The AAA Club Partners clubs are collaborating to share best practices and ideas to fuel membership growth. Through a collaborative spirit and idea-testing, the clubs have created a membership blueprint. By assessing automotive service gaps, introducing a sales excellence program, establishing a "Tiger Team" group to address challenges, conducting mystery shopping, and enhancing tracking and analysis, the clubs have reported member growth over the last year. AAA Oklahoma/South Dakota attributes their growth of over 3% to changes made through collaborative Tiger Team efforts, including adjustments to billing cycles, automatic renewals, and lapsed member recoveries. A sales excellence program based on an insurance group program has also contributed to improved member experience and retention.

1. 30 AAA INTERCHANGE OCTOBER 2015 AAA CONFIDENTIAL
bestpractices
Growing Good Ideas
ACP clubs pool their good ideas and best
practices to fuel membership growth
For AAA Club Partners Member Experience
Vice President Velma Knowles and her staff,
recent membership growth at all 10 ACP clubs
isn’t the result of one good idea but many.
“Over the last year, we have been creating a
membership blueprint based on quick results,
idea-testing and best practice sharing that all
clubs can use and benefit from,” Knowles said.
“There’s definitely a collaborative spirit here.
The learning never stops, and we’re incorpo-
rating and sharing all our lessons and findings
across all clubs.”
All ACP clubs—AAA Allied Group; AAA Ari-
zona; AAA Hoosier Motor Club; AAA Mid-At-
lantic; AAA MountainWest; AAA Northern
California, Nevada Utah; AAA Northwest
Ohio; AAA Oklahoma/South Dakota; AAA
South Jersey; and AAA Southern Penn—have
reported member growth, in 2015 year-to-
date tracking and during the 12-month period
ending July 31.
Knowles and her team attribute success to
assessing automotive service gaps; introduc-
ing a membership sales excellence program;
establishing a cross-club “Tiger Team” group
that meets to assess challenges and create solu-
tions; mystery-shopping programs to gauge the
member experience, identify best practices and
target areas for improvement; and enhanced
tracking, analysis and reporting to help identify
areas where the team should focus its efforts.
“Major and positive changes accomplished
through Tiger Team collaborative efforts have
turned a very slow, lethargic membership
growth pattern into one that is more than 3
percent at the moment,” said AAA Oklahoma/
South Dakota Member Experience Vice Presi-
dent Rick Bickford. “Over the past 12 months,
we’ve made changes to our billing cycle, auto-
matic renewals and how we handle lapsed
member recoveries. We’ve also assigned front-
line membership sales representatives who
have completed our sales excellence course
to both states and look forward not only to
more, but better sales.”
The sales excellence program—based on
a successful insurance program initiated by
CSAA Insurance Group—has contributed to
an improved member experience, which in
turn supports member retention, growth and
engagement, Bickford said.
The club also has implemented a tracking
portal to provide frontline associates access
to key club metrics at a glance, including
year-over-year, year-to-date and month-over-
month trends.
Steven Groft
Led by Member Experience Vice
President Velma Knowles, inset,
AAA Club Partners clubs are
spreading the word about good
ideas that can benefit all clubs in
the association.