Data Rich. Insight Poor.

It seems like you can't have an experience as a customer anymore without someone asking how it went. Rental cars, flights, restaurants, game nights. We have to rate the experience, say whether we’d recommend and answer numerous “targeted questions”.

And that’s where I hop on my soapbox: everyone is asking all of the questions and almost no one is doing anything with the answers.

I don’t think I’m alone in sayingI've filled out a TON of surveys and have sometimes checked the box that says yes, I had a problem during my experience. But I have never once received any type of follow-up save the “Thanks for your feedback!” auto-reply. For me and, more importantly, for customers everywhere, we did the work of telling you what happened and only to discover that it doesn’t seem to mean much to the surveyor. That's most definitely a bad trade for the guest and a HUGE missed opportunity for the venue.

Why are venues data rich but insight poor?

I think it comes down to two things.

First, a lot of organizations collect data because everybody else is collecting data. So now everyone has infinite bits and bytes but no one appears to be asking two key questions beforehand: Why do we want this information? And, what do we want to happen once we have it?

Second, nobody questions the data. In a focus group, you ask follow-ups. You dig. With data, we tend to just have it.

Think about buying a couch. Is it supposed to look good in the room or is it where the whole family piles in for movie night? The point of the couch decides which couch you buy. Your data deserves the same question. Why do we have this? Do we need it? If we do, what is it for?

Scores like NPS and customer satisfaction are worth knowing, and most platforms calculate them for you. But a score tells you where you stand. It doesn't tell you what to do next. I look at everything through what I call the "so what" lens. You have all this information. So what?

And the “So what?” answer comes from having a conversation with your data to get to the insights. Otherwise, like a couch bought for the wrong purpose, the information you have is sitting in storage collecting dust.

What does it look like to actually use your data?

During my time with the San Jose Sharks, I’m very proud of the fact that we acted on our data. Doing so definitely required a bit of a culture shift. And that may have happened simply because people got tired of me saying “So what?!” to them.

Start Times. Initially, we had anecdotal feedback from our season ticket holders telling us that a 7:30 p.m. puck drop on weeknights was too late, especially for families. Those games tend to end around 10:30 p.m., which means fans aren’t getting home before 11:00 p.m.That's too late for kids. While a 7:00 p.m. start is only 30 minutes earlier, those 30 minutes matter a lot on a school night. Because we regularly had conversations with our data, we knew this was an important piece of information. To ensure the validity of the feedback, we intentionally surveyed our members about start times, shared the results with the league, and were given a 7:00 p.m. puck drop for the majority of the weeknight games.. The immersion in our data allowed us to learn something we hadn’t asked about and subsequently turn a few open text responses into a formal research study that drove change for one of our most important customer segments.

Member Benefits. For that same customer segment, we used survey data and CRM notes to look at which season ticket member benefits were being used and which weren't. In doing so, we quickly learned that some were being used by less than 10% of our base, which meant we were spending money in a space that wasn’t driving value for more than 90% of buyers. This also gave us the opportunity to ask what would drive value and reimagine the Member Benefits package around their answers.

Neither of those took a fancy analysis. They took someone looking at the information, analyzing what it was telling us, and taking action on what it meant.

What questions should venue operations be asking?

The same thinking applies on the operations side.

Trip and Falls. Most venues log them in case litigation shows up, which treats each one as a single incident. Put them together and you can see a trend. Is it one curb? One spot inside the building? Does that curb need yellow paint or does that area need different lighting? Is there a trip hazard that we’ve gone blind to?

Escapes. If you run a zoo and an animal continues to find a way out (a “Houdini" for one of our clients), the question is how. What does the pattern tell you about the enclosure? And what changes need to be made?

Repeat Repairs. Say you have 10 engineers, and each one gets a separate request for the same piece of equipment. Engineer one might mention it to engineer four. Engineer four might mention it to engineer ten. Because these are separate conversations - or emails - nobody connects that the same AC unit has now been repaired 10 times. Look at repairs as a whole, whether that's HVAC, the Zamboni, or escalators, and each line shows a trend. That trend tells you when to call the manufacturer and say this is unacceptable.

Elevators and Escalators. These are huge, because when they go down it gets very hard to stay ADA compliant. Most people know which elevator is always broken, but why? What’s being fixed each time? Is it the same part? Or is it an elevator or escalator that’s being slowly rebuilt over time? What’s the ROI on these repairs? Should we just get a new one?. If it does need replacing, how long is the downtime, and what's the plan in the meantime? Every guest who needs an elevator should have access to one and the details on how to make this happen is likely available, just in an extraordinarily fragmented fashion.

What changes when a venue gets this right?

The short answer: everything gets easier. You stop constantly fixing broken things. And you get to start looking at your wish list.

When you're not fixing, you have time to develop, and those are very different jobs. Back to the zoo. If everything that needs attention gets handled consistently and ahead of time, the conversation changes. What new enclosures can we build? How do we expand? How do we bring in more guests?

A few other things come with it:

• Community. A lot of our venues are showpieces in their communities. Guests should walk in expecting it to be even better than last time, not thinking "yep, that's broken again."

• Employee Pride. Your team gets to say "I'm part of building something that is really important to a lot of people" instead of "I repair the same things every week."

• The Bottom Line. You understand costs far better when you budget proactively than when you respond reactively. This is as true for time as it is for dollars.

• Room for real emergencies. When your whole day isn't reactive, you have the capacity to handle the things nobody could have predicted.

Where SwitchBase Fits

Housing and conversing with your data inventory is what we do. SwitchBase brings your siloed sources into one platform. Then it does the part nobody has time for, which is data mining. With your Knowledge Base and Ask AI, you can engage with your data like you would a strategic advisor. Ask it what you aren't doing well and let it tell you. Ask it what is going swimmingly and how to make it even better. Ask it for trends you haven’t yet seen.

Then take that human step: go do something about it.