Recent global events have shown that analysis of the data can lead to some big assumptions about people and their behaviour that may not be correct. Data is not political or biassed, however, the lens through which we analyse data can be, and this can lead to an inferior customer experience.
Sport is one of those industries where management’s idea of who the customer is and who the actual customer is can be wildly different. Often that is because there is not one audience, but many, each looking for something different. Whether it be football or motorsport, there is a big difference between a fan, an anorak fan, someone looking for a day out with the kids or a VIP box ticket holder.
Motorsport can be quite glamorous, but there is a huge difference between the Monaco Grand Prix and a dirt track oval track outside Indianapolis. Even the same race weekend can have totally different audiences.
Be the Customers – all of them
The danger comes when your marketing team and senior leaders in the business believe that the customer is one thing and the reality being something completely different. You might be telling your sponsors that your audience wears an expensive watch, drinks coconut water and drives an Audi, when the reality is that the bulk of your audience drinks Coke, don’t wear watches and drive a Ford Focus.
Often, the best way to make sure that you are looking at the data through the right lens is to speak directly to customers. This helps if you are an offline business and you can walk around a racetrack or visit a stadium on game day.
A running theme of this blog will be to highlight situations where people have signed off an experience without experiencing it themselves. Not just the VIP experience, but the experience of the cheapest ticket holder or the average experience.
The whole journey needs to be experienced as a fan. From ticket buying to signage, to parking, to buying a hot-dog. Sometimes it might be the parts of the journey you can’t control that can be the difference between a great day out and a nightmare – like do the taxi drivers know where your event is taking place?
This doesn’t just go for sport. This goes for senior people who haven’t flown economy for a while, or haven’t stayed in the cheapest room of a hotel, or haven’t walked into a store and seen what the customers look at versus what they are actually buying.
Only by being the customer can you truly sign off on a journey.
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