Feb. 14, 2024
326: Board Chats - Crafting The Perfect Survey w/ Gary Eversole
In this episode of Board Chats, brought to us by our friends Concert Golf Partners.
Join us as we talk with Gary Eversole, a pro in club management with 30 years of experience, about making your club the best place for members. Gary shares how important it is to listen to what members say through surveys, especially when clubs are trying to keep up with changes in what people want and need.
Learn about the big role member feedback plays in making a club successful. Gary tells us with real stories about how paying attention to members' opinions can open new doors for your club. We also discuss how good and bad experiences affect the club's community and why fixing problems fast matters.
We also dive into how social media is changing the way clubs interact with members, especially the younger crowd who want to see more openness and online activity.
Lastly, we get into the best ways to ask members for their thoughts without taking too much of their time. Gary gives tips on making surveys that are short but still give you the info you need, and how to use technology to understand what members really mean in their feedback.
Tune in to learn how to make your club even better by really listening to your members.
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00:00 - Member Experience, Innovation, and Tradition
17:04 - Member Data in Private Clubs
23:54 - Social Media's Importance for Private Clubs
30:23 - Club Management Strategies and Survey Frequency
40:07 - Club Surveys
WEBVTT
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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.
00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:28.173
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.
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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.
00:00:50.494 --> 00:00:53.746
Once again, head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom.
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Set up a phone call with Peter Nanula and guess what?
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I know you're going to love it because Peter's a great guy.
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You're going to have a great phone call, a great chat, regardless.
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And speaking of chats, on this episode I get to chat with Gary Eversole, who's the vice president of Club Insights Now.
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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.
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And obviously we all know how important member experience is in the club world.
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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.
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You know you can just do a survey and it's just hey, are you happy, yes or no?
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What do you think of this?
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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.
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And we go through the whole gambit of member surveying.
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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.
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It's hey, how do you take technology and tradition?
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How do you take all these different aspects and balance them together so well?
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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.
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I can keep talking about it, but why don't we let Gary tell you about it.
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So, everyone, let's welcome Gary Eversole from Club Insights to this episode of Board Chats here on Private Club Radio.
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Thanks to our friends Concert Golf Partners.
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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.
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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?
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Who's Gary Eversole?
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Well, gary Eversole is.
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I have spent, I guess, nearly 40 years in survey research working for a large organization.
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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.
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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.
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So when you say surveys and experience, what does that mean?
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Or what did that mean for the Ritz Carlton's and those bigger companies Like, what sort of projects were you working on?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Highly satisfied customers obviously return at a greater pace than individuals are less satisfied.
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So those are the basic principles that people were trying to do at that point in time.
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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.
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Can you go into detail about that?
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I was trying to think what we were talking about at that point in time.
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Certainly the member experience.
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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.
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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.
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Clubs are now experiencing, you know, full.
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Many clubs have reached their charter, they're full.
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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.
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There's a lot of pressures on clubs today that may not have been there three or four years ago.
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So maintaining and continuously improving that member experience is paramount in today's world.
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So the show that we're recording for here this is for board chats thanks to our friends concert golf partners.
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You know concert golf partners you have to.
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Not you, I'm talking to the listeners at this point.
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If you didn't know, we were going to have some problems, but you know.
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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.
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How can you tastefully blend together board perspective while listening to members and their experience, because sometimes I think there's like a mismatch.
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It's hard sometimes to get that alignment.
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You have such research and time and a wealth of knowledge.
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What are some ways that they can be blended together a little bit better?
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Sure, I mean, just like you know.
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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.
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Much the same is true for private club boards.
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If you think what a private club board is doing is they're doing much the same kind of thing.
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And so listening to members and understanding members can help guide and shape a how a board needs to prioritize things.
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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.
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Additionally, let's say the board needs to make some decisions on, maybe, a particular project by understanding where member sentiment is.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Are there certain trends, either upward, downward, good, bad, that you see happening?
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Oh, you know, I think one of the trend.
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We've seen a bunch of trends here.
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Certainly, as I mentioned a second ago, the COVID era has changed a lot within the private club industry.
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There are a lot of younger folks have joined private clubs.
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Their expectations are different than maybe members who have been a club for many, many years.
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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.
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You know they would just prefer things to go back to the way they were pre-COVID.
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Those two can represent a clash if not properly understood.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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How do you properly get that information?
