Give golfers a great golf club membership experience and they will never leave you and spend more money in your golf club. Great! This is what every golf club is striving for. So why are so many golf club customers disappointed?
I believe 5 factors have a huge impact on the customer experience available in a golf club:
- Speed,
- Convenience,
- Consistency,
- Friendliness and
- Human Touch.
Out of these 5 factors, speed, convenience, helpful employees, and friendly service matter most.
50% of office workers have left their job since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, people want a stronger alignment with their personal values. They want to find a sense of purpose in their work too.
Our golf club employees are expecting us to help them achieve a healthy work-life balance and improve their mental health conditions.
This is why I wrote last year that it is not enough to understand golf club employees’ individual needs, expectations, goals, and private life challenges. Golf clubs should think about how they manage the effects of stress overall.
Customer experience measurement
NPS is still often used when measuring customer experience at golf clubs. As customer experience is becoming more complex, I am not 100% sure it is the best method to gauge customer experience.
This is why I am not surprised at all when I read Gartner Inc. says more than 75% of organizations will abandon NPS as a measure of success for customer service and support by 2025.
A Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey in September 2021 found:
“41% of companies can’t explain why customer experience metrics are going up or down.”
It is very important to understand your actions’ impact on customer behavior when you are addressing a golf club customer’s need (+ where you are having it and why). This can help you to deliver a better, consistent customer experience.
Today, golfers pick and choose how they interact with a golf club in the digital or physical worlds based on what is convenient for them in the “moment of truth”.
As a result of the digitalization of certain elements and areas of golf club operations, the available customer data have exponentially multiplied.
These data should be transformed into information so that we can personalize our services as precisely as possible and thus provide defining & memorable experiences to our golf club guests and members.
This adds another layer of complexity to CX measurement that challenges the value of NPS.
Burhill Group‘s success at the 2022 Member Experience Awards
BGL (Burhill Group Limited) and its golf division venues, Ramsdale Park Golf Centre, and Hoebridge Golf Centre have been recognized with prestigious accolades at the 2022 Member Experience Awards in Nottingham.
The awards celebrate and reward health and fitness clubs, leisure centers, gyms, and golf clubs across the globe for their delivery of excellent member experiences, as measured by Net Promoter Score.
It is the industry’s only awards program based solely on NPS score as an objective measure of quality.
In 2022, Burhill Group golf venues received 4 awards among them the Golf Operator of the Year Award. Hoebridge Golf Centre was also named Most Improved Golf Club of the Year.
Ramsdale Park Golf Centre in Nottinghamshire picked up 2 accolades, including the Best Golf Club Member Experience award.
In addition, Ramsdale Park was named as the overall Club of the Year – this was a prize that ran across all sectors of the industry, from health and fitness centers to leisure clubs and golf clubs.