326: Board Chats - Crafting The Perfect Survey w/ Gary Eversole

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Board Chats here on Private Club Radio, brought to you by our friends and show partners, concert Golf Partners, boutique owner-operators of private golf and country clubs nationwide. If you, your club, maybe a friend or colleagues club might be looking for some recapitalization, head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom, set up a call with Peter Nanula and see if you all are a fit. And also, it's not just for clubs who might need recapitalization or needing funds, but maybe you're just looking to get out of being member-owned, you want to become private-owned, you want to take that hassle of being member-owned off the table and you're looking for a good, reputable company to fill that position. Once again, head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom. Set up a phone call with Peter Nanula and guess what? I know you're going to love it because Peter's a great guy. You're going to have a great phone call, a great chat, regardless. And speaking of chats, on this episode I get to chat with Gary Eversole, who's the vice president of Club Insights Now. Gary has spent over 30 years in customer experience research and now brings that experience and that knowledge over to Club Insights and helping our clubs get that real-time intelligence, that RTMI, and help the clubs genuinely grow and engage their members. And obviously we all know how important member experience is in the club world. And making sure that the surveys and hopefully you are doing surveys, but making sure that the surveys are done in the best way possible, because there is an art to crafting a survey. You know you can just do a survey and it's just hey, are you happy, yes or no? What do you think of this? But there really is an art to asking the questions, and not just the questions, but how you frame the answers to get the best answers possible, to make sure the club is moving forward and you're actually doing what the members are asking for. And we go through the whole gambit of member surveying. And it's neat because Gary really helps us see some strategies on how to balance innovation and tradition, which has been a big thing on the show recently. It's hey, how do you take technology and tradition? How do you take all these different aspects and balance them together so well? So we talk about survey frequency, question types and how to maximize the survey results, because that's really what it's about at the end of the day. I can keep talking about it, but why don't we let Gary tell you about it. So, everyone, let's welcome Gary Eversole from Club Insights to this episode of Board Chats here on Private Club Radio. Thanks to our friends Concert Golf Partners. I'm happy to have you on here because you have a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience, and I'm happy that we're here on Board Chats. Glad we got linked up through our friends at Concert Golf Partners, so why don't you kind of give a 30,000-foot view? Who's Gary Eversole?

Speaker 2: 3:19

Well, gary Eversole is. I have spent, I guess, nearly 40 years in survey research working for a large organization. Private organization in St Louis really spent that time conducting research for Fortune 100 companies, the likes of Ritz Carlton, general Motors, toyota, bank of America, American Express really designing, developing, managing large, ongoing customer experience programs. I did that for 32 years I guess, and then was fortunate enough to join the Club Insights theme and really brought the best practices that I had learned across my career at Merit and brought those to the private club industry and married that with their expertise in private clubs and we put together some tools and products regarding member experience.

Speaker 1: 4:23

So when you say surveys and experience, what does that mean? Or what did that mean for the Ritz Carlton's and those bigger companies Like, what sort of projects were you working on?

Speaker 2: 4:36

So really the dawn of the experience era happened back in really the late 80s, early 90s, when competition amongst hotel chains, for instance the Ritz Carlton's of the world or the Holiday Inn's or the Merit JW Marriott's, became extremely challenging. In other words, there was fierce competition in those sectors and, as a means of retaining customers as well as acquiring customers, the experience that those organizations would deliver really became a source of differentiation. And so what was taking place was the companies were trying to better understand the experience that they were delivering to their customers and make efforts to continuously improve that experience, and then, through positive word of mouth, you could garner new customers as well as retain the customers. Highly satisfied customers obviously return at a greater pace than individuals are less satisfied. So those are the basic principles that people were trying to do at that point in time.

Speaker 1: 5:57

So you and I chatted last week at this point I think a week or two ago before we recorded, and I made a note because one of the last things you told me was the member experience has taken on a new meaning and I have like a big star and like a asterisk by that. Can you go into detail about that?

