RecChat: Customer Spotlight - Bend Park and Recreation District, OR - 01/23/2020
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
In this special edition episode of RecChat, our host Zach Malloch is joined by Assistant Municipal Support Manager, Goodwin Moy, and representing Bend Oregon Park and Recreation District, IT Specialist, Jut McDaniels. Jut highlights what makes recreation in Bend, OR so special and explains how they utilize RecTrac to better serve their community.
Recording
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:47
And we're live! Welcome to a very special edition of RecChat. I am joined in studio once again by Goodwin Malloy, one of our support managers and today we have a special guest live from the West Coast. Jut McDaniels, IT specialist and Bend Park and Recreation Oregon. They get all that right.
Jut McDaniels 1:09
You got that correct, how's it going?
Zach Malloch 1:12
Very good. Very good. Thank you so much for joining us today. So
Jut McDaniels 1:17
Thank you!
Zach Malloch 1:18
we, we had the intro. And the last couple of seconds of that intro, we had a couple of pictures of Bend with some of your kind of stats attached to it. And that was too fast for anybody to have seen. So I was hoping that we could go back through that. And maybe you could kind of take us through just a little bit of a tour as far as what is Bend done. What do you guys do out there?
Jut McDaniels 1:41
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, bring that up. And we can kind of go through that here really quickly.
Zach Malloch 1:48
Excellent.
Jut McDaniels 1:52
Yeah, so you know, as far as the park district, you know, we're always trying to hit those, those major things of promoting stewardship and active healthy lifestyles, things like that. And I can't put together a little sample of how Big Bend is the kind of populations we support and some of the engagement that we do with different audiences. So we have, you know, over 1000 recreation programs, and we have nearly you know, or over 245,000 weekly fitness classes at our facilities with juniper, and soon to be expanding into another facility. Lots of natural areas and parks, be it them actually just being a natural area themselves or a fully established Recreation Park and, you know, 80 plus miles of trail around the Bend area. We also have 11 miles of the riverbank that runs through town, the Deschutes River, so we do a lot of restoration and trying to, you know, promote stewardship along the river corridor as well. We have over 3000 acres of property, lots of fire management habit that respiration and volunteer opportunities around the area. We have a lot of partnerships with school districts, our health care programs such as silverfit SilverSneakers, which a lot of people may also be a part of as well. City and county organizations. The Big Ben lupine school district is probably one of our biggest partners locally. So there are a bunch of schools in the area that we provide health care, sorry, a health care childcare programs for for after school and things along those nature's and we also partner with several nonprofit organizations. Quick overview of what we have so 36 neighborhood parks 23 community and two regional parks, and then 18 natural areas to urban sizes, and we also have our whitewater park. So we have a on the one part of the river. We have wave shapers that can actually control gate and create a little whitewater park. Definitely a fun attraction for many people.
Jut McDaniels 4:08
And additionally, we have three soon to be four facilities. So we have our universal and Fitness Center, which is our indoor and outdoor pool, our Senior Center. We also have the pavilion, which is our ice skating rink and the larkspur Community Center, which is basically an expansion of our Bend senior center, so it'll be more of all ages. There'll be another pool in there. Kind of therapeutic style, lazy river style. There'll be another fitness facility, and it'll still kind of have it'll be divided off so there's still the senior center but in addition to we have our larkspur Community Center coming up we try to provide access for all so we have a lot of inclusion programs, working with Latino famlies leaves in populations around the area, and others that are generally underserved. We also do a lot of therapeutic recreation programs with, you know, 1000s and 1000s of hours of special needs inclusion and support. We provide a lot of free events around town, different munching, munching music swarming where we have concerts and activities around just in all of our parks throughout the season. And our goal is to have, you know, a park within walking distance to every home in Benton. So whether it be a neighborhood park, or community park, or one of our larger established parks, some sort of green space that is within, you know, half a mile and most to a mile of anyone in there. And we also provide a lot of scholarships, so quarter million dollars worth of scholarships that allow a lot of people to access based on financial needs, and trying to reduce those barriers of entry into our programs and provide opportunities for all ages and all demographics. And then we also have a lot of engagement.
Jut McDaniels 6:09
So 14,000 Plus patrons, with, you know, nearly 50,000 enrollments annually. Many of those are youth with our childcare programs. But we also have a fair amount of senior and adult programs as well. Heavy registrations online, as I think that's kind of the trend that everything's moving to. And then we also have over 16,000 passholders with, you know, going upwards of half a million annual visits, particularly, you know, going to grow once we open our larkspur center later on this season. And that's where most of our adults and our seniors engage more so than the activities themselves. And then, like I said, we have things coming up soon, some park expansions with big spot, Big Sky alpenglow. We're also remodeling and expanding some of our other athletic fields. And we have our larkspur Community Center, which I've talked about before, which is the expansion of our senior center. And we're also going to do a little Registration Site remodel. So those are all things that are kind of coming up in the near future with us. So that's a little bit about us and who we are and how big we are in sizes, you know, we serve about 90,000 people here in Bend kind of our population.
