Synopsis

Jeremy Walsh joins Dr. Misner again this week to explain some recent enhancements to BNI Connect:

* Members who send a visitor invitation through BNI Connect receive a copy of the invitation, so they can be sure it’s been sent and follow up if necessary. The invitation itself contains a link to RSVP.

* BNI Connect emails the leadership team, director, and consultants when a new member joins a chapter.

* The renewal reminder for existing members has been streamlined so that the leadership team is notified of anyone whose membership is due for renewal.

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Complete Transcript of Episode 483 –

Priscilla:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:

You know, I am still in southern California. I mentioned last week that we had the global convention. I didn’t mention where it was. It was in southern California in Orange County. I am still here. The convention is over but we do Director Orientation.

We think that it is really important that Directors get thoroughly trained on how to run chapters in BNI. They go through 24 hours of training in three days, eight hours a day. So we are just wrapping that up today.

Priscilla:

Oh great.

Ivan:

I have a guest again, Priscilla. Jeremy did such a great job in last week’s podcast and previous podcasts that I have asked him to do another topic related to BNI Connect. Last week’s topic was very, very specific to a policy change. This is a little bit broader and something that every member has an opportunity to really use, or every member can certainly improve on.

We have had some enhancements on BNI Connect. I have asked Jeremy to maybe cover what some of those enhancements are and talk us through it in ten minutes.

So Jeremy Walsh, your great customer service for BNI Connect- everyone loves the work that you do. We appreciate what you do and tell us about the new enhancements that are going on in BNI Connect.

Jeremy:

Absolutely. So we have really been doing a lot of thinking- and this is mainly due to the global support team that has been doing a lot of thinking about the member experience and all of the different parts of the member experience. Not just from when they are there as a visitor, but all the way to when they become a member and all the way through when it is time for renewal. How can we touch people at different parts of that process and improve that experience with them?

A lot of these changes that we have made in BNI Connect recently are really aimed at improving the member experience. Again, we start that off with the visitor experience. One of the things that sometimes members struggle with is how do I invite somebody to BNI and how do I get them to the meeting?

Quite some time ago, we put in a visitor invitation into BNI Connect. We have just recently updated the format of that so it has some great, new gorgeous branding on that, but the one tweak that we did here was people were saying, ” You know what? I don’t quite trust BNI Connect here that this email went out to the visitor and I am not quite sure what it said, either.” So we made it so it automatically includes a copy to whoever is sending that message.

That way, you know two things. Number one, it went out and the potential visitor should have received that invitation, which also gives you the opportunity to say maybe you can follow up with that person and say,