Speaker 2: 6:19

I was trying to think what we were talking about at that point in time. Certainly the member experience. If you think of what's happened in the private club space over the past let's say 10 years back in the 2008 period, when there was a real down cycle in clubs Member experience was a way, certainly, of differentiating yourself and retaining the members you had, as well as acquiring new members. The COVID era and the pandemic was an incredible gift to the private club industry, with many new members joining, more activity at golf courses and at private clubs, and so the member experience has become even more important today, I think, than it ever has been. Clubs are now experiencing, you know, full. Many clubs have reached their charter, they're full. Therefore, retaining those members and continuing that positive word of mouth is paramount in today's environment, especially with the escalating costs that all clubs are facing now and increasing dues, increasing joining fees. There's a lot of pressures on clubs today that may not have been there three or four years ago. So maintaining and continuously improving that member experience is paramount in today's world.

Speaker 1: 7:47

So the show that we're recording for here this is for board chats thanks to our friends concert golf partners. You know concert golf partners you have to. Not you, I'm talking to the listeners at this point. If you didn't know, we were going to have some problems, but you know. I want to bring this back a little bit to the board perspective, because I remember we were talking about this as well when we chatted. How can you tastefully blend together board perspective while listening to members and their experience, because sometimes I think there's like a mismatch. It's hard sometimes to get that alignment. You have such research and time and a wealth of knowledge. What are some ways that they can be blended together a little bit better?

Speaker 2: 8:36

Sure, I mean, just like you know. Interestingly, just like publicly traded companies, boards were incredibly interested in understanding the voice of their customers and the voice of their customers in shaping products, shaping services and in shaping the experience that their company is delivering. Much the same is true for private club boards. If you think what a private club board is doing is they're doing much the same kind of thing. And so listening to members and understanding members can help guide and shape a how a board needs to prioritize things. So, for instance, and within the strategic plan, it can help inform components within the strategic plan, it can help to prioritize and assist them in making decisions that are consistent with the membership wants and needs as you look forward. Additionally, let's say the board needs to make some decisions on, maybe, a particular project by understanding where member sentiment is. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have to do everything in agreement with member sentiment, but what it does do is can help them inform the communications to the member. So if they were to understand that, let's say, a large segment of the population are against a certain capital initiative, it helps to inform them. We need to spend a little more time communicating with our members on exactly why this new amenity, or this new spend is so important to the club.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Are there certain trends, either upward, downward, good, bad, that you see happening?

Speaker 2: 10:31

Oh, you know, I think one of the trend. We've seen a bunch of trends here. Certainly, as I mentioned a second ago, the COVID era has changed a lot within the private club industry. There are a lot of younger folks have joined private clubs. Their expectations are different than maybe members who have been a club for many, many years. And those two cultures at clubs be those younger members who are just happy to be at the club, they're using the heck out of the facilities and the amenities, they're just loving life at the club versus the older, more established members. You know they would just prefer things to go back to the way they were pre-COVID. Those two can represent a clash if not properly understood. So one of the things that we certainly focus on is really trying to help boards understand that you do have multiple cultures occurring within the club and that's okay, but to understand them becomes very important. Certainly, another trend that we have seen in the past year or two has been we generally, almost in all our surveys, ask questions regarding the value for price paid or value for the money, and we've seen that take that the ratings on that particular question take a pretty significant downward path. Expenses and costs at clubs have increased dramatically, most of it due to, obviously, cost of goods sold, the cost of labor, the cost of fuel. All the things that drive the expense line of a club are the very things that we've seen, you know, certainly, inflation occurring in clubs which has led to dues increases and or capital assessments, and so certainly there's been pressure on that value line and trying to understand and help boards really understand not only the decline within the value for the money, but what are those key priorities that they can be working on to continuously improve and elevate the member experience.

Speaker 1: 12:54

How do you properly get that information? How do you get that from the members? Is it surveys? So what steps do you take? Because to me, the futures of clubs and just the world in general is going a mile a minute between technology, ai. There's so many different ways to get information, to analyze information, so how do you kind of see the future of this part of the club world evolving over time? Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2: 13:30

I think certainly the word surveys can have a negative connotation, sometimes at clubs, because there are myths out there that will only the complainers respond Only. the only thing you hear are people that had a recent bad experience or things like that, and those things simply simply aren't true. But today's survey technology and the ability to utilize shorter surveys, more pointed surveys, and not only the ability to identify what are those things that are most important to members and have the biggest opportunity for improvement, trying to isolate and give priorities to the leadership team, or these are the things we need to work on, because if we work on this set of these set of items, those are going to be the ones that really drive the biggest bang in improving the overall member experience. The other trend I would say that you've seen in happening more in the public sector than it has the private sector and in private clubs is one-to-one relationship management. So, in other words, I am member, have an issue and it might have been. I went to dinner last night at the club. Maybe my steak was tough, maybe the service was poor, maybe I waited 45 minutes for my meal. The ability to capture that information very quickly and do a follow-up service recovery with that individual member before it becomes the talk of the locker room, the talk of the force and the talk of the dining room. I think those are the kind of things that are going to be the future within the private club space.

