The U.K. and indeed the world, has a huge opportunity to get more people, more active. Of course, this is important for the growth of the sport and fitness industry. But it also creates individual health benefits and wider social and economic benefits.

Transforming the experiences of real people

We believe that to unlock this growth potential something needs to change. Specifically, the experience that real people get from sport and physical activity. This change is not limited to the sports and fitness industry. Customer experience is fundamental to the success of every business in every industry.

Companies like Amazon, Twitter and Virgin are reshaping how customers do things. In the process, they are changing consumer expectations about all products and services. To keep up, sports and fitness organisations need to keep their fingers on the pulse. Annual surveys and post-event evaluations are no longer enough. They need to put the voice of their customers at the heart of their decision-making.

Barriers to great customer experience

I founded MyCustomerLens to support this transformation. I have spent the past 20 years working with a wide range of clients. Regardless of the country or industry, I’ve seen several common challenges preventing growth:

1.The real voice of the customer is getting lost.

Customer‚Äôs are sharing more feedback than ever, but not directly with organizations. Instead it’s lost in a flood of comments on social media, online reviews and customer emails.

2.Analysing this text feedback is hard.

It takes humans a lot of time to review, filter and tag customer comments. This work is time consuming and boring, which makes text analysis slow and expensive.

3.’Data’ is being confused with ‘insight’.

It’s easy to summarise data into charts and tables, but this doesn’t usually provide a clear ‘so what’. Raw data, even when presented in a chart, is only an input. To make data ‘insightful’, it needs interpretation and context.

4.Inconsistent views of the customer.

Insight, data and research are often commissioned for different purposes, by different people. So the results are only relevant to a specific programme, question or campaign. This leaves everyone with a different perspective on customer needs and expectations. When this happens, delivery of a consistent customer experience becomes very hard.

Removing the guess work

To get more people more active, we need to take the guesswork out of growing participation. We need to design and deliver consistent customer experiences, based on a rich and consistent picture of customer needs.

MyCustomerLens combines a wealth of sport industry experience and analytical expertise. Using the latest machine learning tools, we capture and analyse multiple sources of customer feedback. Our browser-based software uses interactive dashboards to present simple actionable insights. By getting everyone on the same page, our clients make faster, more informed decisions.

If you would like to see MyCustomerLens in action, please get in touch

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