A Comparison Table of the 4 Techniques for Collecting Member Feedback

Written by Sophie Adams

“There is only one boss – the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores Inc (Entrepreneur.com)

With more and more competition for your members’ hard earned free time and money, it’s even more critical now than ever before to ensure they are happy and you are providing them with the experience they truly want from their membership with your club. The best way to do this? Simple. Engage with them > Ask for their feedback > Listen > Then act and respond.

Once you start the conversation and are receiving a steady stream of actionable member feedback – good, bad or ugly – you will be able to truly understand what your members want; what you can do to meet their needs; what you are already doing that they love; what you need to do to keep them engaged and loyal; and how you can turn them into your biggest and best raving fans.

Your first step?

Decide your strategy – How are you going to collect member feedback for your club?

You have 4 options:

Option	Pros	Cons
In Person	Very personal Can help to strengthen relationships with individuals	Very time consuming and resource heavy Staff may gravitate to members who they already know – this (along with the small sample size which comes with this form of feedback) may skew results Will members be honest with your team to their face? Especially if they have an issue to raise about them or one of their colleagues? What do your staff do with the feedback once they have it? How do they share it? How do they follow up with a member and how do you track their action?
Suggestion Box	Quick and easy to set up Cheap	Feedback has to be completed in-club so you are more likely to get a biased sample of regular users. What about those members who aren’t regularly visiting? How will you discover why they aren’t in more often? What do you do with comment cards when they have been submitted? How do you track action/follow up? Will a comments box look to members like a bit of a ‘box ticking exercise’? Rather than showing them you genuinely care and want to constantly improve to meet their needs? Can’t guarantee members will leave contact details, so how will you follow up with them to show how you are addressing their comments?
Traditional One-Off Survey	In depth Can be completed in club or away from club Potentially large sample size	Will your members want to spend their valuable time answering 15-minute surveys about you? A yearly one-off survey send will not provide you with the constant stream of up-to-date feedback you require How do you use feedback to measure and benchmark your performance? With lots of answers to lots of different questions, how do you decide what to prioritise and act on?
Net Promoter Score® (NPS®)	Create club advocates who promote your facilities to their friends and family Specific focus on customer loyalty, which promotes a culture of customer service excellence Collect, interpret and act on feedback all from within one system Structure your team’s follow-up process One simple question – quick and easy for your members to answer Ability to be action based for greater levels of insight and accountability – reach out to members after a specific visit or interaction with a member of your team Steady stream of feedback Potentially large sample size Simple standardised scoring means club performance is clear and can be easily compared to other Net Promoter Score organisations	Requires an engaged, proactive team to maximise its potential

If you are serious about listening to your members, and using this insight as the valuable resource that it is, it is clear that the best way to gather member feedback is using the Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) system.