Membership Questions

[thaggerty]

Hey everyone!

We are just starting to set up our memberships, and I wanted to find out how everyone out there handles the billing.  For new installations (we do generators), it is easy to set up monthly payments with the purchase contract.  When there is a customer who you are trying to sign up several years after the install, do you charge the first year up front, and then monthly billing after that?    If you are selling a membership from the office, do you send the estimate to the customer to sign and return?  For monthly billing, how do you handle it if the customer stops paying 4 or 5 months in?

Also, if anyone has add-ons to a membership, how do you add them on?  What I mean is, we have a base membership, but then add ons for things like travel if it's out of our normal range, or 24/7 service options, or a bi-annual option to add a second visit.

Thanks for any advice and guidance you can offer!

[hailey_c]

Hi!

We install generators also and we offer maintenance memberships. We have two levels (Silver, Gold) and we give the customer the option to pay annually or monthly. It doesn't matter if they purchase at the time of install, or later on down the road. A lot of our customers don't sign up until it's time for their first maintenance. We include two visits with both options (every 6 months) one full maintenance and one inspection visit. With our memberships, we also offer different perks depending on which membership you choose: discounts, remote monitoring, priority service, etc. We currently do not have any "add-on" and charge the same for the membership no matter where the customer is located (our service area is pretty large) We do have a clause that if you choose to cancel within the first 12 months, the customer is responsible for paying any remaining balance owed toward the membership. Along with the memberships, we also offer an "a la carte" maintenance service for customers who do not want to commit to a plan. In most cases though, they go with the membership because it's simply a better value. 

[thaggerty]

Thank you so much for your reply, Hailey!  Your input was very helpful!

[christiew821]

We are about to go through the same process, so I'm watching your post closely! I have so many of the same questions. We do Garage Door Sales and Repair, and we are bringing back an old membership program that was loved by our customers. It will include twice a year maintenance to their system, and discounted service fees. There are different levels to the program as well. I'm not 100% sure on what different levels offer, I am new and I wasn't here when we did this previously. Thanks for asking all these questions, like I said, I'm excited to read the answers. 😎