Speaker 1: 15:17

Yeah, word spreads very quick these days, the great mind is amazing. It's so fast, especially if you use your thumbs.

Speaker 2: 15:26

Now it's not just picking up the phone, it's now your thumbs that do the talking in a lot of cases. Do you know what happened the other night too? You know so-and-so at the club. Well, that can be. Just. As a negative story treads quickly I've come to learn over the course of my career a positive story also moves quickly. So let's say you did have a bad experience at the club. If the follow-up to that was done in a timely and appropriate manner, that can spread equally as quickly. You know what happened to me the other night and the next day the general manager or the food and beverage manager called me up. Everything explained the situation. I explained the situation to them. They listened to me. The next time I'm in I'm going to get a free glass of wine, but you know my problem. Those results, that's, in a very powerful, powerful Message that can go into the great mind in a positive sense.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Yeah, yeah, and sometimes not even some it's, sometimes it's it's as it's happening, like the immediacy. It's not even odd to hear, like last night it's people are, you know as it's happening, you know like live documenting the whole experience to you know, friends or or wherever? Are there any other challenges? You kind of see clubs facing and collecting and using member data and intelligence and you know what? How do you overcome some of those?

Speaker 2: 16:54

Yeah, I mean, I mean some of it. I mean challenges can. They can be broad. You know Clubs are generally have many operating committees, as well, as, you know, boards and leadership teams, and so that dynamic can create some challenges. I actually believe that doing conducting surveys and having data Can choose to align all those various constituencies so that, if you've got a good Understanding, you listen to your members through surveys and information and data that can serve to align boards, committees, management teams and staff, because now you clearly understand these are the priorities that the members are seeking. So often in, especially in committee discussions, it becomes the opinion of one and that opinion of one is a dangerous, very dangerous thing, because all of a sudden, everybody has an opinion of one and that can lead to debates and discussions and you know those kind of things when, in reality, having the data doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it, but just the knowledge that this is what our members are saying Is an incredibly powerful tool.

Speaker 1: 18:20

Would it be safe to say that? You know we can call these Like member intelligence strategies. Is that like a proper word there Okay. How? How can clubs measure? So you, you, you, you get the information, you, you get the data. How do you measure the ROI like? How do you Measure track? How do you know if it's working, if it's not? You've been doing this for for for so long, so you know how do you know if it's working? How do you get that ROI and how do you measure it?

Speaker 2: 18:50

I Think the ROI is just the continue continues, the improving member experience. So you know, we recommend to our clubs they should be listening on an ongoing basis. Some clubs do that annually, some clubs do that every three to five years. I think in today's world that's too long or too far in between. But if you're, if, if you really follow the beliefs that, if you, if you listen to the members, you and From that information that you gleaned from them, you put together Action plans, you share the results with members. You then execute to those action plans and drive improvements in the member experience and Then celebrate that with the members that they were part of that entire process. That's an incredibly powerful elixir. And then you rinse and repeat that process again and again and again. You get everyone involved in the improvement process. So it's not just, you know, either a management driven or a board driven, let's say, initiative. This is the entire membership saying this is what's important to us, this is what we're focused on, this is what we did. That's a very, very powerful equation.

