Royal College of General Practitioners: Member Renewal Calls

Member retention by RCGP has always been high at around 95%. Membership renewal is on 31st March annually, with payment due on 1st April. Members retain full benefits for six months, until 30th September after which membership and benefits lapse.

The main initial challenge for the RCGP membership team was not having sufficient in-house resources to make personal contact by phone with all members, due to the sharp peaks in renewal activity and finite staff levels.

RCGP therefore considered outsourcing high quality renewal calls to members from August and throughout September, so that the membership team could focus on dealing with enquiries and welcome calls to new and renewing members.

Chord proposed a telephone-led campaign, using their online multi-channel campaign management system, to engage with 1,200 UK members with the primary objective to:

• Encourage members to renew by effectively communicating and reinforcing membership benefits.
• Answer any questions that they may have with regards to their membership.
• Establish direct debit payment and details.

Up to three call attempts were made to each member, with evening calls being used to optimise reach to members working evening shifts.

Chord left carefully tailored voicemails to private landlines and mobiles only, offering specific signposting and a clear call to action for those not reachable by phone.

Seamless integration with the RCGP membership team was achieved by Chord using:

• Tailored emails sent using a RCGP email address, with web-links to the member subscription page.
• Direct call transfer from Chord to the RCGP membership team when appropriate.
• Weekly campaign analysis reports and conference calls.
• Secure data sharing including suppression from calling of members renewing directly with RCGP and direct debit payment details via Chord’s SSL-encrypted, UK-based cloud file sharing system.

Chord also improved member data completion, accuracy and consistency, focusing on increasing completion for email addresses, home addresses and alternative telephone numbers, to help improve the effectiveness of future communications.

The campaign was extended to include 132 international members.

Chord made more than 4,000 call attempts over the course 23 days:

• Chord achieved 202% of the UK target agreed with RCGP
• 242 members renewed as a direct result of Chord’s activity, against a target of 120, in three ways:
• Directly by phone with Chord
• Via call transfer to RCGP
• Directly to RCGP (website or phone)
• 78% of members reached by phone renewed their membership.

Other key stats from the campaign included:

• 93 members intending or considering renewal
• 442 members spoken to directly / sent an email
• 1,930 emails, in some cases more than one per member
• 490 personalised voicemails left
• 256 new email addresses and telephone numbers captured.

Chord achieved 133% of the target for contacting international members too.

Following the success and speed of completion of the retention campaigns, Chord was asked to test the effectiveness of contacting two more audiences.

Both met or exceeded RCGP’s expectations.

Lapsed Member Calls

Chord engaged with members who had lapsed last year to establish their reasons for leaving, seek opinions about current membership benefits and establish whether non-renewal was unintentional or reasons for confirmed non-renewal.

Welcome Calls

Chord telephoned new members to glean information about the reasons for joining, uncovering specific trends, offering help to clarify membership benefits and gather other valuable qualitative information.