Zach Malloch 7:32
So with all that, what do you do and all your free time Jut?
Jut McDaniels 7:38
Do my best to get out and explore as much as I can. Yeah, great skiing around here, great trails, you know, a lot of emphasis on athletic and outdoor lifestyles, both within the park district and just as a community as a whole. So a lot of a lot of focus on that here.
Zach Malloch 8:00
Great Well, if you had anything else you want me to show us, please feel free otherwise, let's, let's we'll just move kind of some more of the conversational piece of this. And I know we've got to, I've got a couple of questions for you. But we could also invite questions from the audience, if anybody's curious about this. So I guess a little bit more of a background about Bend parks and recs. And people might be wondering, why is Goodwin here for talking about Oregon? Well, he has done most of your installations. Is that correct? Did you do that first initial?
Goodwin Moy 8:31
Yeah, I think it was back. I think it was, was it? 08 or 09.
Jut McDaniels 8:36
I think it was 2009. I remember. I mean, I wasn't here, but that's the word on the street.
Zach Malloch 8:42
So then you've been using or the organization has been using RecTrac for just over 10 years? It would sorry? You're coming up with tenure? Yes, around there. And then, how long ago did you guys go to 3.1.
Jut McDaniels 8:55
So we converted in not this past September, but the September before September of 2018.
Zach Malloch 9:04
And so obviously, you've got a lot of different things going on. So RecTrac is kind of the core of all that. This isn't a commercial for RecTrac. I think most people here already have some familiarity on it. But one of the thoughts that we have for these community spotlights is to give people a little bit more insight into how other organizations are doing things and doing some of those problem solving. And I guess, is there a single thing that's kind of surfaced as a way to prioritize the way that you use RecTrac or how you're serving your customers?
Jut McDaniels 9:44
I would say the biggest thing that we try to do is keep RecTrac as much of a silent partner as possible. So trying to utilize the flexibility of rules fees, streamlining processes, is stripping down as much of the extra out of the screens, both online and in house that we can to try to really utilize and harness the horsepower that RecTrac has to offer to free up customer service and other staff members to actually engage with our customers. And patrons even, and create a positive experience in that regard instead of the tedious kind of minutia that may come with other registration methods.
Zach Malloch 10:30
So kind of using the power of RecTrac, to get it out of the way as much as possible to have it as simple streamlined process whenever we can.
Jut McDaniels 10:42
Yeah, just trying to Yeah, like I said, it's, it's very powerful. So trying to capitalize on that. And, yeah, it's almost seems unfair, you know, it's so powerful, and doing all these things, and we're trying to keep it as quiet as possible. But it truly is, you know, a great way to streamline the efficiency and, and really remove those barriers of entry and access as much as possible. So, you know, anytime that we can streamline a process or policy to avoid the need to have someone call to register for something, you know, be it they have a special case, you know, maybe their needs based, maybe they're, you know, eligible for certain discounts anyway, that we can automate that to allow them to register just like anyone else, and have it automatically apply those discounts or, you know, allow them access is what we really strive to do with streamlining it as much as possible. And some of that's on the policy side, and some of that's on the RecTrac setup side as well.
Goodwin Moy 11:50
And I mean, I think, I think what a lot of people don't realize that the reason why you guys are so successful RecTrac is really, you do really well as an organization with communications, not just internally, but externally as well. Internally, I just find that everybody from top up knows exactly what's going on. So when I show up on the site, you have a game plan, you know, on, on this date, this is what we're doing, we're gonna be down to this time. And it seems like everybody from getting higher up, always checking in and go How's RecTrac today? how many hours you spend? so they have a finger on their pulse on what's going on. And, you know, externally, I mean, your customers seem to have a really good idea of, you know, online registration, when a system is going down your, your marketing team does a great job, all these campaigns. I think one of the things I saw first time was out there. So we start up RecTrac on registration, but there's a huge campaign going on. Why wait, my sorry, why wait in line go online, I remember seeing banners and whatnot. And there's also you know, when customers call up, you know, I'm having trouble reading, or I want to sign up for this phone registration. With the front desk now did a really good job was oh, hey, did you know that we actually have online registration, this is how you have to get access to it. Let me walk you through it. Or if they're on a Screen that go, I'm on the Screen, I can't see the register, the front desk staff does a really excellent job, you know, walking the customer through, just make sure they're successful. So it might take a lot of time from beginning to just walk into that process. But I think after that builds trust in the software, it also in the parks and rec department.
