6 ways to improve customer satisfaction in your club

Customer satisfaction is important no matter the size of the business, and if anything, operating as a smaller Club or organisation, brings this even more into the limelight as customers and members seek to part the hard earned money with a business that truly resonates with them and serves their needs on an holistic level.

The effects of bad customer satisfaction can leave your reputation in ruins, and good customer service can lead to everyone raving about your business with potential opportunities for significant growth too. The question is, how do you balance it with business needs, and also, how do you truly know what your customer satisfaction levels actually look like?!

What is customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction can mean a bunch of different things to different people, and it can depend on the industry that you are operating in as well. For example, if you ask an engineer what customer satisfaction means to them, they may believe that it revolves around how often the product breaks for the customer. Ask a salesperson and it might be something along the lines of how much commission they make, believing that commission earned reflects a higher level of customer satisfaction. On the other hand, a customer service representative in a retail environment might tell you that customer satisfaction and their desire to care about satisfying their customers ultimately depends upon how they are treated themselves by the customer, and sometimes even what kind of a day they are having.

It's not saying that any of these are wrong, or right for that matter. The key point is that none of these people are your customers so what they believe good customer satisfaction looks like for them could be worlds apart from what customer satisfaction looks like for you.

It's also possible that none of the above examples, if you were to measure them, could tell you anything about how you can improve things for your customers that not only better serves them, but that also has a positive impact on your club or organisation.

Understanding your customers on a whole new level

Today's technology is ever amplifying the voice of customers and increasing the ocean of data available to us, but it's important to know where to listen, and what is relative information that can serve the purpose for you and better understanding your customers. Despite the technology available, having a hands on approach to something as important as customer satisfaction can give you so much more intel about your customers needs, and enable you to connect with them on a whole different level.

This is why we are sharing 6 ways that can help you to better understand how happy or unhappy your customers are, and how you can take strategic steps to improve the customer satisfaction levels for your Club.

1. Actually talk to your customers

   Yes, we said it, you need to talk to them! Where possible, take time to actually sit down and talk to your customers. Ask them to talk you through what services and/or products they use, and how they use these in their day-to-day lives. During this process pay attention to what happens before, during and after the conversation, the emotions and feelings that they are displaying, and their tone of voice and body language. This can tell you a lot about what they actually believe, rather than what they might be telling you.

   

   Engaging with them in this way can help inform the decisions that you make about the services and products that you offer, and can be so beneficial in building valuable advocate relationships with your customers.

   Be mindful of who you choose to partake in this activity as you will want to take a range of customers to ensure that you get a good breadth of awareness, rather than just one subset of your customers i.e. the loud ones that are always vocal about the way that you are operating your Club.

   If you don't feel comfortable in sitting down with these customers directly, or maybe you don't have the space or time to do so, you could look for alternative options to get the same or similar results. Online tools such as SurveyMonkey could be used to survey your customer base, you could call them, or there's even the option of asking them to undertake a virtual meeting with you using video conferencing software. There are so many options, it's just a case of you deciding what would work best for you and your customers to get this ever valuable insight.

2. Set up focus groups with your customers

   Setting up structured focus groups with your customers is great for testing out new product of service ideas, as well as troubleshooting some of the issues that you have identified about your existing offering. The insight that can come from a well structured focus group can help to inform business decisions and get a sense of what is happening within the Club community, however, it's important to remember that a goof focus group isn't just a room of random people who are there to answer whether or not they like your products and services, they are there for a specific purpose and it's key to keep them on track towards this so that the session doesn't quickly fall off track.

   To set up a good focus session, set clear objectives that you want to get out of the time that you have with your customers. Think about what you think you know, the things that you ultimately want to find out, and of course, be open to the things that you simply won't see coming. You'll want to set aside enough time after the session to analyse the output of the focus group too.

   In terms of size of the group, we would recommend keeping the numbers manageable, 6-10 people is usually a good guide.

3. Introduce Exit Surveys

   One of the questions that we are often ask business owners, is "why do people stop buying from you?". A lot of the time, the answer is "we don't know!". There is absolutely no shame in this at all, often it's not easy to see or understand why this might be, but it's a good area to investigate, especially for businesses that operate membership and subscription based services.

   Introducing a well designed Exit Survey can provide you with valuable clues as to your customers' major turn-offs, helping you to target improvements that can have a measurable impact on your bottom line.

   If you are implementing Exit Surveys for the first time, we aware that you might need to spend a bit of time filtering through the comments that you receive to find those useful nuggets of information that can actually tell you the root of any issues that the Club might be seeing.

4. Talk to your customers

   We mentioned this earlier in this blog, but it's here again as it is the single most important things that you can actually do in your business, talk to your customers!

   You may find some that are negative, some that criticising of your offering, some that are just down right rude, but at the same time, you will also find that a lot of your customers just want to be heard. They want someone to listen to what they believe and feel, and what they think would work or not work for the Club. Even if their ideas or feedback never goes anywhere, just the fact that you have taken time out to listen to them, can make the world of difference even without you making a single change in the business.

5. Utilise industry reports and market trends

   Benchmarking your business within the industry can give you a view of how well your Club is performing relative to others in the market. With so many customer satisfaction metrics available, reports can give you an indication of which ones are relevant to your business, and provide you with a welcomed confidence boost for certain industries which generally have poor satisfaction levels over all.

   Industry reports are also a great way for you to understand what other Clubs are doing and how certain strategies have and haven't worked for others, which can help inform decisions that you make about your Club.

6. Keep up the good work!

   Whilst it may not add any value to your business to schedule weekly or monthly focus groups discussing the same topic(s), please don't see customer satisfaction and customer insight as one-hit-wonders, that you do and never repeat again. It's through being consistent and listening for key information that you can truly transform your Club, the service that you offer to your members and customers, and the impact that you have on your local community, and industry as a whole.

   Choose the tools and techniques that are appropriate to what it is that you're trying to learn, and key your customers are the heart of what you do. Doing this can be a powerful way to spot opportunities and threats early so that you can create or protect your competitive advantage in the market.