The Pellucid Perspective - August 2015 - (Page 11)

goLf courSe operatIonS Good customer service and communication two keys to success By Stuart Lindsay W e get to see a pretty good cross-section of golf operations over the course of a year. Some are courses we've worked with for a long time and some are new, but they all face the same challenges everybody in the golf industry has to deal with. While courses do come to Pellucid because they think they have some problems, most are really looking for answers and market validation for what has happened over the past few years. It's easy to simply trot out the usual suspects of declining participation and over-supply, quantify how they do versus the weather, and then pat them on the back and tell them we feel their pain. Many are then happy to be able to go back to ownership with an explanation for sub-par performance. However, all of them are looking for advice on how they can perform better. Fortunately, we get to tell some owners that they are actually out-performing their markets. There are some common threads that can be found among the successful operations: * * * * Effective customer communication Email collection rate over 50% Good course conditions High customer retention Those who say email is becoming "old school" aren't paying attention. Email open rates have actually increased as mobile devices are used to read them. We can now view emails as they come in instead of seeing a big backlog when we get back to our office or laptop, and delete messages of only tangential importance. As we have said many times, the average value of customers with email addresses in our analyzed databases are always higher than those you don't have them for. In 2014, one of our most effective communicators had an average value that was $146 higher per golfer. Our lowest was only $23 higher, but when totaled over more than 3,000 golfers, that meant they were getting more than $70,000 in additional revenues from their email customers. Both Jim Koppenhaver and I did some semi-unintentional secret shopping this summer. Jim visited four local Chicago municipal courses and I visited a municipal and another privately owned daily fee course. Collectively, we pretty much went 0 for 6 in the customer identification process. Space doesn't allow a recap of all the experiences, but one course couldn't find Jim in their database - this precipitated "new golfer" instructions that the gate closed at a specific time, but no request for his email address or any indication they had added his name in their database. The municipal I visited is a venerable old course that was the site of Tiger Woods' professional debut when it hosted the old Greater Milwaukee Open. I'll probably catch some flak from some Park District golf people who read our stuff, but I was told that they didn't even want my email address - they do not have the technical tools to use it. The Milwaukee County Parks may wonder why their rounds are down 30% from their peak, but I don't. The golf industry can pay all the lip service to hospitality it wants, but until some real progress is made in staff selection and training combined with the technical ability to effectively recognize and communicate with customers based on value, we continue to put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage with other forms of recreation that compete with us for time and disposable income. The only bright side we see is that some courses are being successful. They are enjoying good customer retention and taking advantage of new customer attraction by using good customer identification practices. They have also figured out how to deliver good playing conditions with relatively moderate expense levels. The basis for that success is both their own communication programs and the word of mouth (or social media as we now call it) that comes when customers feel they have been well treated and got a good value. If there were more courses following that path to success, maybe we could stop losing existing golfers and start keeping more of the still large number n we attract. It's easy to simply trot out the usual suspects of declining participation and over-supply, quantify how they do versus the weather, and then pat them on the back and tell them we feel their pain. www.PellucidCorp.com The Pellucid PersPecTive 11 http://www.PellucidcorP.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - August 2015

TOC
TaylorMade: The Golf Gods giveth and taketh away
Rise of Arcis Golf contributes to record high in industry consolidation
Teeing up some competition – PGA Tour and EZLinks Golf
One year later, Goat Hill on the road to recovery
Good customer service and communication two keys to success
July golf weather impact: A small step backwards
New York, New York – Play it again
Fathers and sons

The Pellucid Perspective - August 2015