Month: July 2021

STATHAM, Ga. – North American customer service satisfaction and benchmarking firm 59club USA announced today they added VICI Properties and their four golf courses to the 59club USA client roster. 59club USA will use their industry-leading proprietary software and objective data analysis tools to provide mystery shopping services to help audit and improve the golf experience, event sales and group-outing sales at all four VICI owned golf courses.

“We’re excited to be assisting the high-end properties in the VICI portfolio with their customer service operations,” said Mike Kelly, managing partner of 59club USA. “We’re thrilled to get started and look forward to providing detailed feedback for each of their four unbelievable golf courses.”

The mystery shopping services provided by 59club USA will capture the golf experience from start to finish and provide industry-leading, unbiased feedback on hundreds of data points that fully encapsulates the customer experience at each club.

“We are excited to partner with 59club USA as our teams strive to offer the best customer service at each of our VICI Golf facilities,” said Jeff Krohn, VP of Golf Operations for VICI Properties. “Using 59club USA tools, our teams will have the best resources available to WOW our guests during each visit. The team at VICI Golf is very excited to get started.”

VICI Properties owns and operates four golf courses in the United States including Rio Secco in Las Vegas, Nevada, Grand Bear Golf Club in Biloxi, Mississippi, Chariot Run Golf Club in Laconia, Indiana and Cascata Golf Club – touted as the 8^th Wonder of the Golfing World – in Boulder City, Nevada.

59club is a service-based management tool and customer service provider which uses objective data points and images to measure, improve and then maintain standards of customer service, in turn increasing visitor and member retention. Results of on-site testing from 59club are a boost to customer satisfaction, revenues and profits for clubs who use their services such as customer satisfaction surveys, mystery shopping services and employee training – both virtual and on-site.

Already, 59club USA has established and developed relationships with more than 80 well-known golf clubs and resorts in North America including 14 TPC Network properties, Reynolds Lake Oconee, The Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda, Haig Point in South Carolina, Bobby Jones Links, and Landscapes Golf Management – two of the world’s largest golf management companies.

About 59Club USA

59Club USA is specifically designed to elevate sales and service standards. 59club USA provides mystery Shopper Audits, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, and Training Services, empowering venue managers to analyze their entire visitor and member experience, enabling them to set targets, monitor performance and ultimately make informed decisions to enhance their guest services. To learn more about 59club USA, visit www.59clubusa.com.

About VICI Properties Inc.

VICI Properties Inc. is an experiential real estate investment trust that owns one of the largest portfolios of market-leading gaming, hospitality and entertainment destinations, including the world-renowned Caesars Palace. VICI Properties’ national, geographically diverse portfolio consists of 28 gaming facilities comprising 47 million square feet and features approximately 17,800 hotel rooms and more than 200 restaurants, bars, nightclubs and sportsbooks. Its properties are leased to industry leading gaming and hospitality operators, including Caesars Entertainment, Inc., Century Casinos, Inc., Hard Rock International Inc., JACK Entertainment LLC and Penn National Gaming, Inc. VICI Properties also has an investment in the Chelsea Piers, New York facility and owns four championship golf courses and 34 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to the Las Vegas Strip. VICI Properties aims to deliver sustained income and value growth through its strategy of creating the highest quality and most productive experiential asset portfolio in American real estate investment management.

A unique question was posed of PGA TOUR star Marc Leishman during his 2018 BMW Championship appearance – do you know what you don’t know? The philosophical, almost Zen-like inquiry left the Aussie star perplexed and confused, but he eventually answered the riddle with charming befuddlement, stating with a chuckle “No. I don’t know what I don’t know.” Lucky him.

When it comes to their on-course game, Leishman and the rest of the PGA TOUR’s best might have the luxury of blocking out the riffraff, choosing instead to focus only on winning – the one component of their career that matters. But for the remaining 99.9 percent of golf industry professionals like course operators, hospitality managers, F&B personnel, outside service members and others who use the game of golf to make a living, knowing what you don’t know is the difference between providing a valuable golf experience or receiving an angry Yelp review. 

Golf course operators and managers cannot be everywhere at once to ensure every single element of the golf experience at their club matches the price point. But with many clubs operating at high price points, excellent customer service is not the exception. Excellence is expected, and the reason why high-profile daily fee clubs and private clubs alike rely on third-party customer-service expert consultants to figure out what they don’t know and fix it.

“An independent mystery shopper audit allows managers to view their club through the eyes of their customers,” said Mike Kelly, Managing Partner of 59club USA. “Feedback will pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, while the ability to make service comparisons to not only chosen competitors, but also the 59club industry and best performing clubs, gives operators actionable data, goals and opportunities to evaluate their tactics.”

Mystery shopping audits measure all service offerings at the club and are not solely limited to turf conditioning or bunker presentation – although that is a large component of the program. Staff attitude, sales and upselling prowess, facility management and general operating procedures also are factored into the mystery test – which gives club managers a real-time snapshot of their entire customer-service presentation. 

59club USA has helped more than 80 high-profile clubs collect customer-service data and elevate their golf experience all over the country including the TPC Network which operates 32 golf properties was one of the first to adopt 59club USA customer service benchmarking techniques, using the collected data to increase customer loyalty and provide employee feedback. But Kelly suggests the tools provided by his firm are not reserved for only high-end or private properties.

“Investment in bricks and mortar do not sustain and grow reputations,” said Kelly. “It is people who build reputations. You may or may not be the ‘biggest’ club in the area but you can definitely achieve, deliver and then maintain outstanding customer service.”

As we slowly come out of the pandemic and get back to what serves as a new normal – whatever that might mean – we have a little breathing room to reflect on silver linings. The golf industry enjoyed a mini boom over the last 15 months, drawing a large number of first-time players and overall participation not seen since the early 90s. And with that newfound reinvigoration, the game itself is in a unique position to renew its focus on elevating the game from standardized commodity to an elite-level golf experience. And it seems as though 59club might be the best way to know what you don’t know.