Integrating the Virtual Club Experience
Technology is everything that doesn’t work yet,” observed Danny Hillis who, as it turns out, is actually a big fan of technology. He’s a successful entrepreneur who pioneered the concept of parallel computers and part-time MIT professor whose wry definition of technology underscores an often-overlooked point: successful innovations become invisible.
They recede so far from our awareness that they no longer fit our commonplace conception of technology as new, imposing and complicated. The private club world knows this better than most. Although identified more as guardians of established traditions than early adopters of the latest new product, private clubs have now come to understand that technology is fundamentally a trade-off, both a blessing and a burden. Even that most modern of talismans, the cell phone, has won grudging admittance to the most exclusive of clubs.
Still, the visible wonkiness of embracing new tools that are not yet seamless remains off-brand for many clubs. Members want an experience at their club that is distant from the everyday demands on their lives, the thinking goes, and that is not to be found in augmenting that experience with technology. But now, everything has changed. In the last few months, as people have grappled with COVID-19, technology that both works and doesn’t has been pressed into everyday service, forever changing our lives and the club landscape. What are the costs? What are the benefits? What does this change portend for the private club?
THE VIRTUAL CLUBHOUSE
The Olympic Club—with its almost 11,000 members, three golf courses and two campuses located in the San Francisco Bay Area—stands out as a club that rose to the challenge of virtually bringing the club experience to its members.
Since the club’s closure in March, members at the Olympic Club—called “Olympians”—could go to their club’s website and tour a refreshed and revamped suite of virtual clubhouse offerings. Some of what the club offered in person was now conveniently accessible online: fitness classes (139 in the month of April), cooking classes and golf lessons. But where the club really excelled was in their innovative programming: virtual movie nights, trivia nights, club history lectures, a digital Easter egg hunt, and a Webinars by Olympians for Olympians series featuring such recent titles as “Working from Home Made Better: How to Organize Your Home Workspace” and “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System.”
What will be the lasting impact of this virtual club experiment? COO Tim Muessle, CCM, CCE, urges caution in predicting the future but does venture that certain club offerings might remain an ongoing virtual option for members. “When we’re able to reopen and do our classes in person again,” Muessle says, “we’ll probably still offer them on Zoom, because … why not? It adds value to the membership.”
The Pulse Survey (page 7) asked 448 club leaders what the likelihood is of virtual classes, events and service continuing to be offered in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, 58% of respondents replied, “Very Likely” or “Somewhat Likely.”
COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
Another question from that survey asked whether in the post-COVID-19 club landscape, club communications (board/ committee meetings, staff communications, member outreach, etc.) will increasingly move to online via platforms currently in heavy use like Zoom, Facetime and Skype. Sixty-six percent of respondents viewed this as likely to happen.
While “zoom-fatigue” can be a drawback, virtual meetings have many benefits. For starters, and as Muessle has observed, participation and efficiency are up. Meetings begin on time and end on time. Those who may have let others do the talking before have suddenly found their voice. Travel time and other inconveniences can exit the equation.
Indeed, the dynamics of the committee and board meetings have changed so totally in this virtual space that an entirely new host of candidates—who might have previously felt too inconvenienced or intimidated by the meeting environment—might reconsider their position on joining.
While in-person meetings will no doubt remain, it seems likely that this current trend gives way to a mixed new normal, with some opting for the virtual option, others not.
THE MOBILE TROJAN HORSE
As clubs labor over the protocols and policies for reopening, it’s clear that business as usual is still some ways away. In the meanwhile, for most clubs, very nearly every aspect of their member’s engagement with the physical space in the club will need to be controlled and scheduled.
This is no task for the Luddite. Technology will make or break any club’s controlled reopening and smartly leveraging this technology will put a club on the on-ramp to whatever future lies ahead.
For those who predicted the embrace of the club mobile app, vindication may finally be theirs.
THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT!
Increasingly, club apps are doing a lot of the heavy-lifting required to bring a suite of services and other possibilities within the tap of a member’s finger. While online reservation systems are nothing new, having an app that integrates with your club’s website makes controlling access decidedly simpler. And clubs are wise to do this. Sixty-six percent of clubs report using a club app since the coronavirus pandemic began with 39% indicating heavy or frequent use.
Adoption will not be overnight or without bumps in road. Even in the tech-hub of the world, San Francisco, the club app has, in the past, diffused throughout the membership at a measured pace. But not anymore. Downloads are rapidly rising at The Olympic Club. Want to look at an online menu for a to-go order? You can do that on a web browser, but it’s easier on the app. Want to close your check contactless? A browser would work, but the app’s easier. Reserve a lap for swimming or time in the weight room? Same thing.
OUTLOOK
For now, digitization is in, and analog is out. But for how long, really?
Almost everyone is on the verge of a great reset: work, school, social and recreation will, sooner or later, recommence. Will these digital work-arounds recede or will they assert themselves in ways that potentially accelerate our re-engagement with the world? Is our entry into the clubhouse or on to the course now accompanied and augmented by a subtle and always-on digital mirror? Perhaps. Everybody’s crystal ball is a bit blurred, but most seem to believe that the new normal will be different in important ways, including the thorough integration of digital and analog experiences.
At the club level, this digitization is not so much replacing the physical club experience as it is mirroring that experience. Club members are witnessing the convergence between the digital and analog and are rapidly and enthusiastically embracing the union.
Technology is a tool for making our lives easier and it will certainly do that by helping clubs expand their virtual suite of offerings; by saving a committee member an evening car trip; and by personalizing and, in a very beneficial way, distilling the member experience.
However, the burdens are not insignificant. As lives grow more networked and systems and data more integrated, vulnerability grows. Susceptibility to cyberattacks, data breaches and system failures increases.
It will be critical for the private club in the post-COVID-19 world to navigate these waters by having a vision for what they want to achieve with their IT infrastructure. A vision that prioritizes safety through the use of a strong firewall, strong anti-virus software, a backup strategy and a clear and secure password policy. On this foundation will need to be built a new wave of creativity and innovation that is alert to the many ways in which digital processes and flows of data can enhance the physical and social encounters that give clubs their distinctive appeal and character.
This new vision of club life will depend upon leadership and management that is both bold and far-sighted. The best club leaders understand the importance of vision, talent acquisition and insightful strategic planning. Now they will need something more in order to imagine and deliver the club of the future. Executive leaders may not be IT experts, but they will have a clear-eyed understanding of a new reality: that the high-touch experiences that club members expect and value will be increasingly delivered by high-tech tools that are intelligent, pervasive and, yes, largely invisible.