Who are today’s customers?
Want to improve your digital customer service? This is for you fellow golf professionals and golf club managers.
(*I will focus only on the digital aspects of customer service. There is no way I would tell you how to speak to the customers you know so well through the medium of Medium.com!*)
THE MODERN CONSUMER
We live in an on demand society. Service speed is everything in store and online. Quicker=better in 2017.
The mind is rarely idle. People use their phones everywhere; Standing in a queue. Bored at dinner. Travelling. It’s an endless list. The current average is two hours daily of social media usage!
Expectations are high. The online world has matured. Consumers are used to spending time in the most expensive and polished of apps, used to purchasing on world class platforms and websites. If your design and user experience doesn’t meet a good standard, make no mistake, it will reflect back on you.
A website not suitable for mobiles, loading slowly or hard to read will kill a first impression. Of course golfers are loyal and a quality golf course is more important than a website BUT…. have a check of your traffic. How many users this week have you provided poor digital service to?
SOCIAL MEDIA
If you have a marketing budget but no social media plan you are potentially throwing your money away. Your missing out on the biggest of opportunities.
This counts as customer service because it is where your customers are spending most of their time when they are online. And don’t think it is just for the youngsters — we have just as high an engagement rate with our seniors as we do golfers aged 20–30 years on our Facebook page.
When was the last time you looked at your Facebook analytics?
When was the last time you bought a Facebook ad?
When was the last time you promoted a hashtag campaign on Instagram.?
When was the last time you re-tweeted positive feedback?
Do these things and you will be ahead of many in the golf industry. But a word of warning. Do not spam or use boring repetitive price based posts. Social media is about stimulating interest, providing information and engaging with others. The modern consumer is allergic to poor quality adverts.
Email is a divisive topic in the world of marketing. Some claim its a dying platform with spam and other incessant messages landing all the top. Open rates have certainly dropped in recent years. Others shout about how effective it is versus advertisements on social media.
Most interesting to me is the fact that a basic text only email will generate a higher open rate than one produced with a fancy graphic template (source; Drip) . Simply put the basic email looks like pure communication, as you would receive from a friend. We assume the email with graphics is commercial and trying to tempt us to click or to buy something.
Be very careful with the pre-built template solution that some of the buying groups offer or insist upon using. Of course they are full of graphics and product information. If all you do is write a couple of lines at the top of the email be prepared to up your game. Imagine a member follows another pro/club and opens their email which is almost identical. Customers don’t like to be duped or forced to consume affiliate information.
Their is a huge opportunity waiting if you can communicate regularly with a personal and original viewpoint. Imagine you have an audience in the clubhouse of one hundred members on a Monday morning for thirty seconds. What would you say? If the first tens seconds are boring, they will leave. That is the reality of email behaviour. To get a bigger audience you have to keep showing up and providing value and let the word spread.
MESSAGING
The problems of email above have the potential to be overcome with businesses moving into the messaging space. A catch phrase that has caught on in the tech industry is;
“the potential for the message inbox to become the new home screen.”
Nothing is more personal and direct than a text. There is a security and confidence in the messaging platforms as a spammy or negative user can easily be blocked.
So if you communicate this way be careful. In my experience customers love to receive an SMS that you have just finished re-gripping their clubs or that their lost headcover was handed in. Mass sending an impersonal sales message is sure to antagonise though.
Messages are almost always read. The same cannot be said of social media posts or email. We feel this is our opportunity at Dogleg to innovate for the golf industry.
A SMART AI ASSISTANT
We want to use our smart assistant within messaging to interact with golfers and provide world class service to them. Our assistant will work 24 hours a day and can speak with tens of thousands of people simultaneously.
It will solve problems and create new customers. It will generate feedback and user content that you can use for future promotions. It will save you time and hassle.
Most importantly it will demonstrate to golfers that you are a golf club or professional who embraces change, who embraces new technology and wishes to provide the best service they can.
Go behind the scenes are read more about our plans and progress here.