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How do you get that from the members?
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Is it surveys?
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So what steps do you take?
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Because to me, the futures of clubs and just the world in general is going a mile a minute between technology, ai.
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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?
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Yeah, I mean.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So, in other words, I am member, have an issue and it might have been.
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I went to dinner last night at the club.
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Maybe my steak was tough, maybe the service was poor, maybe I waited 45 minutes for my meal.
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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.
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I think those are the kind of things that are going to be the future within the private club space.
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Yeah, word spreads very quick these days, the great mind is amazing.
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It's so fast, especially if you use your thumbs.
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Now it's not just picking up the phone, it's now your thumbs that do the talking in a lot of cases.
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Do you know what happened the other night too?
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You know so-and-so at the club.
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Well, that can be.
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Just.
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As a negative story treads quickly I've come to learn over the course of my career a positive story also moves quickly.
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So let's say you did have a bad experience at the club.
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If the follow-up to that was done in a timely and appropriate manner, that can spread equally as quickly.
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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.
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Everything explained the situation.
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I explained the situation to them.
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They listened to me.
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The next time I'm in I'm going to get a free glass of wine, but you know my problem.
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Those results, that's, in a very powerful, powerful Message that can go into the great mind in a positive sense.
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Yeah, yeah, and sometimes not even some it's, sometimes it's it's as it's happening, like the immediacy.
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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?
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Are there any other challenges?
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You kind of see clubs facing and collecting and using member data and intelligence and you know what?
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How do you overcome some of those?
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Yeah, I mean, I mean some of it.
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I mean challenges can.
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They can be broad.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Would it be safe to say that?
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You know we can call these Like member intelligence strategies.
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Is that like a proper word there Okay.
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How?
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How can clubs measure?
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So you, you, you, you get the information, you, you get the data.
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How do you measure the ROI like?
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How do you Measure track?
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How do you know if it's working, if it's not?
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You've been doing this for for for so long, so you know how do you know if it's working?
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How do you get that ROI and how do you measure it?
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I Think the ROI is just the continue continues, the improving member experience.
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So you know, we recommend to our clubs they should be listening on an ongoing basis.
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Some clubs do that annually, some clubs do that every three to five years.
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I think in today's world that's too long or too far in between.
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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.
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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.
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That's an incredibly powerful elixir.
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And then you rinse and repeat that process again and again and again.
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You get everyone involved in the improvement process.
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So it's not just, you know, either a management driven or a board driven, let's say, initiative.
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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.
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That's a very, very powerful equation.
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Have you, can you do, or maybe you can remember, I'm not sure.
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I'm just trying to think now, like, have you ever?
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Do you remember?
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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.
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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?
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Remember any stories or anything like that?
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That might be.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I mean matter of fact, we just had one, not that too long ago, which was and this isn't.
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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.
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And we need to continue doing what we're doing and really focus on maintaining and improving our dreams.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I Think I already know where this question is gonna go, but just always fascinating.
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What is the role of social?
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How has the role of so has social media played in, you know, intelligence gathering and member engagement and feedback?
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You know I it's interesting because Social media has played such a prominent role in the, in the, in the public sector.
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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.
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Private clubs I.
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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.
00:24:06.500 --> 00:24:22.977
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.
00:24:22.977 --> 00:24:29.782
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.
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Yeah, it just.
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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.
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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.
00:24:58.896 --> 00:25:02.869
And if you want to take it even further, you can use Instagram, facebook.
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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.
00:25:14.790 --> 00:25:33.077
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.
00:25:33.077 --> 00:25:39.289
Yeah, oh, man, at least, at least for a spawned, it makes you look so much worse.
00:25:39.289 --> 00:25:44.988
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.
00:25:45.028 --> 00:25:45.269
It isn't.
00:25:45.269 --> 00:25:55.473
I mean you know customer reviews have become, if you really think about the history of the experience movement.
00:25:55.473 --> 00:26:08.849
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.
00:26:08.849 --> 00:26:16.585
But that has given way to a lot of the survey feedback being populated onto the social media sites.
00:26:16.585 --> 00:26:30.861
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.
00:26:30.901 --> 00:26:37.134
Facebook or wherever, and that's certainly the trend within the public sector.
00:26:37.134 --> 00:26:45.124
That really has yet to kind of hit the private club sector, but you would think it's coming very, very soon.
