Enhancing Member Experience: Mistakes to Avoid When Implementing AI and Automation in Trade Associations

While AI seemed like a far-fetched concept a few years ago, it’s now readily applicable across most industries and associations. Businesses are using it to streamline their processes, governments are using it to transform public services, and associations are using it to enhance member experience.

Associations know that personalization is key to a better member experience, and that’s where AI comes in. However, the association world is still ripe for this kind of digitalization, and mistakes are inevitable—yet easily avoidable.

Here are mistakes to avoid when implementing AI and automation in trade associations:

1.  Creating an Overly Complicated Automation Processes

The concept of AI can be overwhelming, driving people to create overly complicated processes that are hard to measure later on.

If you’re a leader of an association, don’t make the same mistake. Too many variants in the automation process will only lead to more hassle and more complicated success metrics. It defeats the purpose of efficiency that AI should fulfill.

Automation doesn’t need to be complicated to give you the desired outcome. First, assess the clarity of the existing process. Then, create a set of guidelines for the tasks you want to automate and drop the ones that aren’t prepared for automation yet.

2.  Failing to Train/Include Members

Developing an entire automation system without including the association’s members can have adverse effects. Since the changes directly impact the members, you’ll want to let them determine how efficient the new system is.

Engaging your members will make sure you don’t meet resistance later on.

Aside from inclusion, you also have to make sure the members are properly trained to use the new system. Otherwise, they won’t welcome it with open arms.

3.  Attempting to Replace Human Capabilities

An automation system is meant to do the repetitive tasks that humans waste time on. It’s not meant to replace human capabilities, because, unsurprisingly, humans still prefer to deal with each other.

Make sure to use AI appropriately by giving it a side role that streamlines your process and makes it more personalized for members. Attempting to replace human capabilities may lead you to create an unnecessarily complex process.

4.  Using Wrong Success Metrics

Assessing whether your automation system is successful is equally as important as creating it. However, you have to use the correct metrics for that.

Most associations use AI for identifying relevant content for individual members, analyzing scripts of meetings and conference sessions, and generating better-targeted leads.

Using the same KPIs for the entire process won’t reflect whether the automation is successful. Instead, you’ll want to focus on specific KPIs for each task and the results you want to achieve from it.

5.  Not Providing Enough Data

With all their complexity, AI tools are, in the end, data-driven. If they don’t have enough data, they won’t give accurate results.

So, before attempting to use AI to automate any processes in your association, you have to restructure your data and make sure it’s clean enough for the tool to analyze it. Otherwise, you won’t get maximum benefits from the automation process.

Final Thoughts

Implementing AI can have ground-breaking results in improving member experience at your association. However, the key is knowing what mistakes to avoid and providing enough data.