While mystery shopper services are common in the hotel, restaurant and retail industries, it is typically not common practice at golf venues.
Yet the advantages are clear: detailed feedback, insights and professional analysis of the customer experience should be central to informing strategic decisions on management and operations.
It’s an important service we offer all of our venues in the European Tour Properties network. Every venue receives four mystery shopper visits each year. We use the information to analyse venue performance and advise how they can improve the customer experience, refine the customer journey and, in many cases, increase revenues.
It’s also an important way of evaluating and benchmarking performance against other venues within the European Tour Properties network as a whole, and within a more specific competitor set of directly comparable venues. Looking at golf venues in general, some of the opportunities for improvement that arise from mystery shopper feedback include:
Reservation process
For many customers, the first contact with a venue will come when they book their round or stay. What’s important is to then communicate with the customer, confirm the booking, provide directions for their arrival and, if appropriate, offer additional products or services. It gives the customer assurance and a sense they are being looked after. The most efficient way of doing this is via an auto-confirmation. While this requires staff discipline and appropriate systems, it reduces the risk of the customer not receiving a confirmation, which can be the case if a busy reception desk is reliant on sending emails manually. It also ensures the communication is consistent and includes additional sales opportunities.
Sales opportunities
It’s easy to miss sales opportunities and the incremental revenue this can generate. What mystery shopper reports often highlight are opportunities to upsell products and services, not only when a booking is being taken, but when the customer arrives in the pro shop or when they are in the bar or restaurant and within every aspect of their journey through the property. Once a venue views the entire experience from the customer perspective, they can see how easy it is to put processes in place that ensures customers are offered added extras such as a golf cart for their round or a coffee and a dessert after lunch.
Golf course quality
One of European Tour Properties’ brand promises is that our venues’ courses come with a ‘a stamp of tournament quality’. While we advise and work with our venues to achieve this, including providing professional agronomic advice, ultimately the customer will judge what they think of a golf course. Feedback on the course from the mystery shopper is therefore very insightful, especially as the venue receives photographs of what the reviewer has seen. The venue is then aware precisely what the paying customer sees, what has driven them to form their opinion and what can be done to improve their experience. Seeing and understanding the experience from the customer’s perspective – and then making operational decisions based on this – is vitally important. In a world where consumers make instant choices based on Trip Advisor, Google reviews and other rating platforms, it puts venues with outstanding customer service that is constantly monitored and measured at a distinct competitive advantage.