00:26:46.531 --> 00:26:47.693
With social media.
00:26:47.693 --> 00:26:49.898
You know social media technology.
00:26:49.898 --> 00:26:56.989
We're now 2024, how can, how can, clubs better balance?
00:26:56.989 --> 00:27:02.999
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.
00:27:02.999 --> 00:27:08.349
Have you found or seen or heard anything of kind of meshing those two together?
00:27:08.349 --> 00:27:20.761
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?
00:27:21.809 --> 00:27:24.478
You know, I think clubs are very internally.
00:27:24.478 --> 00:27:31.462
It's a great question and I don't know if I've seen any application.
00:27:31.462 --> 00:27:45.124
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?
00:27:45.124 --> 00:27:47.840
I think that's a good question.
00:27:47.840 --> 00:27:54.069
I haven't seen any real innovations on that front outside of what's available out there in the public space.
00:27:54.069 --> 00:27:57.500
But clubs tend to be very internally focused.
00:27:57.500 --> 00:28:01.217
You know what's for dinner that night?
00:28:01.217 --> 00:28:04.304
Very, you know it's the urgent versus the important.
00:28:04.304 --> 00:28:19.730
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.
00:28:19.730 --> 00:28:27.428
You know there's certainly there's some clubs that think about that, but I wouldn't say that's a widespread.
00:28:27.428 --> 00:28:28.769
That's widespread at this point in time.
00:28:31.056 --> 00:28:34.865
Have you found it's going back a little bit.
00:28:34.865 --> 00:28:35.548
My ADD brains go going wild.
00:28:35.548 --> 00:28:36.150
That's right.
00:28:36.150 --> 00:28:43.348
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.
00:28:43.348 --> 00:29:01.280
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?
00:29:01.280 --> 00:29:03.321
You know increases in responses.
00:29:03.321 --> 00:29:08.359
Are there any clubs that you've worked with that do anything that you've done that you've done?
00:29:08.359 --> 00:29:11.118
You know increases in responses?
00:29:11.118 --> 00:29:17.960
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?
00:29:17.980 --> 00:29:19.282
that might have a little bit more of an issue.
00:29:19.990 --> 00:29:22.875
Yeah, we tend to recommend with our clients.
00:29:22.875 --> 00:29:30.630
We do tend to recommend a process that they go through, depending upon the type of research application.
00:29:30.630 --> 00:29:55.289
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.
00:29:55.289 --> 00:30:07.647
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.
00:30:07.647 --> 00:30:22.109
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.
00:30:24.474 --> 00:30:29.567
There are clubs out there that will also use incentives.
00:30:29.567 --> 00:30:36.650
The one that we generally recommend to boost response rates are some kind of raffle for drawing.
00:30:36.650 --> 00:30:47.329
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.
00:30:47.329 --> 00:30:54.650
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.
00:30:54.650 --> 00:30:58.308
We do work in both in boosting response rates.
00:30:58.410 --> 00:31:11.970
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.
00:31:11.970 --> 00:31:18.730
That's an important part of your life, so therefore response rates tend to be pretty high.
00:31:18.730 --> 00:31:22.376
So you know you're not going to be able to see what your brand is or your favorite laundry detergent.
00:31:22.376 --> 00:31:32.978
This is something that's near and dear to your heart, and so you tend that that in itself drives a high response rate.
00:31:32.978 --> 00:31:53.184
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.
00:31:53.184 --> 00:32:06.438
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.
00:32:08.986 --> 00:32:09.827
Best practices.
00:32:09.827 --> 00:32:11.473
How often should it be done?
00:32:12.885 --> 00:32:16.771
I'm back, so roaring debate right now, I think in the industry.
00:32:16.771 --> 00:32:21.960
You know it's funny because some clubs have never surveyed their members.
00:32:21.960 --> 00:32:27.711
Other clubs that I'll talk with will say yeah, other clubs.
00:32:27.731 --> 00:32:28.333
I'll talk with.
00:32:28.393 --> 00:32:30.355
Well, we did a survey three or four years ago.
00:32:30.355 --> 00:32:31.778
Five years ago we did a survey.
00:32:31.778 --> 00:32:34.221
Yeah, I think it's about time we should do another one.
00:32:34.221 --> 00:32:40.758
Other clubs have adopted an annual type survey process.
00:32:40.758 --> 00:32:51.988
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.
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