Are All Guests/Members/Customers the Same?

Taking an outside-in view.

Often, we assume we know what their guest/member want – but this isn’t always the case. Even when you try to be objective, the fact that you know our products and services so well, and understand your workplace’s jargon, means seeing things from your guest/member s’ perspective is actually quite difficult.

Guest/members aren’t all the same. Think about the many different segments of our members, our guests, and our customers. Identifying the different guest/member segments at our properties, and recognizing that each segment may have different CTQs, is essential.

Segmenting our guest/member helps us see your guest/members’ different requirements. By segmenting them, we can develop the right services for each group, and create specific measures that help products and services for each group, and our performance in meeting their differing requirements. To help you segment your guest/members, list some categories that describe both your current guest/member and the people or organizations that you consider to be potential guest/members. You might also look at past guest/member in this way, too.

Consider the following segmentation categories in relation to your guest/member s:

1. Corporate Guests
2. Wedding Guests
3. Members
4. Ladies
5. Men
6. Juniors
7. Seniors
8. Golfing
9. Social
10. Day Visitors
11. Social Travelers
12. Romance Travelers
13. Historical Travelers 

Prioritizing our guest/member/customers

Every guest/member is important, but some guest/member use our services more frequently or are more critical to our business than others. You may need to devote more time and resources to these particular guest/members/customers.

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto developed the idea of the 80:20 rule when he described how 80 percent of the wealth of his country was in the hands of 20 percent of the population. Our Properties have a ‘vital few guest/members/customers, perhaps 20 percent who provide you with 80 percent of the properties margin. These guest/members/customers are very important to the ongoing success of our business and understanding their requirements and their perceptions of our performance in some detail are crucial.

You could prioritize by guest/member segment, but we need to understand how best to prioritize our guest/member for our us. For many of our properties, the priority could be revenue, but more sensibly it should be profit. As our understanding of your guest/member increases, you’ll find it easier to determine our organization’s priorities.

Truly focusing on guest/member/customer as opposed to simply saying you are, requires real investment in understanding our customer/guest/member. Knowing who our customer/guest/member is, how they’re segmented and which ones are your priority is a vital prerequisite to your research and data gathering. Identifying the wrong customer/guest/member, or not being aware of the different segments, can mean you collect information on requirements or customer/guest/member that isn’t related to the process better yet the service we’re designing.

You may say…I know my members, my guests, my customers… however, let me ask you some questions to see if you truly know our customers.

1.      How many rounds does your membership play in a week?

2.      What is the average total lunch covers per round? What is the average number of lunch covers in a week? What is the average ticket price?

3.      What is the average number of dinner covers per day, meaning Mon, Tues, Wed, etc… what is the matrix of these covers? Where are they coming from, exactly?

4.      What is the average ticket price? How many bottles of wine do you sell per night?

5.      What is the top 10 items in order on your menu?

6.      What is the most profitable item on your menu?

7.      What is your merchandise dollar per round?

8.      How many times does your membership eat in the restaurant per month? Why do they not eat more?

All of this information is vital for us to learn, and improve our business. These metrics will help us better serve our customers and provide better value to them. 

Your guest/member may be both internal and external. Thinking in terms of processes helps you identify where we need to focus on and highlights who our internal guest/member are.

Remember Knowledge without Action is Useless… All of these Lean Management Messages are designed to help you progress and adopt Lean to better run your areas of responsibilities.

Best,

Sean Taylor

If you would like to find out more about what Up To Par Management can do for your club or property please call us at 540.464.4653 or email me directly at [email protected]