Jut McDaniels 13:32
Right
Goodwin Moy 13:33
that and another not so I found out internally and externally, but also I think you do a good job communicating with me or VSI you know, if there's issues or ways that you know, Juts been very creative and always try to come up with ways to better, you know, his people. So, you know, we always have a discussion talk about Jut will be like, "Hey, I'm thinking of doing this, you know, how is that possible?" So just, you know, opening that line of communication, I think is a great benefit to everybody.
Zach Malloch 14:05
Yeah, no, that's a that's a huge point. And actually, kind of along that line, actually, I wanted to address a question. First thing, and we'll probably come back to that if we can, because I think it'll tie back in. So which modules of RecTrac Are you guys using? And can you give us an idea of which one you use most heavily out of those?
Jut McDaniels 14:26
The ones that we use most heavily are going to be our pass module, Activity Registration module. We do a fair bit of Point Of Sale leagues, and then obviously our facility rentals as well. One thing I didn't mention is we have a lot of facilities or shelters and all those parks that we reserved, so they can use pretty heavily in the summertime as well. So those are the major modules that we intend to use, but definitely weighing heavily heavily heavily on the Activity Registration, as well as the pass, and particularly the pass visit into our facilities are probably the two most heavily used one.
Zach Malloch 15:12
And so going back to Goodwin's point, I noticed that you're you're kind of like little statue showed that you had 67% online registrations, over a third of your registrations come in, or over two thirds of your registrations come in online. And Goodwin kind of mentioned that there's a campaign to bring awareness to the fact that there's WebTrac and online registrations are possible. There's informing you're empowering your front desk staff so that they can answer your customers questions kind of when they call in and be able to help walk them through that. Are there other elements are there particular challenges that you went through and overcame during that to kind of promote such adoption in WebTrac?
Jut McDaniels 15:57
I think the biggest challenge that we face is we we really strive as an organization to provide as many opportunities as possible and accommodate as many unique situations provide some sort of assistance or support to those patrons. And I think a big shift of going to more online, just naturally, I think audiences have become more familiar with that just in general, you know, life, everything is almost online now. But in addition to being more comfortable with it, we are also able to really flex the system to accommodate those kind of one off Special Needs a little bit more frequently than say them having to come into one of our facilities, and have to have manual overrides. And everything else, there's particular situations, are able to self serve a lot using the flexibility of the system. So part of that has been changing our policies and kind of getting into those ground floor conversations when we need to kind of review or revisit or pay, we want to do this with registration as as possible getting in at the very beginning to really be ahead of the curve versus trying to play catch up and come up with another external process where we can just maybe manipulate a policy or change a couple of words and how we do something that serves them.
Zach Malloch 17:28
Yeah, I definitely want to come back to that, because I think kind of in to Goodwin's point, and communication, in including communication about policies is one of the things that I find most impressive, their most effective about what you do. So I definitely want to come back to that. We did have a couple of questions. So Megan was curious if you guys use access control in any of your facilities.
Jut McDaniels 17:52
We we don't use any of the actual physical barriers. We do have kiosks, and pass visits that we people can check into our facilities. But there isn't like any kind of automatic locking or turnstile or anything like that. But we do have a pretty good handle on, you know, having both self scan kiosks that we've kind of set up, as well as having our customer service staff placed near the doors to greet and also help out with those that are trying to access via, you know, their pass numbers or their pass problems themselves.
Zach Malloch 18:30
And then another question. So this is from Stephanie, and she's curious, how long did you How long did your staff take to adapt to the new software once you migrated? And how long did you prepare training before you actually went through the migration? Maybe that's a two sentence question and probably has a much longer answer.
Jut McDaniels 18:55
The the migration prep. So I mean, I I'll give credit where credit's due, Audrey, who was my former supervisor, and really was the RecTrac Guru before I came on board, did a lot of prep, screenshot after screenshot and we came through, but I'd say probably about a year. A year is when we started, like philosophically planning how we wanted to change things, and then really putting our nose to the grindstone for the last six, eight months of actually changing the way that we calculate stuff, our fee structures, our you know, our rules and things like that and testing them very heavily and working very heavily with, you know, remote systems on the phone support, working through some problems and nine problems but just, you know, the way that we have our policy setup, and then some of it was going back and is this policy, you know, the juice really worth the squeeze with this policy. Can we get adjusted and adapted to make it work more efficiently for us. So the prep was a pretty long lead up. And then the actual materials that we created, were probably in the last month or two, with screenshots based on what we've already established and built along the way. And then how long did it take for our staff to get behind it?
