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Customer Story - Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce

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Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce

Who Are The Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce?

The Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce is a non-profit organisation supporting local businesses and community groups in the Rockingham-Kwinana region since 1970. This organisation has existed since before the internet, and they are still going strong and growing today. There are not a lot of organisations that can say that. 

I am not even going to pretend to understand all the struggles and challenges they have faced or the insight they have gathered in that time. All I can say is that this is clearly an organisation that knows what it’s doing and has successfully adapted to many changes throughout its lifetime. Change is constant, however, and when Sue Hasey started as their operations manager in 2020, she knew it was time for the RKCC to change once again. 

In late 2022, the Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce partnered with Member Jungle to implement a new membership management platform. The system went live in January of 2023. To learn about the transition and their experience with the new system, I caught up with Sue Hasey, their Operations & Events Manager, for a chat.

What Problems Were The Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce Trying to solve?

Sue was the business manager of a large CRM business before she became the Operations & Events Manager for RKCC in 2020. When she arrived, she found an enthusiastic and driven team that was being held back by the systems they were using. 

The chamber of commerce was managing its membership through MYOB, CRM via Excel and its Newsletters via Campaign Monitor. Sue felt like both Excel and MYOB were great programs for certain things but that they were falling short when it actually came to running the business. 

Sue said, “There were many lengthy, multi-stage processes involved and some procedures were out of date or non-existent. We were running it with limited knowledge of what you can do with systems.”

The RKCC was doing a lot with these systems too. They have over 280 businesses as members, with all of these businesses having up to five secondary members each; we are suddenly talking about a large group with a great deal to keep track of. 

All of those members needed to be manually invoiced every month. The chamber was also hosting three events a month on average. As a result, they had their work cut out organising such a large and busy group. Sue was sure that there had to be a better way. 

Why The Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce Chose Member Jungle

Before the RKCC signed up, Sue started a free trial of the Member Jungle System and took her time exploring it and working out exactly what it could do. She found the admin side of the system to be easy to set up, user friendly and full of helpful powerful tools. Likewise she found the member side to be customisable and easy to make into a good looking website and member portal for her members. 

When asked why she ended choosing Member Jungle over any other possible options Sue had this to say. 

“There were a couple of others (membership management systems) that were recommended. What I liked about Member Jungle was the ease of use. It was just easier, it seemed cleaner and it ticked all the boxes, and the staff were only too happy to answer my questions.”

What Changed After The Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce Implemented Member Jungle

It’s been less than a year since the RKCC went live with Member Jungle; however, they are already noticing the impact. They are no longer struggling to maintain their member database across several platforms and services. They no longer need to duplicate information and member data between their different systems, and they are saving time and reducing errors as a result. 

It has really helped them with their membership side of things. Automatic renewals and automated renewal reminders have been saving them a lot of time and effort. Plus, being able to take renewal and event payments online has really reduced the amount of time they have had to spend chasing debtors.

As a group that runs a lot of events, they have also found the Member Jungle event module extremely useful. Sue particularly loves the event notifications and automated event emails. She said that if she has an event coming up, she just sends out an automated “Book Now” email. In one case, she had 14 members registered for an event four weeks away. She sent out an automated email, and by the end of that day, 54 businesses were booked. 

The RKCC also love how all of the following Member Jungle features have benefited the running of their chamber of commerce. 

 

  • The Member Jungle App
  • Automated Emails
  • CRM Backend
  • Text Messaging To Members 
  • Power Data Forms 
  • Data Reporting
  • Members Being Able To Update Their Information and Directory Listing
  • The Ability to Add Secondary Members 

 

Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce

 

On that last point, the RKCC believes that allowing members to add a certain amount of secondary members when they purchase different membership products will be a big upselling point for them. This will improve their own productivity. 

Most importantly the positive feed back from members using the WebAPP is that they can: 

  • Call and email each other directly - huge benefit for buying local
  • See which other members are attending events - this is the best benefit for member networking. 
  • View common discounts and shared offers for members.
  • A simple registration process to events

 

Finally, Sue shared the story of the administrator at RKCC and how she has benefited from Member Jungle’s system. 

The RKCC’s admin comes in one day a week. Before Member Jungle, she manually reconciled databases, organised renewal reminders, and posted renewal notices, confirmations, and new member cards. There was no guarantee she would be able to get through all that in one day, and often she didn’t have time to do everything she needed to do. 

Now all that takes only a few hours to get done. She is now able to take charge of the chamber’s social media presence. 

“It’s given her a lot more time to enjoy the creativity. We’ve now brought back our social media inhouse”, Sue explained. 

Final Thoughts


Steps to

 

I will leave you with a direct quote from Sue when I asked her if she’d recommend Member Jungle to a fellow chamber of commerce.  

“I’ve actually recommended Member Jungle to a number of businesses, not just chambers of commerce. I’ve recommended it to a couple of sporting clubs and also three different theatre companies. I would happily recommend and be a change champion to mentor the process.” 

 

 

Rockingham-Kwinana-Chamber-of-Commerce FINAL



 

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