Speaker 1: 20:11

Have you, can you do, or maybe you can remember, I'm not sure. I'm just trying to think now, like, have you ever? Do you remember? Or maybe there was an experience that you work with, so maybe it wasn't even you and In in in you know you personally, but it was you know someone you and your, in your group, has worked with. But you know, has there been any times where Maybe the clubs or whoever thought it was going to be x, y and z, but then they found out you know, through their, their intelligence gathering that they had to make a really significant pivot or like a change in strategy or offerings? Remember any stories or anything like that? That might be. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Yeah, I mean matter of fact, we just had one, not that too long ago, which was and this isn't. This is kind of a typical one in cases We've had shades of it shades of it in the past when we serve and, generally speaking, most of the surveys contain some some fairly pheromonic detail regarding the performance of the golf course and when you present the results to a green committee or to a board, often what you will hear is that the Greens are the most important thing here at XYZ country club and you know our grains are some of the best in In the country. And we need to continue doing what we're doing and really focus on maintaining and improving our dreams. And and in this particular case that I'm thinking of, when we conducted the research and it was clear that they do very well on their dreams, you know, continue doing what you're doing. But if they really want to elevate the member experience, they need to improve their short game practice area, their bunkers and their driving range, and it was very clear from the information that members were very underwhelmed with those facilities, but they were highly important to the members. So, in other words, that combination of importance and performance Really I choose is really identifies those areas that, if improved, would yield the largest impact on the overall member experience. So not to take money away from the grains keep doing what you're doing, but if you really want to elevate the experience, focus on the short game practice area, driving range and the bunkers.

Speaker 1: 22:38

I Think I already know where this question is gonna go, but just always fascinating. What is the role of social? How has the role of so has social media played in, you know, intelligence gathering and member engagement and feedback?

Speaker 2: 22:58

You know I it's interesting because Social media has played such a prominent role in the, in the, in the public sector. So Organizations like Ritz Carlton or Toyota or Lexus those types of organizations are constantly Monitoring, have entire teams working to respond to social media. Private clubs I. I don't think private clubs have had to worry about that as much in today's environment, but that positive word of mouth or or pot or negative word of mouth, I think is something that you're going to see become increasingly important in the private club space, and so therefore, making sure that you are delivering a member experience or that you're closing the loop when there are service issues or service recoveries, even takes on a greater importance as private clubs start to be talked about in the social media environment. Here at the fore they haven't had to worry as much about that most clubs, but going forward, especially with newer generations now coming into and belonging to clubs, it's going to be an increasing need. I think it's a great question and I think it certainly is something that private clubs will need to wrestle with in the future.

Speaker 1: 24:31

Yeah, it just. I actually did a short episode on it, just how you know, just Google your club, just Google your club name, open up an incognito browser so it doesn't have any of like your cookies and all that, so it won't give any like bias feedback. But just search your club name Because it's amazing what pops up, and not just on Google, because you can do Google but also if you search Google images, that gives you a whole different, that's a whole different set of results. And if you want to take it even further, you can use Instagram, facebook. Those are also technically search engines, so you can go in there and search and you can also search hashtags so you can just see like what like guests are posting when they come in for events. Then it's one thing, when it comes to like engagement and feedback and this sort of thing is when I, you know, I've tons of clubs all over I've worked with, engaged with, and just doing a Google search and looking at Google reviews and just seeing how many don't even respond to not just the good ones, but the bad ones. Yeah, oh, man, at least, at least for a spawned, it makes you look so much worse. So it's just, I know, it's sort of like off the beaten path a little bit, but that was sort of the route I was going when it came to it isn't.

Speaker 2: 25:45

It isn't. I mean you know customer reviews have become, if you really think about the history of the experience movement. Certainly it started with surveys back in the 80s and 90s and it evolved through the development of standards and then into surveys and relationship management type applications. But that has given way to a lot of the survey feedback being populated onto the social media sites. So very frequently if you take a survey for, let's say, jw Maryot, you will be given the option at the end of that survey of posting your comments or your ratings to, you know, social media or online, or to. Facebook or wherever, and that's certainly the trend within the public sector. That really has yet to kind of hit the private club sector, but you would think it's coming very, very soon.

Speaker 1: 26:46

With social media. You know social media technology. We're now 2024, how can, how can, clubs better balance? I don't know if this is even the right question, but to me in my head it's like okay, balancing tradition and innovation. Have you found or seen or heard anything of kind of meshing those two together? Because it's I don't want to say a fine line also, but it is that clubs are that balance of tradition, innovation, newness, how you know, what have you seen in your world with that sort of aspect?

Speaker 2: 27:21

You know, I think clubs are very internally. It's a great question and I don't know if I've seen any application. I mean, there's individual clubs out there certainly that do a much better job of their social presence than others, but are there any clubs that are really trying to leverage that in today's world for their image? I think that's a good question. I haven't seen any real innovations on that front outside of what's available out there in the public space. But clubs tend to be very internally focused. You know what's for dinner that night? Very, you know it's the urgent versus the important. A lot of times at clubs that are in a club, management are dealing with and for that matter, the boards are dealing with as well and the thought of creating a positive public persona within the community. You know there's certainly there's some clubs that think about that, but I wouldn't say that's a widespread. That's widespread at this point in time.