Jut McDaniels 20:24
It was, everyone knew that change was coming, we all knew that it was going to happen. And there were some, some limitations with 10.3, that we were really excited to get past with 3.1. So it was definitely a learning curve for a lot of people with our changeover going from, you know, something that they've used for going on 10 years at that point and familiar with to changing it, you know, and it's, as everyone knows, it looks completely different. And functions, you know, very differently as well. So, yeah, I think there was a lot we did a, Audrey did a great job of gaining a lot of buy in ahead of time, letting people know prepping people like, Hey, this is what's going on. And she would hand out screenshots ahead of time, we did have it already installed on another server that people had a link through that they could go in and play around with mock transactions and just kind of get a feel for how the screens are going to look and flow a little bit ahead of time when they had a couple of minutes of downtime in between their time sitting at a desk. And then we also did training sessions. So we had all the staff come into one of our other conference rooms and had stuff projected, we had laptops, setting out on computer or on tables that people could pair up and actually go through transactions and set up a coordinator sessions, we have customer service sessions, and kind of worked within the lanes that they normally work in, and run them through some of the stuff so they weren't completely, you know, they come in, you know, Tuesday morning, and suddenly everything's different, you know, they had a little bit of prep going into it. And a lot of it was a very, very heavy training campaign ahead of it.
Goodwin Moy 22:13
And also, I mean, what's nice is, during go live week, it was just a lot of support. You know, the front desk staff were definitely a little stressed out. But you know, there was a great support system, you know, man like, Oh, it's okay, you know, we'll work through this. I mean, you know, Vicki did a excellent job easing the minds of people for employees at Juniper. But also, I think that a lot of the front desk staff knew like, hey, you know, if this is not working, let's go call Audrey or let's call Jut somebody, you actually are there to support them.
Zach Malloch 22:45
Yeah, and I think that that's a point to illustrate, and I want to get back to some of the other questions we've got coming in. But it's not just the technical skills, but it's also kind of the the attitude and the way it's presented, it sounds like, generally speaking, you know, we don't always get what we want, but we often get what we expect. So if you can create the expectation that this will be a change, but it will result in benefits, as well as streamlining and you'll be supported through it, then, even if there is some difficulty, or there's some complications that are unanticipated, having that expectation that they'll be gotten through, there'll be work through you'll have support through it can be a really important component of it.
Jut McDaniels 23:24
So picking champions of their departments, though, was a big help, you know, finding those people that you can rally behind, and they can rally behind you, to be those cheerleaders was huge. So Vicki Goodwin mentioned that he was one of those people for customer service, that was great.
Zach Malloch 23:39
And actually, that that sounds like something we could talk about on its own. And just the the idea of finding a champion, somebody that will kind of be in the ranks, I'm assuming somebody that's in the ranks already, that seems to be more optimistic towards things and then kind of just encouraging and using them as kind of an example or giving them a little bit more of a point of support for the rest of their crew. Without the catchy right when you're taking a drink.
Jut McDaniels 24:10
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, having someone that can can really understand their processes and the frustrations of their particular staff. You know, and, and the patron experience, you know, being in IT, you know, I don't have to deal with the patron experience as much as a customer service staff does. So having people in those different departments, the coordinators, are dealing with, you know, their contractors and setting up programs and, you know, kind of finding the people that can really eloquently and accurately illustrate the challenges of those and provide great positive feedback for these changes is very important. Definitely made this transition a lot smoother.
Zach Malloch 24:56
That's, that's huge. And I think that that idea is that right there. That's, that's a big one. And whenever we have situations like that I have noticed, certainly in a lot of the trainings that I've done, there are people who are more enthusiastic. And they're people who are more trepidatious about it. But I don't think I've ever heard anybody necessarily crystallize it as that and then decide, okay, well, we're going to actually use the people that are more enthusiastic to then feed their enthusiasm, and really just encourage that all the way through.
Zach Malloch 25:26
I think that's really great. I do want to come into a couple of questions that are going on the same thing here. In Pam, I love this question. Can you give us an example of an accommodation that was made? She's asking specifically for online registration. But I guess, out of the conversations you've had out of the past, the policies that have come into question and the policies that you've been able to update, you have one, that's your particular win that you feel like saved a significant amount of time, because of a relatively small policy change, or a little thorn in your side that you're able to remove through discussion and working with the decision makers.
