When trying to create the ideal private club experience for members, what’s more important than personalized service?
Simply stated, “personalized service” has become imperative when it comes to delivering a private club experience. But, what is “personalized service” and how do you achieve this lofty goal?
Personalized service is simply this: paying attention to and acting on a member’s wants, needs and desires. Providing personal recognition and being attentive to a member’s favorite food, beverage, merchandise, or interests can make that member feel like royalty.
Unfortunately, in today’s highly competitive leisure and recreational environment, many businesses attempt to treat people like “members.” Through the use of technology and clubby monikers, restaurants, golf courses, hotels and others try to convince people they are receiving a private club experience. However, a true private club experience is generated from the special relationships between members and the club staff. The genuine care and comfort of a member, their family, and guests is what makes a private club experience exceptional.
What better service satisfaction is there than fulfilling a member’s personal interest?
Planning for Personalized Service
If member satisfaction is your club’s ultimate operational goal, then the club’s mission and vision statements must be aligned with this goal. Personalized service cannot be just another program—it must be a driving force that encompasses all aspects of your club’s operational fiber.
A club’s personalized service strategy must be well-defined and action-oriented. In other words, your staff must be able to understand and execute the strategy to differentiate your club from your competitors in the eyes of your members. For example, every member and guest should leave the club with the certainty that they belong to a club that cares about their satisfaction. It is the job of every staff member to provide outstanding, unparalleled personalized service, both to members and each other. The fundamental goal should be to consistently and reliably deliver a personalized experience that motivates members to enthusiastically return to their club with friends, family, and business guests.
For personalized service to become a true strategic objective, three principles are involved. The first is that personalized service must be a leading indicator of outstanding performance, helping to drive club improvements.
The second principle is that your club’s personalized service must provide the club with a competitive advantage. Traditionally, quality service provided in a home-away-from-home atmosphere has been a hallmark of private club culture. However, the best clubs go beyond that and emphasize a genuine sense of belonging between members and staff. They build long-lasting relationships that enrich each other’s lives.
Finally, personalized service must be leader-driven to be effective. The club manager and board of directors must have a passion for service and genuine interest in the well-being and care of the club’s members.
Management Matters
Although it is important for each and every staff member to demonstrate personalized member service, the key component in delivering personalized service to your membership is having leadership that is committed to truly knowing members’ interests and delivering on the promise of personalized service.
Managers who radiate a sense of mission and lead by example do more to establish and perpetuate a culture of personalized service than any other single factor. Staff members will ultimately reflect whatever spirit or ethic is generated by their leaders. The club will take on the personality and culture inspired by the leaders.
Managers who foster cooperation and a desire to serve by keeping lines of communication open, who keep staff informed about positive as well as negative results, and who stick up for employees and defend their interests in the face of competing demands for club resources, generate dedication and optimism and inspire maximum effort.
Also, confident, self-assured managers and volunteer leaders are not intimidated by others’ ideas about innovation. In any service organization, channels of communication must be kept open for the upward percolation of ideas and to engender trust and respect.
Such participatory management is often talked about but is more often the exception, not the rule. Service is an art form, and the proper temperament for service industry managers is collegial. Management must have the proper attitude and a servant’s heart with a focus on achieving service outcomes from the member’s point of view.
All Hands on Deck
Although leadership is important, personalized service and the spirit of cooperation it requires cannot be dictated or ordained. It can only arise naturally from the willing participation and genuinely caring responsiveness of contented employees.
Personalized service requires passion and commitment on the part of leaders who possess a clear vision of the common goal and who are strong enough within themselves and confident enough of the abilities of those they lead. If you are not serving a member directly, you should be serving someone who is. Supervisors should be ready to pitch in to get the job done.
True leaders empower their workers by keeping them well-informed, giving them room to try reasonable innovations, and carefully listening to their suggestions and complaints. This does not mean accepting every employee suggestion or agreeing with every complaint. It does, however, mean responding in a way that resolves the issue and removes it as a source of potential disruption.
Remember that personalized service will not survive as just one priority among many. It must be the end-all and be-all of the club’s efforts. And while a good reputation, member satisfaction and success will flow from personalized service, it must be the motivating force of your club.
Keep in mind that order and unity of purpose are vital, but the club’s structure and vision are not the sole invention of one person. Total personalized management refocuses the role of leaders to emphasize those aspects that contribute to and facilitate the task at hand. It de-emphasizes the self-important and sometimes self-serving disposition of some leaders who gratify their own egos at the expense of efficiency and worker morale.
A refusal to acknowledge errors and to correct them, an inability to communicate empathy and understanding, a lack of emotional control under stress, hoarding information rather than disseminating it—these are impulses that defeat the best intentions and the best efforts at realizing a culture of personalized service.
Employee Recognition
If employees feel supported and inspired by their managers and board members, find their work to be meaningful, have realistic codified performance standards, and can see a genuine commitment to the club’s overall personalized service mission, then most will adapt to the culture and be motivated to deliver an exceptional private club experience.
In such an environment, the employees’ relationships with members reinforce the value of their work. If performance standards are established properly, staff members will experience the natural consequences of their own performance, ranging from pay raises and bonuses, to career fulfillment.
Just as clubs are innovative and imaginative purveyors of personalized recreation, the employee reward and incentive programs need to be equally creative. In addition to classic employee-of-the-month programs, other examples include:
- A personal note from the club manager or board member to employees who receive favorable comments from members.
- A peer-based incentive program in which staff members nominate co-workers based on outstanding performance. Winners receive pins, logo shirts, dinner for two or other similar rewards.
- A paid holiday for employees who demonstrate outstanding service within a period of time.
- Tuition reimbursement programs to encourage employees to continue educational development programs at their own pace.
Service Counts
The idea of personalized service is rooted deeply in the culture of private clubs. Remember: Exceptional personalized service is what separates a club from your day-to-day commercial establishments and provides the private club industry with its strongest competitive advantage.
Doug Howe is Executive Vice President, ClubCorp