Delivering the perfect customer experience

PEOPLE AND SKILLS: Brand ambassadors

The world’s first Open Championship was held at Prestwick in 1860 and since then Scotland has become internationally renowned both for its players and numerous golf courses to choose from, which include the Old Course St Andrews, Carnoustie, Gleneagles and Royal Troon. Golf tourism certainly comes to the fore in Scotland and closer to home in Tay territory.

It is a major contributor to Scotland’s economy and estimated to be a £1 billion industry according to KPMG. Attracting international and UK-based golfers to stay and play in Scotland is a key strand in Scotland’s tourism strategy.

As Scotland is recognised as a worldclass destination for golf and a world leader in the golf business overall, what does this mean to employers in the golf sector when it comes to their staff?

As in every other area of tourism, this sector is also customer-centric in nature, with a culture designed to create great experiences for customers that they enjoy - every time.

Having a team of people who understand this and allowing them to be your business’s biggest cheerleaders is vital to that experience. Here’s how:

Brand ambassadors – employees are your biggest asset and best brand ambassadors. Happy staff = happy customers. Your corporate brand is all about the promise you make to your customers. Your employees are brand ambassadors and therefore the promise keepers. Customers are also strong brand ambassadors if cared for properly as they will tell others of their experience.

Provide the right resources ensure employees have the resources they need to understand how they should talk to, interact with, and solve problems to enable them to deliver excellent customer service throughout the entire customer journey and beyond. Train and motivate employees to maintain your brand promise as this is a key lever to your customer value propositioning. Have a ‘people plan’ or HR strategy that puts employees at the heart of your business with overall development and personal development plans in place which are linked to customer satisfaction levels.

Measuring success - there is a well-known saying in business “what gets measured, gets done”, so ensure to include KPIs in your strategy then everyone in the business will know this is important with business plans and action plans created and delivered to achieve those KPIs.

Build loyalty – make it easy for customers to maintain contact with dedicated staff who really care. Identify and anticipate customers’ needs ensuring their journey is friendly and personal with a truly welcoming feel. Tailor communications and offers based on customer needs as there is evidence suggesting blanket emails newsletters-spam etc can have the opposite effect to loyalty.

Maintaining contact with customers – this can be done via email updates, newsletters, social media and customer care calls. Focus on getting closer to your customers and understanding them through customer insight and research. Sharing information such as customer profiles, customer comments etc. with your staff will often result in wonderful ideas and suggestions on how to ‘delight’ their customers. Of course, because they have insight, their ideas are usually great.

Make sure it is your company that the customer remembers and not your competitor by making their golfing experiences as pleasurable and delightful as possible.

Remember people like other people, so talk regularly, building and maintaining relationships.

Liz Jackson is the managing director of complete recruitment and HR solutions company, Fairways. She is also the former chair of CIPD Scotland, which represents over 10,000 HR professionals nationally.

Happy staff = happy customer

Managing director, Fairways