What will Alcanada not find in surveys?

It seems like 2016 was really an outstanding year for Club De Golf Alcanada (Mallorca; 7,108-yard Robert Trent Jones Jnr-designed course):

1. 59Club Awards: won the Silver Flag Awards in the Overall Golf Resorts category;
2. They were named as Mallorca’s best in Simply Mallorca Golf’s Customer Service Scores for 2016 (in 2015 Alcanada was 3rd in the Simply Mallorca Golf rankings). They achieved impressive results in 8 categories:
   1. design and layout (1^st),
   2. customer service (1^st),
   3. overall enjoyment (1^st),
   4. overall value for money (6^th),
   5. tee boxes (2^nd),
   6. the condition of fairways (2^nd) and greens (2^nd),
   7. and speed of play (5^th)
3. 1Golf.eu‘s German, Swiss, and Austrian readers (84% of the total readers) found club De Golf Alcanada as the best golf course in Continental Europe.

What will Alcanada not find in surveys?

If I were Kristoff Both, director of Golf at Alcanada, I would be really happy with these achievements. However, he should not rest on his laurels at least for two reasons:

1. Customer satisfaction and experience measurement are continuous activities.
2. Surveys have got built-in limitations as to the types of insights they can uncover.

When it comes to customer experience measurement, it would be great to know and understand the nuances of how they do/did/feel something. To be honest, it is really hard to craft multiple-choice survey questions to figure out these small differences. It would also assume that you know the truth.

Unfortunately, we do not know what our customers want or need before we asked them. Another interesting limitation of surveys is that they rely on respondents know the truth.

I think there are 2 qualitative research methods that can help marketers/golf clubs to overcome this challenge:

1. Collecting and analyzing unsolicited customer feedbacks: I am sure that there is no single golf club who has not received any kind of complaint via either social media or email or call. These communication channels are providing us a plethora of customer insights. To carry out this task, you will need a data analyst. According to my sources, Accor (the owner of luxury hotel brands such as Sofitel and Novotel) is using Synthesio (social media monitoring company) to find and understand where and what people are talking about its hotels.
2. Tap internal knowledge and expertise! Our employees are in daily connection with our customers. This is why they can give the golf club management feedback about customers’ positive and negative experiences. Have you got a “Voice of the Employee” program? These very same people (front and back-end workers) can give you feedback about your club’s internal processes, policies, and systems that are affecting customer experience negatively.