Thanks to digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as mobile apps on smartphones and tablets around the world, consumers can now share their experiences — good or bad — with the masses, resulting in either increased brand loyalty and advocacy or lost customers. Using data to shape those experiences leads organizations in the right direction.
According to Alicia Rankin, head of research and fan insights for the National Football League (NFL), it has long been imperative for the NFL to make sure that the in-stadium experience is exceptional. And in 2007, it became a corporate initiative to focus on in-stadium engagement to ensure that it is not just as good but even better than watching an NFL game on TV. Since that time, the NFL started a Gameday Experience/Voice of the Fan research platform that is driven from Rankin’s department and executed across all 32 NFL clubs. The online survey with ticket members evaluates the entire driveway-to-driveway game-day experience.
“Not dissimilar to most businesses, the NFL has a core group of fans that drive a large part of our business. That group starts with our ticket members, who spend more than three times as much time with the NFL in a given week as the average fan,” Rankin says. “And with fan insights revealing that avid fans generally bring along casual fans with them, it is critical to make sure that their game-day experience is great every time. Regardless of whether your team is winning or losing, you want fans to feel compelled to be there so that not only do they keep coming back but they act as advocates for others to attend in the hopes they become interested in getting their own season ticket package, thus keeping a strong pipeline of fans and revenue.”
Rankin will speak about how to effectively track and leverage the customer experience at the marcus evans Customer Experience 2013 Conference on August 13-14 in Chicago.
Research has played a critical role in how the NFL evaluates the customer experience, she says. “The advantage of any tracking study is the ability to benchmark and we do that on both a league level [all team data aggregated] and club level,” Rankin says. The research allows the NFL to determine which areas may need to be more league-focused and driven vs. club-driven. An example of the former is the league instituting mandatory in-stadium replays of all big plays around the league. “Both quantitative and qualitative research with our ticket members have told us that fans are accustomed to seeing replays on TV and want to see as many as possible in the stadium as well,” Rankin says.
“Separately, through factor analyses, we can gauge which areas of the overall experience are most likely to impact ticket renewals. So for the clubs, the data generated has been extremely helpful to them in determining which areas of game-day operations and/or gameday entertainment to prioritize.”
Rankin says that the Customer Experience 2013 Conference and other gatherings offer organizations critical knowledge on how other companies and industries put their customers first and what research programs they utilize to measure success. “The passion, questions and opinions in talking with conference attendees about the NFL are endless – in a good way! Afterwards, I always feel like I just did a focus group with a hundred people, just without the M&Ms!”