Speaker 1: 28:31

Have you found it's going back a little bit. My ADD brains go going wild. That's right. When you have the, when you're asking for this information and you're trying to get this, you know get the right and proper stuff. Are there any strategies that get people, members, to take it more seriously or do it when asked, then kind of blowing it off Like so have you found or heard of any clubs that might do something, maybe a little bit different, that you know they do X, y and Z and it helps them get, let's just even say, 5 or 10% more? You know increases in responses. Are there any clubs that you've worked with that do anything that you've done that you've done? You know increases in responses? Are there any clubs that you've worked with that do anything kind of unique in that way to kind of get the ball rolling more from clubs?

Speaker 2: 29:17

that might have a little bit more of an issue. Yeah, we tend to recommend with our clients. We do tend to recommend a process that they go through, depending upon the type of research application. Sometimes focus groups start the process where you know, especially if you're thinking about a made, let's say, a major capital improvement to the clubhouse, and that may involve some qualitative research, in other words, focus groups, roundtable discussions with members, and letting and communicating with the members that here's what the process is going to look like. You know you will be invited to a roundtable discussion, a focus group, and that will then be followed up with a survey and here's what we intend to do with that survey and here's the process. And so communicating with members in advance what they can expect and what's going to be done with the information is extremely important to garner a higher response rate. There are clubs out there that will also use incentives. The one that we generally recommend to boost response rates are some kind of raffle for drawing. In other words, if you respond within a certain period of time, then you will be entered into a drawing or, let's say, a hundred dollar gift certificate in the dining room or something like that. Those incentives do work in both in-house and in-house and that's what we do in general, and that's what we do in general. We do work in both in boosting response rates. In general, clubs experience very high response rates compared to a lot of other type research, and the reason that is is because you're very emotionally vested in your club. That's an important part of your life, so therefore response rates tend to be pretty high. So you know you're not going to be able to see what your brand is or your favorite laundry detergent. This is something that's near and dear to your heart, and so you tend that that in itself drives a high response rate. And just letting them know certainly when you do collect the information, summarizing the results, sharing that information with the membership and, as I mentioned before, when successes are realized, celebrating that with the members that they were part of that entire process. And so therefore, when the next survey comes out next year or the next period, they're more inclined to respond because they know something's going to happen with the information that they provide.

Speaker 1: 32:08

Best practices. How often should it be done?

Speaker 2: 32:12

I'm back, so roaring debate right now, I think in the industry. You know it's funny because some clubs have never surveyed their members. Other clubs that I'll talk with will say yeah, other clubs.

Speaker 1: 32:27

I'll talk with.

Speaker 2: 32:28

Well, we did a survey three or four years ago. Five years ago we did a survey. Yeah, I think it's about time we should do another one. Other clubs have adopted an annual type survey process. There's now a movement and there are some out there in the industry that are starting to talk about quarterly surveys and doing things like that. You know certainly you start running into complexity, issues with sampling and survey fatigue and you know there are other factors that you need to consider In doing that. So at this point in time, you know we tend to recommend doing the survey annually provides that cadence of understanding what the members want, the ability to put together action plans, execute against those and then reassess, you know, either at the end of the season or the beginning of the following season. But keep in mind you also need to have ongoing listening tools to listen to your members throughout the year. So not just the survey, so having having listening posts out there so members can respond, having mechanisms so that you are performing that one to one relationship management and identifying service recovery issues when they occur or, for that matter, just identifying exceptional experiences. It doesn't have to be all about what went wrong. It can be what went right and those are bear. Those are extremely important for staff to hear as well.

Speaker 1: 34:04

Do you recommend? Is it a thing I'm just thinking out loud? Is it always the same? Like it, does everybody get the same survey? Are there, are there, can or are there in, or can they they know clubs do they have? Do they tend to maybe interview or switch up the questions or go? Hey, we're going to ask the people who use the club you know Much more frequently. We're going to put put together, you know, a set of data people who we think use the club, you know, more than three times a month. We're going to ask them. We're also going to survey, have a slightly set different set of questions for maybe members who only use the club once a month. If that Just kind of gauge and see like, are there different surveys, are there different approaches, are always usually just the same way. Well, with this, with the state of technology today.

