Hi all,
Today we are asking about tracking constituent information changes in your business. If a constituent’s information is changed in any way in the system, what do you need to know about the change? What are some stories from your business (current and future) where you need to know about additions, removals or changes to constituent information?
Thanks!
Andrew
Dilemma: The Box Office has a line of walk-up patrons (with a 20 minute wait for those at the end) to buy a $17 ticket. A member asks the harried ticket rep to update their address. How many steps will this take before it becomes a disservice to those waiting in line? Does the ticket rep just skip it, if it is too involved?
We need to be careful what we make mandatory or a required field, not all organizations need the audit trail, or would happily relinquish it in the name of efficiency. In the current Tessitura, I would gladly substitute a required telephone number field for a mailing address, and it would speed up some kinds of transactions (and yes, creates a problem with dups…but shouldn’t that be our decision what to require for our institution).
From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Recinos| Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 7:22 PM| To: rbernard@smm.org| Subject: Re: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Changes
Hi Dale and others,
Can you give me a few examples of Source and Reason? Would the source not be the same thing as the user (or in the case of changes made via the web, the constituent themself?)
Also, would you expect Reason to be free text or something you choose from a list?
From: Dale Aucoin <bounce-daleaucoin4707@tessituranetwork.com>| Sent: 3/15/2010 5:31:38 PM
We often come across information that has been updated on an account and that information is incorrect or there is research added and it is incorrect. Sometimes it is an audited area of Tessitura and we can track it back to a user. Of course sometimes we can find out who made the change but since they no longer work for the company we cannot find out why they changed/added the information.
For a while, when we had a full-time researcher, we would keep track of what research was done, where the information came from and who did the research in the Research-Research area. That has kind of slipped away.
For some areas of Tessitura it would be great to have a mandatory "source" and "reason" when updating information -For example when changing an address. I think it would be cool to have a utility that only lets you add/change an address if you say where you got the new address and/or why you're changing the address. Right now we track source/reason for address changes in Contacts Customer Service but people sometimes forget to add the contact note.
| Dale
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Would it be possible to allow each organisation to specify whether the fields are mandatory or not? There doesn't seem to be an overall concensus on which fields should be mandatory and which optional, so allowing each org to set their own criteria would make the whole thing more flexible. It could also be linked to control groups, if they are staying. Not sure if any of this is possible, but we are in the 'Lets ask for everything' stage at the moment.
Debbie
It seems some of the discussion about which changes require a mandatory source/reason versus which changes don’t could also be addressed by looking at the way in which other departments receive notification that changes have been made.
In my Pony World, so named because it’s the world in which I get everything I ever wanted plus a pony, there would be functionality that easily allows users to create a hotlist of accounts and receive notification whenever any changes are made to an account on that list. This would even include ticket purchases or exchanges.
When faced with a line of 20 patrons at the box office, we would never want customer service reps to slow down their service so that they can fill out details on why an address was changed. But if one of those changes was to a $100K donor, we’d probably want to check-in with that rep as soon as things had slowed down. (And even if a source/reason was required for that change, we’d still probably want to check in to see if there was any additional information beyond what was captured in the note.) If we’re receiving better notification that changes have been made, it puts the onus of researching the change on devo, for whom the stakes are higher if the donor’s information is incorrect, than on the customer service rep.
The Constituent Audit Report does serve this purpose to a point – but the parameters don’t feel intuitive to somebody who isn’t familiar with the table structure. And there’s a heightened level of notification that would help…I’d prefer a tickler pop up right away to let me know that there’s been a change to that $100K donor’s account, rather than wait for the report to run at its scheduled interval. Admittedly, I’m a little obsessive about those sorts of things, but I don’t think my mania is all that unique among development officers.
A real-life example – one that applies more to a ticketing change than to an address change – is that we often set up surprise experiences for our donors when we know they’re going to be in the house. We might have the Artistic Director pop in to say hello, or we may invite the donor for a drink at intermission. Currently, we wait until the end of the day to set these up, as we’ve had a number of instances when a donor has called that afternoon to exchange tickets. But if we could trust that we’d receive instant notification when a change is made, it would be much easier to plan these ahead of time.
…Alex
Alex Harris | Director of Individual Gifts | 206.443.2210 x1018 | Fax: 206.443.2379 SEATTLE REPERTORY THEATRE | www.seattlerep.org | In Lower Queen Anne at Seattle Center
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From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Recinos Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 9:52 AM To: Alex Harris Subject: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Changes
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Andrew,
As an organization that quarterly is required to update the addresses in its database for NCOA (National Change of Address) reasons, we would like to be able to audit system level changes made to a constituents information and represent it in a way that is understandable by front line staff working with customers directly.
As an organization that keeps audit information staff authorized to make changes to constituent information should be authorized on an account by account basis to roll back changes represented in an audit history.
As a front line user of Tessitura looking at audit history, I should find a representation of the audit history in a clear and easy to understand format that directly reflects the fields and screens I see on the screen. (Not in a way, that only a programmer or database manager would love.)
As a customer on the website as I change my own information, it should be reflected in the audit history so that the organization that uses Tessitura to manage our relationship knows that it is really me who said that, I’m divorced, even though my old partner is still in denial and trying to change it back all of the time.
As a user of Tessitura I would like to be able to see changes to constituents reflected in Tessitura in the same way I see changes in Adobe Photoshop or other applications. I want to be able to review and roll back my customers histories on an object by object or entire customer history bases.
--Tom
From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Recinos Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 12:52 PM To: Thomas Brown Subject: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Changes
We'd also love to be able to choose which fields to make mandatory, and we'd like a full audit history of attributes which have been removed/changed.