Memo #18: New BIZ Ambassador Team focuses on data and member connections
By Joe Kornelsen, Executive Director, West End BIZ (Winnipeg)
Photo credit: behance.net
Any membership-based organization knows that maintaining a connection with members is one of the most important things it must do. But it can be challenging to maintain that connection, to do it meaningfully while constrained by myriad other service priorities, and to remember what you have learned from members in order to build effective programs.
In Winnipeg, our West End BIZ (Business Improvement Zone) has found a new way to address this challenge. This article will describe the launch of our Ambassador program, and the other complimentary steps we took to help this new program to succeed.
A New Business Improvement Program for Engaging Members
At 6.6 square kilometers, the West End BIZ is geographically the fourth largest business improvement district in Canada. We have nearly 1,000 member businesses and over 200 stakeholder non-profits in our neighbourhood. There are also 37,000 residents living within our boundaries. The result is a great deal of diversity in business sector representation, issues and challenges, and business size. The western side of our zone is made up of larger businesses and business mix leans more toward construction and manufacturing while the east side is characterized by smaller, sidewalk-fronting businesses that are often owned and operated by newcomers to Canada.
To address the difficulties of serving such a large and diverse membership and community, the West End BIZ’s Ambassadors program was created in 2019. It is different from ambassador programs run by other BIAs/BIDs/BIZs. In addition to our existing patrol staff, the two-person Ambassador team is primarily responsible for connecting with our member businesses and neighourhood stakeholder organizations (i.e. non-profits). Their role is to learn about safety issues members are experiencing, get updated contact information from members, have general discussions about the nature of the member’s business, provide information about services we provide, and learn about other possible ways we can support them.
The ambassador is a revised patrol position, which is why safety concerns are their first priority. But they do a great deal more. Importantly, the ambassadors are a pre-emptive connection point, tasked with actively reaching out to members and stakeholders through casual visits, phone calls and simply dropping in while walking by. The difference between the two positions is that our patrols respond when we get calls, whereas our ambassadors visit those who have not yet called or don’t know to call. What makes the ambassadors special is that once we are talking to members, the discussion can cover a wide range of topics that give us insight into the needs of the member, the area and the business sector. To hire the best people for the position, we modified the patrol interview questions to prioritize interaction skills. One highly weighted interview question is, “What are the key features that make for a productive conversation?”
Our ambassadors began by focusing on areas that received lower call volumes and then expanded their visits from there. They identified, for example, that members on the west side of our zone were less familiar with what the BIZ does and how it can help, making those businesses aware of grants program available during the COVID-19 crisis. They were able to do follow-up interviews to develop programs to attract and keep small start-ups in our neighbourhood. Additionally, the Ambassadors are discovering how businesses are feeling in the area and whether they feel the BIZ is meeting their needs. In the very rare cases where they encounter members unhappy with BIZ services, the ambassadors will work to mend the relationship and ensure those businesses are receiving all the information about programs that could work for them.
This spring, mandated business closures came into effect in Manitoba due to COVID-19. Our ambassadors switched to calling businesses instead of visiting in-person. They were able to rapidly identify which businesses were closed temporarily and which were considering permanent closure. Additionally, we were able to understand the specific challenges our community was experiencing, contributing to reports we prepared for various levels of government to advocate for assistance.
Neighbourhood Data and Relationship Management Tools as Key Building Blocks for Success
The Ambassador program became such a quick success due to two other initiatives we had introduced over the last five years. The first was the creation of an Economic Development department within the BIZ. It is not large, consisting of one or two employees at any given time, but it allowed us to take a data-driven approach, monitoring key data sets such as business mix, address turnover and vacancy, grant dollar volume support by region, and much more. This data collected over the last half-decade gives us insight into what is happening in our community, providing the ambassadors with valuable intelligence as they head out to engage with members of the BIZ.
The second initiative is an updated and revised database, to better manage the data we are tracking. Moving beyond spreadsheets and to a relational database has allowed us to more effectively query data to get key insights and monitor indicators. Additionally, over the last year, we have upgraded the database into a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Ambassadors can record the interactions they are having to rapidly notify the appropriate department when grants, graffiti removal, advocacy, marketing assistance or any other type of service is needed. Having a tool like a database with CRM capability to follow up appropriately is critical to the ongoing success of the Ambassadors.
Lessons Learned through the Ambassador Program
The Ambassadors are key to opening the door to our relationship with our members and have proven to be an incredibly valuable part of our programming. Through pop-in visits, conversation and effective reporting, they make us better at developing and providing services, which in turn makes them a critical asset to our members as well. We hope our experience and lessons learned can help other business improvement teams across Canada.