Over a recent weekend I attended the Southern California and Nevada President-elect Training Seminar (PETS) where I was amazed by how much things have changed and how little things have changed since my first PETS over two decades ago. First of all, there was the inspiration and awe created by the duo of past RI Presidents Rick King and Cliff Dochterman who are always crowd favorites. Then there was the special interest session on social media; a topic title not on the radar screen at my first PETS.
Some of those emerging club presidents who will be our next generation of leaders asked my opinion on what they should be working on during ‘their’ year. Over the past twenty five years we opened our ranks to women in effect doubling the number of possible Rotarians, we established new Rotary Clubs in countries where Rotary was never present and we took on and have almost completed the unbelievable challenge of raising money and committing volunteers to end polio in the world. With all of those increased opportunities we have barely grown the numbers of members within the organization. With little doubt we have brought in many new members, but we have failed to develop those members into Rotarians.
As much as things have changed over the past few decades, one challenge remains constant even as my understanding of that challenge has evolved. It is the concept of customer service; an idea that goes right to the root of many of the big challenges of Rotary. I responded to the question of those new club presidents with that idea and asked them, “Who they thought are the customers of Rotary?” Overwhelmingly they answered that the customers are the people who benefit from what we do; the members of Interact, the attendees at RYLA and recipients of the polio vaccine. I am concerned that our future generations of Rotary leaders don’t quite get it.
My next question was who pays for all of the things we do with their time, treasure and talent; and their answer was universally our members. Even then few of them were able to connect the idea that the people who pay for what we do are our customers and the good we do is simply the by-product of what we do.
There is a direct connection between how satisfied our customers (members) are with what they get in exchange for their time, treasure and talent. When we concentrate our efforts on the by-product; we miss the point of assuring customer service and member satisfaction at the risk of not having customers who will address future Rotary programs.
We cannot create good customer service and a high level of customer satisfaction until we understand who our customers are and what they expect in return for their investment.