Speaker 2: 34:54

All of those things can assert that some people can call it, you know, ai and artificial intelligence. The reality is that the survey instruments themselves have become pretty intelligent In that if, for instance, you play golf a certain amount and you may play golf once a month you may get a slightly different battery of questions. And someone who plays four times a week you know type of things. Or you know if you don't play tennis or you don't go to the gym or the fitness center, you're not inundated with those type of questions. So there's skip logic built in to the surveys. The surveys do tend to vary over time. We try and keep certain parts of the surveys consistent from year to year so that you've got trend information and you're able to compare performance over time. But the surveys become very customized, especially when it comes to, you know, clubs may be looking at, they want to prioritize their, their pending capital improvements, or they may want to think about looking at, maybe branding themselves a little bit differently than they are. And what do members feel about some of these statements? So that surveys can evolve and in my opinion, they should evolve over time to meet the needs of the members as well as the usage patterns within the club.

Speaker 1: 36:24

You mentioned survey fatigue. How often do you think is too often so to me? I can't remember how often they would do it, but I wouldn't be upset with a monthly survey, even just like hey, how are things going? Are there clubs that do that? What are your thoughts on more regularly programmed surveys?

Speaker 2: 36:53

Well, I mean, I think there's different types of surveys. So the kind of touch base how are things going, how was your experience at the club? A very high level relationship management survey, yeah, I think once a month, once every three weeks, four weeks, five weeks I think is very appropriate. If you're going to ask a member to complete a 12 to 15 minute survey, I don't think once a month is appropriate. I think you would see fatigue Survey fatigue happen pretty quickly. So is that a survey that should be done semi-annually or annually? The longer survey is probably Because one of the things that I've come to learn over my career is that numbers can change, in other words, the ratings themselves can change, but the relationship of that particular variable to everything else is much slower to change. So in other words, let's say, menu variety is rated poorly at a club, and frequently that's the case. Does that number go up or down? It might. If you conducted that survey monthly, yeah, that number might increase, might decrease, but the relationship to the other variables within dining, like timeliness of service, greeted promptly, consistency of food, the relationship is slower to change than the number itself. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 38:18

Yeah, how long is too long of a quote?

Speaker 2: 38:22

unquote survey. Yeah, I mean in the old days.

Speaker 1: 38:27

What's the I would say what's a good range. So what's too low, what's too high? And from your 30, 40 years, what have you seen to be like the sweet spot?

Speaker 2: 38:37

Well remember 30 years ago, surveys were basically SAT tests and 45 minutes was not uncommon in the survey world and you had these time to researchers that would put together surveys and you'd have these 45 minute hour surveys that were just painful. I think in today's world, the most you can ask from a member on these longer type surveys are probably 12 to 17 minutes is probably the most, and I think it's important you communicate with members in advance. This is what we're going to do. This is what our voice of the member is going to look like, and you're going to receive a survey once a year or twice a year. It's probably going to take you 15 minutes to create and we're going to send you periodic surveys throughout the year that are basically one or two questions For us to understand. Are there any issues? Are there any issues you'd like to communicate? I think that's the proper approach in today's world being respectful of members' time and providing the management and leadership teams the information they need to guide the business.

Speaker 1: 39:49

And what about types of questions? So do you mix it up? Is it all the same? Is it true? False ABCs 1 to 5s, 1 to 10s. Fill in the blanks paragraph. What do you see normally? Is it a mixture of all of those? Is it one or the same? How have you seen the structure of those surveys?

Speaker 2: 40:15

I think the structure is evolved over time. Certainly scaled questions. Closed end questions. The scales have gotten, as time has went, moved forward. I think five-point scale questions have replaced seven and 10-point scales. They just require less time and energy to complete, mental focus to complete.

Speaker 1: 40:39

Yeah, I can see that, Because sometimes you're like 1 out of 10. You're like it wasn't quite an 8, but not a 7. Like you're going back and forth all these numbers, but there's five. Yeah, it's like it was a 4.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Yeah, exactly. So again, five-point questions. Unipolar scales have become very popular. What I mean by that is let's say there's a five-point scale, there may be three positive boxes and two negative boxes, so that it's much heavier weighted towards the positive. They extremely satisfied, very satisfied, satisfied type scales. What that enables you to do is differentiate performance, because all clubs tend to be pretty high performing entities, and so, as you strive to continuously improve the experience, you need to be able to separate performance a little bit better. Open-end questions are something that have always been around, but I think they are more popular today than ever. In other words, what two things can the club do to improve your experience? And let the member tell you Now prior to text analytics software being available, someone had to go through and read all those comments and code those comments and try and make sense of all of that wide array of information with today's text analytic tools You're able to do that pretty quickly. It doesn't replace still going through and doing some reading. But the text analytic tools have improved in accuracy considerably and they've gotten much, much better in being able to summarize that information in a very quick and easy manner.

