AI at Membes: Unveiling innovation and expanding your capabilities

Last month, Membes hosted its inaugural webinar, "AI at Membes: Unveiling innovation and expanding your capabilities".  The webinar provided an overview of new AI enabled features that have been introduced into Membes to help associations operate more efficiently and deliver more value to their members. The turnout exceeded our expectations and the enthusiasm of attendees clearly demonstrated our customers’ appetite to embrace this new technology for the benefit of their association. Here, we share some insights from the day. 

Why AI? 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a central focus in today's tech landscape. The Membes team, have been dedicated to harnessing its potential to enhance user experiences and streamline operations for well over 12 months now.  

Our journey began with the development of the Membes Assistant, an AI model trained on our extensive documentation such as user guides and other training material. It enables our customers to quickly and seamlessly access comprehensive information on the Membes system when needed. If you haven’t tried it out, why not give the Membes Assistant a go?  

Once the Membes Assistant had gone live, our next step naturally was to start providing our customers with access to these same tools. We are pleased to say that with Membes, you will now be able to use AI in the same way to efficiently respond to enquiries from your members. Let’s explore some of these areas below. 

Your own AI model – personalised for your Association 

You might be thinking, "I don't need AI to provide generic information or responses for my members. It won't be accurate, and I'll still have to heavily edit it to make it relevant to me." We assure you that this won't be the case! One of our most exciting developments is the ability to train your own AI model. Our customers are empowered to train an AI assistant so it’s specific to their organisation. This innovation not only boosts operational efficiency but also ensures a personalised and engaging experience for your members.  

Reduce time spent on member enquiries 

A notable highlight from the webinar was the unveiling of our new Membes Service Desk ticketing module. This is included at no additional cost,and allows you to seamlessly handle member enquiries directly within Membes. You now can link online web forms, such as your contact form, directly to your own Membes Service Desk. If a member submits an enquiry, these interactions are also recorded on their member profile.  

Now for the best bit! You can use your trained AI modelto generate highly accurate, detailed and personal replies to these enquiries at the click of a button. Enquiries are processed efficiently, delivering detailed and friendly responses based on your knowledge, files and website content - in a matter of seconds. 

Create more engaging communications  

AI isn't just about responding to enquiries - it's also revolutionizing content creation. Use AI to generate attention grabbing subject lines for your member emails, automated news intros, event summaries, and meta descriptions for SEO optimisation. Over coming months, you will start to see more opportunities throughout your Membes system to use AI to enhance content quality and engagement. 

Let's not forget about reporting. You can ask your AI to analyse the graphs within Intel to generate insights for your board reports quickly and easily.  

What’s next? Predicting member behaviour 

Looking ahead, Membes is focusing on predictive analytics, leveraging AI to provide actionable insights such as member retention probabilities and event participation forecasts. This data-driven approach empowers organisations to make informed decisions and optimise your strategies. 

Webinar Q&A 

The Membes webinar closed with an opportunity to ask questions. We tried our best to get through them all but didn’t anticipate just how many there would be. We didn’t quite get to everyone so some of those we missed are answered below.  

Q: How does AI handle privacy? 

A: AI models available to you through Membes are closed models. All information training the model remains within Membes and is only passed to the AI engine in a transient manner as needed. No data used to train your model becomes available outside of your system unless you approve it before sending the proposed reply.  

Q: Is the assistant inward (or) outward facing? That is, if you have pages that are non-public on your website, will it pull out information from both public and non-public pages? 

A: You can have control over this and can specify whether a page of content is for public consumption or not. If not, then it will not be used by your personalised AI Model. 

Q: In terms of security, has the model been trained to its instructions and training confidential, to avoid unauthorised access or copying? 

A: Yes 

 Q: Will Membes be using 2FA soon, as we'd be reluctant to enter too much "knowledge" into the system when it is does not have 2FA. 

A: Yes. All Membes administrators are already required to login using 2FA protocols. 

Q: If we load content into the model, how would we test the quality of the responses, before we make it available to members. 

A: Currently, responses are not provided directly to members. They are viewed by administrators first, who can then choose to use the reply as is, or edit it before sending. Editing of replies provides further training of the model and improves the accuracy of subsequent responses.  

Eventually you will be able to decide if and at what point you would like to give your members direct access to your AI model to have their questions answered. This will likely be in the form of a Chatbot you can enable on your website. 

Embracing Feedback and Continuous Improvement 

At Membes, we value your feedback. Our AI journey is driven by user input, and we encourage you to share your experiences and suggestions as we refine and enhance our AI capabilities. Our customers can do this by submitting feature requests in the Help Desk portal.  

 Conclusion 

The AI revolution is well underway at Membes, and we're excited to embark on this journey with our customers. We are on a mission to provide our customers with peace of mind when it comes to AI. If you are using Membes, you don’t need to worry about AI. We’re committed to bringing AI to you in a way that is clear and easy to use, ensuring you will not be left behind.