[Businessmtg] List Administrator's Report

[Steve Rankin]

Hi Anna et al,

Let me take your questions in order . . .


1.   "Could it be with such a high number of new members the greeters aren’t available to respond to every single email? "

I doubt it. See, that would imply that the greeters miss a whole slew of emails for this issue to reach this kind of scale. I seriously doubt that has anything to do with what we see in the meeting. 


2.   "When I joined I asked my greeter about sponsors or a sponsors list and she said she didn’t know."

That's entirely possible. I wouldn't expect every greeter to know the answer to every possible question. That is especially true since members are not required to have years and extensive service backgrounds before becoming a greeter. However, although I would like to think that a greeter would either find out the answer or forward the question to the Greeter Chair. 


3.  "If there’s hundreds joining a month with what, 3 or 4 greeters that’s a lot of responses. They do a fine job, and there’s no way they would be able to answer so many questions."

We have 3 greeters that handle an average of 7.8 new members/day. That's less than 3 new members/day for each greeter, on average. The web-based process we adopted in late 2017 lifted most of the back and forth emailing between new members and greeters that took much more time for the greeters to spend doing the job, and often took 2-3 days to accomplish. Today, the greeter admin workload is much simpler and the process for new members joining ASP is MUCH faster. 
I don't know how many new members ask their greeter questions, or how many questions they ask. However, from what I've heard over the years not very many new members ask questions. 


4.  "Has it ever been thought to create a new position for someone to monitor the ASP list and respond to questions? If they ask to unsubscribe we could direct them to how that happens, and pretty much have someone designated to answer all questions."

This is actually a multi-part question, so let me respond in parts.
   
   a.  Monitoring the meeting. Let's look at this question from an Al-Anon principle point of view. No single member of Al-Anon is designated to monitor a meeting. That kind of position tends to lead to being a position of authority over members and that's contrary to our Concepts of Service. Some List Administrators take it upon themselves to read every share, perhaps looking for problems. Others read some and believe that problems will come to them soon enough. 

   b. Responding to questions.  Every single share posted to ASP includes a footer at the bottom that suggests members contact the List Administrator with their questions. The footer also includes a link to the Member's section of the ASP website and another link specifically to the Member's Instruction page, which specifically addresses unsubscribing. 

As Jerry just noted, approximately half of the members leaving ASP find the door by themselves without any apparent difficulty. About half of the others also find the door by themselves, but for some reason don't realize it, or they just feel the need to rant and take out their life's frustrations on the List Administrator. Or both. In other words, about 75% successfully unsubscribe all by themselves. That leaves less than 2/day that can't find their way out, aren't willing to try, or maybe just want someone else to handle their problems for them. My vote is for the latter. FWIW, I'd really like to have better numbers than guesstimates, but today we're dealing with what we have. 

Another thing about joining ASP. One of the pages that a prospective member has to read before joining ASP says 
"Members of ASP typically receive 30 or more emails everyday from other members. It is entirely possible to receive 50 emails on busy days."
Then again, we remind them that "you will get 30 or more emails every day" and they press the Yes button to join ASP. 
Then they get 41 emails the next day and they're overwhelmed and want out.

Please understand that even if the List Administrator didn't have a life, never slept and monitored ASP 24/7/365 and responded to every question in less than 2 seconds, and every request to unsubscribe instantaneously . . . you would still see every question and every single request to unsubscribe anyway. Just because you see a question from a member, or an unsubscribe request does not mean that Oz is taking a vacation, goofing off or not doing the job. 

Now . . . after having said all of that, I should probably point out that we're a bit off the rails of asking questions about the staff reports from the Steering Committee.

Love and SERENITY,
Steve