Jut McDaniels 26:08
Some of the, the accommodations that we make online, so we have our needs based assistance program, which is basically you're eligible based around a pass, and that pass will dictate what kind of percentages you get. And we had a whole restructure of that. So the accommodation for online registration, I would say, we've increased our accuracy with the way we've done stuff. Before, you know, a 10.3 coordinators would have to put in several different fees. And then we had all these fee codes that would have to match up and, you know, based on what you had on your system. And it was, it works. But it was also a little bit limiting depending on, you know, going online, you didn't always see the right fees, or there was a lot of manual setup with that, where now, coordinators can put in one fee, and things automatically calculate out of district fees are more accurate, because they used to be manually calculated, now they're a solid 20% were able to open up passes for online sales. So before, you know we have different ages that dictate what passes you can get. And there's several different layers of discounts that can go with that. So being able to open up some of these things online for purchase. And renewal was a big, a big plus for us as well. Trying to think of a specific example for online registrations.
Jut McDaniels 27:44
We have, I was gonna say we don't have installment billing yet, because we're still working on changing our credit card processor. But through doing things like roster, rolling from one program to another and allowing people to go online and pay for their childcare, as we roll it into another month of payments, you know, things like that anything that we can do to allow people to self serve, I think greatly benefits the interactions that people have with our site and with our just organization as a whole began just removing that, that need to pick up a phone during business hours or try to walk into a facility when it's busy, or whatever. And they can just do it and and come into our facilities as they see fit and need, which really increases the overall experience as well.
Zach Malloch 28:38
And so let's see, we had a question about, I mean, I think that you've kind of touched on this elaborating on the policy changes you made when you migrated, it sounded like maybe not so much a lot of different policies, but a better able to apply them to the system and automate them as far as all of that goes without be accurate.
Jut McDaniels 28:58
Yes, I mean, we have made some changes in the way that we are calculating some stuff, you know, obviously, our district fee is one that we've touched on. But also the way that people can manage like are we have another program that uses passes. Now it used to be a combination of Activity Registration and passes for our PAC program. That is like a summer camp program at a pavilion when there's no ice. And now, parents can go on and instead of having to sign up for registration, every time they want to come to a session, they can buy a 10 punch, pass or they can earn any number of punches. And the system is able to do tiered discounts. You know, if you want to come just one time you have that option. Or if you want to come more than 10 times you can buy and get a discount, you know, and there's a lot of flexibility for parents when they're trying to figure out what they're going to do for the summer. You know, with sports and everything else they can buy just a couple punches that they need or they can buy a season pass It just allows a lot more flexibility. And again, for them to manage it on their own, when they're running out of passes, the system can automatically send them an email, letting them know that, you know, you're down to three punches. If you'd like, you know, to go online, you can go here and add more just really gives a nice smooth transition parents have really taken to that portion of it. For that particular program, I should say, and that was kind of a policy changes in the way that we did. It used to be all Activity Registration based, and then transfer things, the passes. Now it's purchased straight, no pass. Some of the other policies, we did redo our need base assistance, just to try to make it more streamlined and simple for customers. So more more options, more accessibility for everyone, and a little bit more easier of a grid so that someone can actually look, you know, add our policy and go, Oh, I fit into that particular discount or that particular need base subsidy. And it's a little in the system matches. A lot nicer.
Zach Malloch 31:08
All right. So we had a couple of questions come up, but I wanted to we are already at half an hour as we kind of predicted time flies every time we have a RecChat Are you okay with sticking around for a few more minutes Jut?
Jut McDaniels 31:23
Absolutely. Yeah.
Zach Malloch 31:24
Okay. So yeah, we have a couple of questions coming up. And one of the questions is, are you willing to share your email with the group for follow up? And you don't necessarily Type that in? Well, you already put it into chat. So
Jut McDaniels 31:38
already there, Yes.
Zach Malloch 31:39
All the panelists will just have one of our panelists share that with the attendees also. So you might be getting some questions coming your way? I think we've answered a few of these. I know, Lisa had a question about what use passes for. And I think your last answer tied beautifully into that. Yeah, there we go. So Jut@bendparksandrec Right there. And let's see, do we have any other questions coming on? I'm just going to review real quick and see if there's anything so maybe Goodwin almost seemed like he maybe had an observation?
Goodwin Moy 32:14
Yeah. So you mentioned I mean, you know, as you know, or ever know that, you know, 3.1 is really flexible, we can do a lot. But I think one of the success is really that you as an organization is actually also flexible as well, working within our parameters. Whereas, you know, I've been to a lot of places where, hey, no, this happens, but this guy understand, this is how the report used to look like in your previous software, the RecTrac, this is what I can give you. But I just feel that, you know, your organization is very flexible, as far as you know, okay, I can play with that, or this is fine. We'll work with it. And, you know, I definitely appreciate that. And it's definitely places I go like, No, this is it, you know, take a look back like this. And what's the case? What if you switch?
