Latest Thinking

Three Member Experience Predictions for 2019

As we do every year, we took a moment to look at the bigger picture and allow it to influence not only how we design technology for our partners, but also how we’re delivering the experience we deliver to our own customers every day.

Three Member Experience Predictions for 2019 & How We’re Walking the Walk. Pacesetter is in the business of empowering the general managers of private clubs to continuously upgrade the member experiences they deliver. So it’s no exaggeration when we say we’re obsessed with all things member experience. As we help GM’s design, architect and deliver exceptional experiences, we are forced to understand what is next in customer expectations and how those expectations translate into technology.

As we do every year, we took a moment to look at the bigger picture and allow it to influence not only how we design technology for our partners, but also how we’re delivering the experience we deliver to our own customers every day. I’ve curated a few of the trends I believe will shape stand-out member experiences in 2019 and provided a peek into how we’re applying these predictions to the Pacesetter customer experience.

TREND 1: In 2019, Clubs realize that EVERY employee owns the member experience.

Think about well-known brands that already embody this belief: The Ritz-Carlton, Nordstrom and Trader Joe’s. When a customer walks through the door, every employee is empowered to make decisions and deliver delight. A friend had to return some produce to Trader Joe’s the other day and it took the employee zero seconds to not only fix the issue, but improve their experience. Not only did they walk out with fresh produce, the cost was already off the bill before they stood in line to check out. HOW WE’RE EMBRACING GROUP OWNERSHIP AT PACESETTER: Every member of our team is empowered to deliver the best possible experience to our clients. Every week we share our individual customer interactions with the rest of our team.  Why? Client Success may have learned a new way for clubs to communicate app benefits, or The Dev Team may have created a stunning home screen design. This kind of unstructured feedback supports our desire to be constant problem solvers and it’s also one of the ways we manifest our belief that clients are true partners, and nothing substitutes one on one interactions.

TREND 2: In 2019, Clubs realize that digital transformation isn’t a destination, but an endless journey.

Certainly not a new topic, digital transformation continually evolves as we watch business models and entire industries change right before our eyes. As we work to adapt mobile brand experiences, leverage the cloud, make creative use of big data and apply social technologies we realize that innovation isn’t slowing down and our own digital transformations won’t either - hello IoT, robotics, 3D printing and next generation security!  

HOW WE’RE EMBRACING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AT PACESETTER: We are constantly conceptualizing, testing and evolving new features that make better use of data, integrate with native/social technologies, and leverage new security. In fact - you can see how these innovative features work in our new digital feature library. We recently launched an upgraded website so that our customers could quickly and easily consume information about the new features our platform offers them.

TREND 3: In 2019, Clubs will continue embracing automation in order to free their teams to do more of the things that matter.

Robotic process automation, or RPA, helps all sorts of businesses automate mundane, repetitive tasks to increase efficiency and productivity. When private clubs automate things like member communication, getting your car from valet and even to go orders, they free up their team to deliver more of the high value, high touch interactions that make member experiences so unique.

HOW WE’RE EMBRACING AUTOMATION AT PACESETTER: We consistently release new features in our platform that all our customers can take advantage of. Before now, we were manually letting every customer know what those new features where. Enter the natural challenge of scheduling and phone calls and we’ve realized quickly there’s a simpler way to deliver these updates. We’re working on a series called Innovation Now. Every month, we’ll be automatically introducing new features our customers can access in a short 30 second video. (If you’d like to subscribe, you can do that here.)

My prediction is that for our private club customers, 2019 is the year of reinventing the member experience. We’re going to help them deliver their best member experiences yet by staying focused on their experience and making sure we continue raising our own bar too.