Director of Member Experience

How has this idea enhanced your club's operation, etc.?

Member Experience refers to how a member perceives your club based on their exposure to it; how they see, use, interact, and feel at your club. Member Experience is a proactive and ongoing mission to anticipate a member’s future wants and needs to improve their experience at the club without prompt. This position has allowed us to really tap in to the member experience, gather feedback, proactively address it and also create extra special moments and memories for the members. Specifically, the Member Experience Mission at Baltimore Country Club is to ensure that each member feels our Simple Truth of “Great People Make Favorite Places” for every member, every time.

How was this idea implemented, and what have been the club members' reactions?

The Director of Member Experience is responsible for ensuring that all club departments meet or exceed the experience standards for membership by implementing Culture & Connection Training for new hire onboarding, the Member-able Moments Initiative, and directing the organization and analysis of a member feedback platform.

Staff culture and engagement are critical to the success of Member Experience. In collaboration with the HR department, new hires are onboarded with Culture & Connection training to ensure that the Club’s core values are instilled into each staff member from day one. The onboarding focuses on the Club’s culture, simple truth, and member experience mission, teaching new staff how to use the concepts in tandem to build member relationships and provide extraordinary experiences.

To provide more personalized experiences to our membership, the Director of Member Experience has created the Member-able Moments Initiative, a member data collection method focused on staff connection and qualitative data. All staff are encouraged to connect with members, being present, engaged, and most importantly, remembering and sharing member preferences, and tiny details learned during their interactions. The “Member-able Moments” data is collected via submission to the Director of Member Experience, who then organizes the data using Northstar Member Preferences, Qlik Sense, and Excel to later use for more personalized member experience opportunities. “When it comes to curating exceptional experiences, data is king,” says Abby Michael, Director of Member Experience. “The ability to have tangible data on member preferences and behaviors takes the guesswork out of member satisfaction by providing a roadmap to success.”

Lastly, the Director of Member Experience directs feedback opportunities for membership by creating, deploying, and analyzing surveys regarding member experience. Annually, one relational survey is sent to the membership to receive a pulse on the current state of Member Experience and is used to prioritize Member Experience improvement projects. Additionally, transactional surveys elicit feedback after specific interactions at the Club (dining, racquets, fitness, golf, and events) to find actionable insights for improvements in each department. The Director of Member Experience is responsible for the overall implementation of the feedback platform. Collectively, these responsibilities result in the implementation of a successful Member Experience program.