: Next time.

[0:15:18.6] JY: Or not.

[0:15:20.5] NH: Or not.

[0:15:21.6] JY: We’re still trying to figure that out, guys. We – see, we’re human, we’re human people.

[0:15:25.8] NH: We’re real people, very real people.

[0:15:27.3] JY: Yup.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:15:27.3] NH: The Tech in Church Podcast is a production of the Text in Church team. To get the show notes for this week’s episode and to download the resources mentioned, go to podcast.textinchurch.com. For more information on Text in Church, visit textinchurch.com. 

[0:15:42.6] JY: The Tech in Church Podcast is a production of the Text in Church team. To get the show notes for this week’s episode and to download the resources mentioned, go to textinchurch.com/podcast. For more information on Text in Church, visit textinchurch.com. 

[END]