As we reported in the Next Gen webinar this week, Release One of the Next Gen software will focus on Constituent themes. We have already asked about Constituent Search and Constituent Relationships. Today’s question surrounds Postal Addresses (we will ask about email, webpages, phones etc. in a separate thread).
Thinking about Postal Addresses in your business, some very BROAD questions:
What are some challenges that you have surrounding addresses today?
Are there trends you are seeing that could impact postal address functionality in the future?
What do you like about Postal Address functionality in existing Tessitura?
What would you like to see changed/improved about Postal Address functionality?
Any other thoughts about addresses, your business, and Tessitura?
(For extra credit: We ultimately take user requirements and express them as “stories”. Feel free to answer this thread however you’d like, but for fun, you could answer in the form of a “story”. An example of a story might be: “As a Special Events Director, I need to be able to send Gala Invitations that include very formal addressing (Street rather than St., Boulevard rather than Blvd), even if this isn’t the mailing convention for other aspects of our business.”)
Thanks!
Andrew
Hi -
These are my addressing stories:
Story #1:
In the ticket dept we are totally QAS compliant to ensure deliverability of tickets. Accounts built over the phone are certified when they are being built and we have put the QAS interface on our website. We routinely QAS the addresses that slip through uncertified (although we do not keep everything in upper case letters as the PO would prefer.) This serves us well and we do our best to ensure that our ticket agents (including those at the window) are always using the QAS tool.
However - our colleagues in development have different addressing needs as has been discussed. Ultimately we decided we needed to identify high touch patrons at-a-glance so as not to defeat the standards of the development dept. or the personal wishes of the high touch constituents (ex: we have a group of suburbs that the PO treats as Barrington and some of the constituents that live there insist on North Barrington, Barrington Hills, etc. which makes no difference when the address has the correct zip code but does make a difference in the patron's perception). We identified these high touch patrons by their donor constituency and our ticket dept custom header shows their address in grey which indicates to us to leave the address alone if we have the patron on the phone or when making an address change to type it exactly as the patron wants regardless of the QAS rapid addressing feature. Yes, we still also use the Mail Purposes flags for specific purposes like Formal Invites, but the 'greyed out' address tells all who touch the account how to proceed.
Story #2:
In tickets we are often printing a name and address in a tightly confined space, and for this reason, we used the Mail Purposes flag for high touch accounts that involve a corporate address and title to create a full but abbreviated address that could print on subscription forms. Essentially this address would be an edited duplicate of the primary address. Problem being that when an address change was done the Mail Purposes flag for Subscriptions may have been overlooked. Suddenly Mr. VIP's renewal form is going to an old address and that is not good - would love to see a dialogue box that other Mail Purposes exist and should be reviewed.
Story #3
Phone numbers: like everyone else we have been finding that the phones no longer are strongly associated to the primary mailing address and we have been in the processing of converting any phone to, what I refer to as, "below the grey bar" with an appropriate description so that we can easily see the active phone numbers, business N1, home, cell N2, assistant N1, any time we go to the General Info screen without having to search through multiple addresses to find a phone where we can reach a patron in a pinch.
Hope these help.
Paula