Coastguard New Zealand gains 350+ donations per month with Dynamics 365.
Meaningful Outcomes
Processing 3000+ memberships per week and 350+ donations per month
Grew membership base with a decrease cost
Save significantly on administrative time and headaches
Better able to manage churn and reduce retention cost
Huge costs savings with the conversion to digital invoice
Reduced unattended membership lapses
Proactive financial forecasting and decision making
Objective
Automate the manual membership process to improve retention and customer experience. Create visibility on membership data. Implement a system that would scale with the organisation.
Challenge
As a charitable organisation, Coastguard Northern Region relies on membership fees to stay operational and provide life-saving services at sea. Their access to advanced technology is critical when providing emergency response, and Coastguard Northern wanted to reflect their tech-first mindset in their membership experience.
The existing membership system was manual, which delayed customer response times and new member onboarding. The renewal process for existing members was also difficult to manage, resulting in lapsed memberships and a decrease in fees collected. A paper-based invoicing process was a monthly administrative headache for Coastguard and greatly affected their ability to raise the critical funds to save lives at sea.
Furthermore, Coastguard needed more transparency across member and donor activity to better understand and report on performance. The improved membership CRM would need to provide flexible and accurate reporting functionality, allowing Coastguard to access and analyse data that would help them to grow.
Solution
Coastguard Northern Region engaged Magnetism to implement a new membership experience. Magnetism offered an out-of-the-box Dynamics CRM to manage not only memberships but also events, courses, and public donations.
To address the bottlenecks in membership renewals, Magnetism leveraged the platform automation capabilities in Dynamics CRM to streamline the process. Members now automatically receive an email reminder when their membership is up for renewal. The reminder has the invoice attached along with a link to pay the membership online. Giving members the option to self-serve online has taken administrative pressure off Coastguard Northern, reducing the number of lapsed memberships and retention costs.
New memberships are easily managed through a custom-built API which allows sign-ups and payments to be accepted through the website. Magnetism extended the CRM to automatically send a welcome pack when a member signs up online, enriching the overall customer experience.
Coastguard Northern now has access to real-time membership information. They can view up to the minute CRM dashboards and charts revealing membership status and donation data. Previously, accessing this information involved multiple departments and lengthy reconciliations. The new visibility means Coastguard can be more proactive when it comes to financial forecasting and decision making.
The difficulties Coastguard encountered with its previous system stemmed largely from its inflexibility. By customising an out-of-the-box Dynamics CRM, Magnetism delivered an adaptable, scalable solution. Magnetism has continued to be a technology partner for Coastguard Northern. Recently, the solution was upgraded and Magnetism transitioned Coastguard Northern to the cloud, replacing the on-premises CRM with a Dynamics 365 platform.
A cloud-based platform opens up a range of opportunities for Coastguard to offer new services and to better understand its members. A transition to the cloud aligns with Coastguard’s overall value of technology, whether it’s on the seas or providing an elevated membership experience.
“We enjoy a good working relationship with Magnetism across the team and we find them to be responsive, great to deal with and always willing to go the extra mile for Coastguard.”
Results
Embracing technology to improve membership experience has had a considerable impact on the organisation’s overall operations.
Now that Coastguard doesn’t rely on manual processes, they save significantly on administrative time and headaches. Customer experience has been streamline and Coastguard now processes 3000+ memberships per week and 350+ donations per month.
Converting Coastguard’s paper-based invoicing process to digital has resulted in huge cost savings. The ability for members to pay fees online allows Coastguard to function more sustainably, without the worry of unattended memberships lapsing.
With an adaptable and intelligent CRM solution in place, Coastguard Northern Region is not only prepared for its own growth but now also to aid in administering membership for other New Zealand Coastguard regions, uplifting the ROI of the solution dramatically.