Zach Malloch 33:00
Well, so there's a, I kind of want to adjust that for a moment, because I've definitely seen a couple of different versions of that kind of Type of conversation. And I guess in my, in the VSI policy, it's always been well, we don't want to tell anybody that they have to change their business to use our software. And so we do as much as we can to accommodate that. That's where a lot of the flexibility and the power. And, of course, the complexity of the system comes in with all of the toggles and all of the different ways to configure all of the different things. But when you are able to take a look at some of those policies, I've I haven't found a situation that I can think of where making it work more simply in RecTrac resulted in it being a more complicated process for your customer base to understand or your front desk staff to understand usually, those clarifications of those simplifications. And I guess I'm asking you, if this is this kind of follows with what your awarenesses or your experiences, that that the simplification or the evaluation of policies so that they might work better in a system that's built on logic, is maybe a simpler thing to do once it's enacted outside of the system as well.
Jut McDaniels 34:12
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's kind of it seems natural for an organization, like you kind of start off with your main core things, and then you keep kind of cobbling and adding more things to it, and it becomes really, really complex. And then every once in a while, you got to take a look. And it's all this stuff, you know, all these different changes in nuances that we kind of specialize can they be rolled up into a greater more umbrella style policy and kind of shrink it back down and make room for more of those growth, you know, growth opportunities. I think right now, especially with the new system and the way it can really capitalize on on having that kind of flexibility, but at the same time being able to streamline it is where we're at right now we're pairing stuff down Um, we are changing policies and allowing, you know, cancellations that are going to have, you know, we're working on a cancellation policy that's concrete that we can now apply and have different tiers, different rules, you know, percentages that get paid back to the customer versus, you know, kept and stuff like that, if you know, it, it's conversations that the system has allowed us to kind of stir back up and reevaluate, you know, policies that were proper at the time may not be applicable anymore. So you kind of have to dig back through and have it be an ever breathing growing and you know, diversifying machine, though, yeah, be able to pivot?
Zach Malloch 35:47
Yeah, no, I think that's, that's great. There is a question from Sally, I did want to come back to and that is, do you have routine training sessions with staff? I mean, obviously, we just had a fairly big change to RecTrac come in with the new UI. But even maybe smaller things like that, how does it look in bins to distribute information about new capabilities of the system, or new ways of doing things or preparing people, people for awakenings will look different?
Jut McDaniels 36:15
Gotcha. So we don't have the, as much flexibility as we had going into the migration, you know, to train people in the big rooms like we had before. We do have our staff, sometimes we'll have like a quarterly meeting, which I'll show, you know, show up for, and we'll present ideas and get some feedback on what's working, what's not. I think the most effective thing for us is chapter I took out of your yearbook with the did you knows. And I, yeah, I started doing those. So when people will call in or ask, you know, email me or call me at my desk to ask me, Hey, how do I do this better? And the other thing, if it's someone that if it's something that someone asks, chances are, there's other people that are not familiar with it, as well, or maybe they run into that situation, even know, to ask that question. So making these short, little, you know, blurbs that are, you know, a couple paragraphs long at most, with some screenshots, you know, did you know, did you know how to do split payment, did you know how to XYZ, you know, these different things, and they can kind of file that into their email and, you know, cycle back to it when they have those. Not anomalous, but rare situations that they're just not, you know, they don't have the muscle memory of what they're doing. So they can go back into it, I think it's been a great way, I've gotten a lot of really positive feedback with that, versus a giant email with a document with all these different steps that you can do, they can just search for, you know, split payments, and in their email, and there comes up a document. That's been one of our ways, the serve information out amongst that,
Zach Malloch 38:02
kind of giving a ride to work a little bit more like a guide book, but you're giving it kind of just in installments, and then it's easier to digest, because you're not getting everything all at once you're kind of trickling some of that through to them.
Jut McDaniels 38:14
Yeah, and everyone kind of learns, I think a different ways or organizes their lives a little bit differently. So when it comes to email, you know, some people just keep it in one folder, some people break it out into different chapters or different things and allows them to kind of leaflet their way in to their own inbox and use that as a tool for searching and resources.
Zach Malloch 38:37
Let's see. So question is, have you are you currently using the Next Gen interface at this point?
Jut McDaniels 38:45
Now, yeah, we're still on 31905. I am looking to in the next couple weeks to a couple of months, once kind of the new year dust settles with some of the other projects is changing and providing basically two shortcut links on everyone's desktop that they can get familiar with the new UI, while still having the security blanket if you will, the old UI and kind of wean them into that next generation knowing that it's eventually going to be permanent.
