As many of you know, my wife is pregnant and we’re expecting our first child in November. We recently had a great experience when we went to a Motherhood Maternity store that impressed me so much I wanted to relate it to you here.
This was the first maternity store we had ever shopped at and when we entered the women working there were very friendly and welcoming. They made sure to answer any questions we had and that we were well taken care of. After Cheryl picked out some clothes they offered to place them at the counter for us so that we wouldn’t have to carry them while walking around and looking at other items.
Being that this is our first time doing the pregnancy thing we had quite a few questions, but both of the workers were more than willing to patiently answer them. We never once were made to feel like we were a hassle, but what impressed me the most (and made me think of college ministry) was the card that we received in the mail a couple days after we visited the store. The card was handwritten and personally thanked us for visiting the store and even mentioned that they were looking forward to seeing us again over the summer when Cheryl needs to pick out a dress for a wedding, which she had mentioned when we were there.
All in all, I was really impressed by their attention to detail and their dedication to providing great customer service. This isn’t meant to be an advertisement for Motherhood Maternity, but rather it got me thinking what can we do in our ministries to go the extra mile? Very often we have students visit our ministries who for the first time are coming into a Christian atmosphere and that can be very intimidating. How can we be as welcoming and inviting as possible? How can we follow up with students to let them know that we value them and care for them?
Hopefully your group has been doing some of these things already, but here are a few quick ideas:
Have a greeter – Have a rotation of a couple students who stand at the door each week and greet everyone as they come in. Make sure that they identify new students and make them feel as welcome as possible.
Welcome packet – I blogged about the idea of putting together a welcome packet a couple months ago. You can see that post here.
Follow up – Have new students give you their information in some way whether it’s a sign up sheet, a short form they fill out, etc. Make sure someone follows up with them either by giving them a phone call, email, facebook message, or some other way of personally connecting with them.
These are just a few ideas for welcoming new students, but really going the extra mile is something we should be striving to do in every aspect of our ministry. Do you have any other ideas about how we can get better at going the extra mile? Please share them below in the comments.
What’s a great way for your group to get better at going the extra mile? The whole idea behind the upcoming Propel: Leadership Summit May 13-14 is about giving your group everything they need to take your ministry to the next level and essentially “go the extra mile.” This will be my last shameless plug for Propel for awhile, but I have talked about it a lot the last couple weeks because we saw how much groups benefited from coming last year and I want to see your ministry succeed in the fall! This will be an awesome time of networking, training, and planning for your group. We’ll be giving out tons of free resources and the first 10 groups that register at least 4 people will receive the first 3 DVD’s of Francis Chan’s new series BASIC free! You can register here.