Golf course CRM in the era of empowered customers


By: March 4, 2013


In these days we are experiencing how employees and customers are embracing social technologies. They are harnessing social technologies to solve collaboration challenges. It should be the same in case of golf courses and private golf courses as well. We are facing a nice challange, namely how to stimulate community life in our golf course by embracing latest social technologies. So far we sent out emails to our members and to certain guests which is a good step, but does not enable us to generate conversations between our members and us or between golf club members.
What we can do?

We can create a fan page on LinkedIn or Facebook or on another golf social networking site. I think a bolder step from golf course perspective is to find an enterprise social networking platform solution like Yammer.
Why enterprise social networking platform is a bold step?

Because there is a great chance that such platform will have integration possibilities with Microsoft's corporate software, including Exchange, SharePoint, Lync or Office Communications Server etc. that you already have in your golf course. At least at Citibank Hungary it was a challenge how to integrate our Facebook page to our systems. From compliance point of view, it is also interesting to check governance and security features. You need to allow sharing and connections without jeopardizing your regulatory compliance or HR standards. This how I found Clubster.com a social networking platform for private golf clubs. As you can see its structure and features are similar to Yammer:
Clubster personal page
From advertiser aspect it can be also interesting since you can target very precisely affluent people who are open to premium or luxury products and services. According to my sources, Medina Golf & Country Club is already using Clubster.
Here is  a video that explains Clubster:
 
We should know that without utilizing all layers of the social needs hierarchy (see Malsow hierarchy of needs) our collaboration community will not be successful. We should not forget:
1. As an institution, you should respond fast to the escalating demands of empowered customers.
2. Employees can respond by harnessing the same technologies to solve your customer and business problems.
3. You can guide your employees’ technology innovation efforts if you think, work, and act differently to safely empower employees to serve empowered customers.