Speaker 1: 42:28

You've seen, experienced. I don't even want to try to count how many surveys in clubs, let alone throughout your entire career. Are there any? How am I going to phrase this? Are there any? I don't know if it's topics, any styles. Are there any things that, when it comes to the surveys, that maybe a lot of clubs do or a lot of people do that they should either? I don't want to say stop, because that's always probably like are they doing anything wrong or are there parts that you just say you just see clubs doing like B instead of A and it's just much more effective across the whole board. So are there any things that you're seeing that clubs do maybe not right with their surveys that, with a little tweak, can be better?

Speaker 2: 43:15

Yeah, I mean when SurveyMonkey came into being a number of years ago where you could conduct surveys yourself. I look at SurveyMonkey and I think it's one of the greatest inventions that's ever happened and one of the worst all in one. And the way I say that is because there isn't arch to asking questions. There's a reason you don't ask a question like please tell me about the quality and price of your dining experience. Well, if you get a poor rating and you're rating quality, you're rating price. So writing questions is a. There's a science to that. But the real challenge becomes when clubs try and do surveys themselves is the interpretation of the results, because it's a real skill set to transform data to knowledge and information. And just looking at tabs themselves and cross tabs can be very confusing because you tend to. If you have a dog in the fight, all of a sudden, when you're interpreting the results, your dog seems to look a bit more favorable than other dogs.

Speaker 1: 44:31

I was going to say ego would probably be very hard.

Speaker 2: 44:35

It does, it does and people don't realize how complicated the survey process can be, and so a club may spend an inordinate amount of time conducting a survey themselves and ask the members to fill it out. And all of that, and at the end of the day they get information that they really can't take action on, and so much of the effort was wasted in the process.

Speaker 1: 45:04

What do you mean by that? Like what would be information that they can't take action on.

Speaker 2: 45:07

Well, let's say they ask a question, like in the dining. Let's say they said quality and please rate quality and price. Well, if they get a poor rating, was that were people rating the price or the quality? So you really can't do anything with the data that you get. Or let's say, a lot of clubs will do a survey themselves and they will ask please rank the following four capital improvements at the club. It may be additional pickleball courts, it could be a fitness center, it could be a multitude of things, and they'll have members rate those one, two, three, four, five, let's say if there are five different items, and you can tabulate the results and you look at that and you go well, ok, it's very clear that this item received the greatest number of first place votes and this number received the greatest number of second place votes. So you could say well, these are our top two priorities and they may be, but what it doesn't tell you is what was the difference between number one and two? So maybe number one was clearly superior, but you don't know how big the difference was to two. The difference might have been dramatic and the difference between two and three might have been dramatic as well. Where, if they would have asked that question on, let's say, a five point scale, how supportive would you be? They would know the magnitude of differential between numbers one, two, three, four and five.

Speaker 1: 46:42

Does that make sense? Oh, no, tons, tons. What type of question tends to get the most juice from the squeeze? So, is it that one to five? How satisfied is it? You know A, B, c, d. Is it a type in a response, from your point of view, what gives you the most bang for buck? That was a wrong thing, but you're picking a point of view, that's a good question.

Speaker 2: 47:11

I mean because we ask generally a batteries of question regarding emotional connectivity or sentiment. You know, like you know, I would recommend this club to a friend or acquaintance. Provides good value for the money. I'm proud when I bring guests to the club. And then we ask batteries of satisfaction questions and performance questions relative to the various amenities, and then obviously open end questions, and so it's a very interesting. You know, where do you get the most information? I think you get the most information when you start, when you are able to cross tab some of the sentiment questions with satisfaction questions, so you're able to start to understand how people feel about the club but then how that translates to their experience itself. And then you're able to look at the various, how strongly correlated some of those levels of satisfaction are to the performance, to the sentiment, and so you're able to really get a good sense of what is the member not only feeling about the club, but what are their experiences at the club and their willingness then to recommend the club to a friend or acquaintance. I think becomes a very powerful combination of understanding and then you can throw on top of that the ability to look at that information by various segments of the member population and whether that be younger, tenured members, the older members. You can look at it by gender, that membership category. You know it's a wide array of things that you look at when you're really trying to identify what are the best opportunities for a club to improve their performance.

