The Valley of the Sun YMCA implemented Daxko Payment Services in September 2018. We sat down with Connie Nelson-Askew, Systems Administrator at Valley of the Sun YMCA, to learn more about the impact it has had on their staff and retention.
Can you speak to some of the struggles your team experienced in the past when managing payments at the Valley of the Sun YMCA?
“We’ve always had a strong collections percentage, but we used to spend a lot of time in salary expense chasing the dollar. Prior to Daxko Payment Services, we had a proactive approach where we would work 45-60 days out with three touches. Members received an email on the 1st and 15th of the month, informing them their information was going to expire. They then received a follow-up call. Lastly, we added alerts to their account to stop them when they checked-in. This took hours away from our data, payments, and branch staff, and it did not yield the same results that we are seeing now.”
How has the Proactive Card Account Updater impacted your bottom line and how do you track this ROI?
“We reduced terminations from credit card declines by 100 units within our first quarter using Daxko Payment Services, and we are trending $5,800 a month on average in savings by preventing these declines. So, we know the card account updater is working and it is working well. We also were able to reduce salary costs by a minimum of $16K.
Our team has three different data points that we measure including the actual number of card declines, membership terminations due to declines, and salary costs.”
How have you reallocated the time spent updating invalid card data?
“We used to spend 40 hours a week and now we spend 20-24 hours a week on collections because we are chasing fewer declines. Our full-time Payments Administrator manages collections for over 16 locations. She now works as a part-time Payments Administrator and the other half of her time has been reallocated to our Accounting Department which picked up a vacant staff position.”
What would you tell other organizations considering Daxko Payment Services?
“When I look at new products, I don’t like to move too quickly. I like to test things and see the functionality. In the case of Daxko Payment Services, we did move quickly, and I would not hesitate to encourage other organizations to adopt payment services immediately. It is going to make life easier for your YMCA or JCC. It’s going to reduce staff cost. It’s going to reduce the number of NSFs. It’s going to reduce the number of terminated memberships due to declines.
The Daxko Payment Services offering has really strengthened our partnership with Daxko because it provided us with confidence that Daxko looks strategically at how they can consistently strive to best meet the needs of their customers.”
To learn more about how to drive impact and optimize your staff time, check out Daxko Payment Services to read about security, savings, and retention!