Zach Malloch 39:19
And then your question or your statement about consolidating or consistently adding consistency to your cancellation policies. Are you guys allowing or are you intending on allowing people to cancel their own registrations online?
Jut McDaniels 39:37
We we don't currently allow but that is something that we have talked heavily because we are moving in with the expansion of one of our centers, the large call center coming online, are passes amongst the district. That whole structure is changing. We're going to start doing installment billing and recurring monthly membership So, once we changed over our credit card processor, so with that, I told everyone like, we have to have some sort of cancellation policy to match that functionality. So it became a greater discussion of how do we cancel anything? You know, do we have rules around it, we kind of have loose policies, but trying to come up with a more concrete. And this is, in fact, the way that we're doing it and hard rules. You know, if there needs to be an exception, people still always have the option to call in. But how can we serve the 80 to 90% of the people on on their own? Though, we are working through that right now. We just don't have anything actually hard implemented right now.
Zach Malloch 40:43
Okay. And actually, that, that point that you talked about, is, is kind of a big one, to my mind. That, you know, having having policies out there that are clearly stated and fairly consistent, seems like maybe it's not as much of a customer focus as having policies that you can always talk to somebody, but in some ways that that gives you the burden, or good puts the burden on the customer to say, Well, I didn't get through my normal way. So now I have to do this extra way of calling in and talking to somebody and working through something. And of course, it also puts the weight on you guys to have a supervisor that can talk about or somebody that's allowed to make that exception to the policy. So sometimes, even though, you know, the customization dealing with everything individually, and very specifically for every single case, is something a lot of people want, in practice of talking about it. But in reality, at least from my experience, it seems like some of the simpler policies where people can really rely on what you're saying is what you mean, in those cases, are more customer centric in some ways.
Jut McDaniels 41:52
Right? Yeah. And that's the thing I said, who is trying to granulate it, but keep it as as streamlined and easy to understand if you're this many days out, this is your discount, or this is your refund, if you're this many days out, this is what you get, you know, so on so forth. Versus if you're in this program, or if you're in that program, or if you have this path, like you can make it as granulated as you want. But I think less is more in that regard.
Zach Malloch 42:20
We had another question asking about streamlining scholarship registrations has, how does a scholarship work for you guys?
Jut McDaniels 42:29
So for us, I know there is a scholarship function in RecTrac, that we we don't use, the way we use it is they are issued a pass at either a high level or a moderate level needs basic assistance. And that pass then has, you know, obviously expiration date and everything else with it. So they come in, they fill out whatever paperwork they need, and it's a pass asigned to them. Then once they go online, that's part of our fee structure or in house as well, you know, anytime they match on, are they you know, a needs based, moderate or needs based, you know, high and what age groups, what activities, you know, we do have kind of a little bit of a little bit of a grid there. It's not just, if you're moderate, you get this percentage, if you're high, you get this percentage, based on our coordinators, how they would categories, they put programs in based on cost recovery. So there's a lot of complications with that. But that's the way that we've done issuing them a pass. And then they get a percentage off. And then we in the background, just kind of backfill from a scholarship GL. So we have a scholarship report that you guys customize for us as well.
Zach Malloch 43:51
So then you're using the passes as kind of a flag for discount use passes for punch passes in certain areas. Do you use passes for drop ins for activities like group fitness sort of stuff at all.
Jut McDaniels 44:04
We do have daily drop in go through the guest household. But there we do have passes that we we do have the full access or a basic access and we have punch passes. So we have monthly quarterly annual for your intended pass, so to speak. That's how it stands right now, again, all that's kind of getting consolidated and streamlined, hopefully with the addition of this new center. But that's that's how we have it we don't really do a daypass they just come in and we have buttons on Point Of Sale that they can select or they you know, adult full access or adult basic access or a child or you know, whatever and they Click on that and they just get charged as Point Of Sale. Okay, so they do have their daily passes or daily passes in that way though.
Zach Malloch 44:54
Okay. All right. Well, the questions have started to slow down a little bit and we're And now 50% over are a lot of times, so maybe we'll give a couple of more thoughts, more moments for people to think about things. But I guess, given any closing statements, and I'll ask the same of you, Jut.
Goodwin Moy 45:14
I mean, I think it said earlier, I think one of the most important things is just communications, you know, everybody internally know what's going on. And that's how you Build support, and also just communicating with the general public. So they have a pulse on Hey, system to be down for this day. Or this is how I get an account or the section how I register. I just remember, like I said, you know, it's going back within marketing campaigns, just little cards that you have the front desk is how you get your account is how your registration I thought was is great.
Zach Malloch 45:46
Yeah, very good. And just anything you want to leave us with right now.
