Our communications focus this month is ‘We’re Listening’. At Belgravia Leisure, we strive to deliver the best possible guest experience, and this can only be achieved by listening to customer feedback and acting on the results – both positive and negative.

In the August edition of B-Informed, we looked at the importance of the AskNicely Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in measuring customer sentiment. The AskNicely Platform is a customer experience platform that we use to gather, understand, and act on customer feedback. Since the inception of NPS in 2017 to August 2020, a total of 350,000 customers were surveyed, with Belgravia receiving a total NPS of 42.2.

Since August, our Guest Experience team have worked closely with the team at AskNicely to incorporate questions about the COVID-19 climate and how Belgravia has responded the crisis. Since the survey was relaunched in August, an additional 3,424 customers have responded to the survey and given Belgravia Leisure venues an NPS of 53.9, an increase of nearly 10 points from the last survey period.

Group Guest Experience Manager Tim Hutchison is pleased with the improved results but reiterates that venue managers must not take their foot off the pedal in reviewing and responding to customer feedback. “Centre Managers must respond to all customer feedback every day through the AskNicely platform. Managers should be looking for trends and common themes that can be converted into actionable outcomes to make operational change,” he said.

“Our previous NPS benchmark was over 40, and now we are striving to consistently exceed over 50 for our NPS,” said Tim.

In response to the question “How satisfied are you with the actions we have taken in response to COVID-19?”, our venues received a customer satisfaction rating of 4.4 out of 5 (Very satisfied) from 3,434 customer surveyed.

Some examples of feedback received include:

• Everyone is encouraged to practice social distancing. All equipment we’re using is wiped down with sanitizer. Dave always wipes everything down after we’ve finished exercise classes as well. 

• We had a good explanation about the pool rules and there was always a staff on hand to monitor social distance has been maintained. 

• There should be disposable wipes at every machine in the gym  

With our venues on the right path to producing positive results, Tim is looking forward to further enhancing the guest experience through the Mystery Shopper Program.

The Mystery Shopper Program allows venue managers to closely monitor team members’ performance and the quality of service they provide to every guest. It teaches team members why it’s important to be mindful of every customer’s needs and ensures managers that every key interaction results in a positive customer purchase experience.

“We’re excited to have kicked off our mystery shopper program for leisure venues!” said Tim. “The Guest Experience Team are working towards launching a mystery shopper program for the PRO and Wellness teams in 2021, so watch this space!”

Through Belgravia Leisure’s Guest Experience Information station, the Guest Experience team have created a suite of training resources (First Contact) which are designed to mirror the mystery shopper criteria. The resources include:

• Training presentations 
• Scripting 
• Questionnaire examples 
• Cheat sheets  

The Guest Experience team encourages all team members to review the training resources because you never know, a mystery shopper could walk through the doors of your venue any day!