Speaker 1: 49:01

Is it a thing? Do you recommend it? Do you not follow up surveys? Like, do clubs do it? Should they do it? If maybe you know certain results, maybe if there's a I don't want to say a threshold, but I'm assuming when you do a survey you have certain I don't want to say answers in your head but you're like, okay, we would hope to hit this mark, we would hope to hit this, like we would really like this. Are there clubs? Do clubs do it? Do you recommend clubs? Do you like a follow up survey If things fall below a certain level? A follow up survey if things fall below a certain threshold, or maybe even above a certain threshold, if people are super excited about everything and love it all, is there another follow up for them? Or maybe people who just really subpar? Is there another follow up survey or an action with both of those ranges?

Speaker 2: 49:45

Sure, you know very, very frequently. You know, one of the processes that we will recommend is that, when you conduct a survey, you know, through a process of looking at the tabulations and looking at the performance improvement maps, we're able to identify those top priorities for a club. And so, let's say, in the dining area, let's say it is menu variety, consistency of food let's say those are the two items that come out to be the areas that have the highest importance to members and we have the relatively lowest performance. So, rather, these are the areas we need to focus on to improve our performance. What we will recommend, then, is let's go back into the database of those who responded and let's identify individuals who may rate it, maybe rated those two areas below, and let's invite them into a roundtable discussion and let's really understand why they're rating those areas the way they're rating. And it's a way to keep surveys a bit shorter, because you can't possibly ask every question on a survey that a member may be feeling, and that's how you get to those hour long surveys if you do it.

Speaker 1: 51:05

How was the asparagus?

Speaker 2: 51:06

last week Exactly, are you satisfied with the weight of the silverware? That kind of stuff, you know. But if you can identify the individuals that rated, let's say, menu variety and consistency of food, now you can invite them into a roundtable discussion at the club where they can elaborate on their response and brainstorm with the club about ways to improve. You know what you might hear and we've done things and we've facilitated things like this and all of a sudden what you might hear is we would like to see more healthy options on the menu at the club, and that's especially a trend. You hear a lot of today, healthier options. Why don't we have theme nights at the club, you know? Or maybe there's an Italian night, or maybe there's a Greek night or things like that. As far as variety comes to the club, you've got to remember when we all go to our favorite restaurant in town. You generally go to that restaurant because there's a favorite dish you want to eat, right, that's where you go to that restaurant, but when? you go to a club three or four nights a week. You want the exact opposite. You want some variety now. So clubs face a real challenge. And that it's not about your favorite dish, it's about variety. And what does variety mean? So those type of follow up mechanisms become, you know, are important in the survey process to get to really drill down what's going on from the positive side. You know those members who are your ambassadors. That enables you to identify your ambassadors, your raving fans, and maybe those are individuals who you want to be part. If you've got an ambassador program at the club for mentoring new members, who better than this pool of individuals? And if you can profile those individuals and then look at the profile of new members, now you can start making some connections in that onboarding process that previously maybe only happened by circumstance at the club, where now you can start putting like individuals together at the club. So you can use the information for a lot more than just traditional market research information.

Speaker 1: 53:24

I like that. I like that. Well, sir, it has been a fantastic conversation we're coming up on, coming up on an hour. I think that's plenty of time. But, speaking of, I want to thank you for your time and shedding some light and knowledge on the industry and everything you have to share. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 53:42

Okay, thank you, I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1: 53:44

Hope you all enjoyed this episode of Board Chats here on Private Club Radio. Once again, thanks to our friends, concert golf partners. If you, or a club you know, is looking for some recapitalization and it's not always about recapitalization If you're also looking for, maybe an option to not be member owned anymore, you want to go private and you want to have that really solid organization that understands what a club is about and someone who will keep the club's culture, traditions and keeping it moving forward. So all you have to worry about is enjoying your club. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure you share it with somebody who you think might also enjoy it. A like, share, subscribe. Any help goes a long way. Until next time.