How Software Can Improve Your Club Management
As someone in the racquet sports business, you’ve probably noticed the increase in players over the past couple of years. In fact, the USTA reported a 22 percent increase in tennis participation in 2020, when racquet sports became the perfect activity in light of social-distancing guidelines. With extra players comes a greater need for coaches, employees, and management at your club. How can you keep up with it all?
An easy, comprehensive sports club management software is the way to go. This software improves communication, streamlines operations, and allows you to spend more time creating a great experience for your customers. Read on to learn how.
Communication Systems That Set You Apart
The single most important thing you can do to keep things running smoothly for your employees is to prioritize communication. Having a system that makes it easy for them to get in touch with anyone—including managers, other staff members, and your members—is paramount.
A comprehensive communication platform can make doing business much more convenient (and fun) for users. For example, RacquetDesk offers networking and social features, giving clients and staff an intuitive way to communicate with each other. This makes communication easier and also sets your club apart as a uniquely engaging place.
Additionally, RacquetDesk provides ongoing documentation, so if any issues arise, you can look back and know exactly what happened. This helps avoid serious headaches and gives you peace of mind with one less thing to worry about.
Connected Management for Streamlined Operations
When you have disconnected management tools, you have to spend time and effort manually coordinating information and ensuring that everything behind the scenes is running smoothly. Not only is this a hassle, but it also ends up taking away from time you could be spending with clients.
With club management software, your internal operations can be managed on one platform, making everything more streamlined and efficient.
Scheduling is a huge task, with courts, coaches, lessons, matches, and players all needing to line up perfectly. Last-minute cancellations and employees needing to switch shifts add another layer of complexity, meaning scheduling can become quite the headache.
A scheduling feature specific to racquet sports can be a lifesaver. From the customer’s perspective, online court reservation is quick and easy, with real-time updates letting them know what’s available. From the club’s perspective, group, lesson, and open-court management is comprehensive and convenient.
Financial management is another responsibility that can become unwieldy. There are just so many pieces to keep track of, from paying employees on time to issuing customer refunds. Having financial management tools as part of your comprehensive court management software makes a huge difference. The RacquetDesk solution, for example, includes a point-of-sale system, electronic billing, a payroll feature, and the ability to calculate real-time revenue. These features mean you can keep your business running and give yourself a useful overview of how the company as a whole is doing.
More Time to Spend Creating an Excellent Customer Experience
When administrative tasks can be managed efficiently through the right software, club managers have more time to spend on what matters most: taking care of their customers.
But where to begin? It’s crucial to understand what your customers value. According to a survey conducted by SuperOffice, fast response times, consistency across channels, and knowledgeable staff are the most important aspect of the customer experience. A comprehensive, customer-facing software can help!
First, a self-service mobile app gives customers the speed, consistency, and access to staff they’re looking for. With an online reservation system, electronic billing, and the ability to see their schedule, players and coaches can manage every aspect of their membership with a few swipes of their fingers.
Second, a comprehensive management software allows you to provide an overall better environment for your clients by taking care of urgent but less-important tasks. What do we mean by that? Perhaps you’ve heard of the Eisenhower Decision Matrix. It looks like this:
Source: Iqra Amjad via Medium
This matrix helps busy people accomplish what matters most by dividing tasks into four categories:
- Urgent and important: Crisis-management tasks that you need to do right away
- Not urgent but important: Future-planning and strategy tasks that can wait but should be prioritized in your schedule
- Urgent but not important: Things that need to be done but don’t require your skill set
- Not urgent and not important: Distractions and unnecessary tasks that should be eliminated from your schedule
The right management software can take care of tasks from category three—such as finding someone to fill in for a sick employee, sending out invoices, and scheduling lessons—so that you can spend more time in categories one and two. Category one tasks might include smoothing over an issue with an important client, and category two tasks might include putting together plans to renovate the customer locker rooms, among other things. These higher-priority tasks help you level up from surviving the chaos of management to making your club the best it can be for your customers.
Managing a racquet sports club is no easy feat, and with more people drawn to these sports over the past couple of years, things may have gotten more challenging! Try a comprehensive sports club management software like RacquetDesk to help improve communication, streamline operations, and allow you to spend more time creating a great experience for your new and existing customers.
Take your first step toward better club management by scheduling a demo today.