Training & support
The people who answer know your association.
Support is not a queue you join and a number you quote. The person who reads your message can open your association and see what you are describing, so the answer comes back about your dues rates and your chapters rather than about the software in general. Association staff turn over, and a new membership director should be productive in a week rather than inheriting a system nobody remembers how to drive.
Ask about your own data, not the manual
Questions arrive attached to a real record. The answer names your tiers and your chapters, because whoever is answering is looking at them.
Get a new hire running in a week
Onboarding is built around the jobs an association actually does: process a renewal, set up an event, pull the board report. Not a tour of every menu.
Change things yourself
A dues rate, an email, an event, a report. The things staff need to change most often are the things they can change, so most of what would have been a support ticket never becomes one.
Ask us the question you always have to ask
Every association has one the last vendor could never answer.