Jut McDaniels 45:54
I would encourage anyone that is, you know, trying to manage the software to to really be on are in as many meetings as they can be with the philosophical portion of things, as much as you can get ahead and kind of help steer things not to limit any policy, but to make it marry well, with the software will create, you know, a much more streamlined process versus having to try to cobble things together. So yeah, anything that can be done there, it's kind of goes along with what you want to say it was communication, but internally, how do you get people that are making the decisions to talk to the people that have to execute the decisions? And?
Zach Malloch 46:39
Yeah, no, I think that that's one of the areas that you excel, and in the more that we can have more people kind of consider that and check their own policies, I can't count the number of Trips that I've had, where it became a deeper questioning of okay, well, why is that there, and then we can decide if it should still be there. And then we can decide how we get it from your as close as possible into RecTrac. And I completely understand there's a lot of people out there that don't have a lot of influence over that. And as you said, the policies are often made by people who might not have a functional understanding of how the system works. And it's kind of more like, well, this is how we think it should work. So make it happen, rather than having that influence or somebody talking about it in that same meeting, potentially. So I think there's two more things. So one's kind of a little bit of a minutia. So how much time do you normally give? Or do you go out, registering security balances? So if they register for an activity, can they pay part of that? And then how long have you allowed them to keep that debit balance? If so.
Jut McDaniels 47:48
So in lieu of having kind of installment billing setup, right now, we do have the ability to put out our balances on people's accounts, but they they have to pay currently, everything 100% online. So if they sign up for something online, they, they, they have to pay 100%. Granted, we are looking into having almost like a 20% down for things like some of our camp programs, a lot of people are signing up in March for camps that are going on in late summer, because they just need to get them. So a lot of people sign up and and cancel, and it just creates a lot of administrative work. So the idea is maybe they pay 20%, that's non refundable, and puts a little skin in the game. And then the rest of it might be due two weeks before, you know we're still kind of hammering out the the policy around that kind of goes along with the cancellation policy allowing him to cancel, you know, and allowing them to only pay portions when they sign up. So currently, they can carry a balance, but it has to be issued in house, if they do anything online, they have to pay everything in full with the exception of Facility Reservation. Those go that could be a wedding that's, you know, way out in the future, they all need to pay a fee in $1,200, or whatever it is when they're trying to register for a swim class. So
Zach Malloch 49:12
and then the last one is a bit of a bigger question. So with all the stuff that you've been able to make changes to and all the communication and policies and training that you have access to and provide what do you still find is a large challenge with the way that you use RecTrac or the way that you run Parks and Recreation out and then if there's no challenges if it's all easy and smooth sailing so completely
Jut McDaniels 49:43
totally I mean yeah, I just spend my time skiing all the time. Now I think the big thing is trying not to get too lost in into how do we do this and more of the why are we doing this Um, it's one of those things where it's, it's so flexible, that there's many different ways to achieve a goal. So you can get lost on what's the best way? Or how to do it or you know, everything else. And sometimes it just comes down to how many people are we serving with this change? Like, yes, we can do it. But are we talking, you know, about 10 people that are complaining about this one issue? Or are we talking about the other, you know, 90,000 that we could be potentially serving? You know, so trying to sift out what's the, what's the need versus the one? And what's the importance of things, you know, kind of triaging some of those audiences, you know, as you as you well, you know, they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but sometimes, you know, you don't have the grease forgive, it's not worth the effort to do that, necessarily. If it's, you know, you might not necessarily please everyone, I guess is where it comes down to. So trying to just be cognizant of that you just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Zach Malloch 51:07
Okay, I think that's a really concise and a great way to end things today. So I wanted to before he ends point out that this picture was very kindly provided by Jut, they do get snow in Oregon. So tales about skiing, are very accurate. And if you would like to be featured on a RecTrac customer spotlight, that's a question we tend to ask on all the surveys, we definitely have some responses. So we'll be talking to some of you guys have already reached out to some people. And we're thinking about doing maybe one of these every other month or every quarter is and we'd like to know also, Was it useful? Is it interesting seeing how Jut does what he does over there and bent and having a little bit more of a brainstorming or a forum to discuss this sort of stuff and ask those questions. Jut personally, thank you so very much for joining us here. Thank you for being willing to share your email and helping out the other RecChatters in the audience that are interested in that. And this has been incredible for me. Thank you so much for joining our first ever RecChat Chat customer spotlight edition. And thanks also Goodwin for coming back over.
Jut McDaniels 52:22
Thank you very much for having me.
Zach Malloch 52:24
Yeah, we'll go ahead and say goodbye.
Supporting Documents
RT103_to_31_Database_Upgrade.pdf