Listening to your customers...

[The Chairman]

When I walk into a shop I have never been to before and introduce myself, I can usually expect one of three reactions. The best one for my humility is the blank look. They have no idea what ScubaBoard is nor how big we have become. They look at me with vague distrust as I tell them about our 220,000 registered users and the 800,000 to 1.6 million visitors we get each month. It’s a good reality check that I have more work to do in getting our name out there for every diver to know and use.

The second response is they are happy to finally meet me. No, I don’t let the effusive accolades go to my head (much), but it’s always nice to hear how they are integrating in with the divers and users on ScubaBoard. It’s amazing though, how many of these fans still don’t know about how to incorporate Social Media into their business without wasting a lot of precious time.

The third response is rather negative. Someone somewhere on ScubaBoard has said something negative about them and they can’t understand why I just don’t delete all those comments. Their whole ScubaBoard experience is based on one or two negatives instead of the host of positives that are on there as well. As I listen to them rant and rave it becomes obvious that they have little idea how to incorporate Social Media into their business as well.

Three vastly different responses and yet they all have the same core problem: they aren’t listening. In the past, it was very hard to gauge your customers’ experiences with your company. Oh, they were talking about you alright, but good or gab, those word of mouth discussions hardly ever got back to you. With the advent of the Internet and blogs, that changed a bit. The discussion became more word of internet and you got to read what a few people thought about your business. If you were smart, you bribed the crap out of those influential few to get good reviews.

Today’s mantra is “Word of Social Media”. Experiences both good and bad, are being shared online about you. Yes, YOU. You’ll find them on Facebook, on Twitter and even on ScubaBoard, sharing the good, the bad and the downright ugly with anyone who would care to read. Make no doubt about it, the success of your business whether it’s manufacturing, teaching or hosting is right here on the Interwebs. All you have to do is to listen and let your customers and potential customers know that you are listening. When you finally listen, make sure you put what you are learning to good use. After all, that’s the point of listening.

 

[rameus]

Today’s mantra is “Word of Social Media”. Experiences both good and bad, are being shared online about you. Yes, YOU. You’ll find them on Facebook, on Twitter and even on ScubaBoard, sharing the good, the bad and the downright ugly with anyone who would care to read. Make no doubt about it, the success of your business whether it’s manufacturing, teaching or hosting is right here on the Interwebs. All you have to do is to listen and let your customers and potential customers know that you are listening. When you finally listen, make sure you put what you are learning to good use. After all, that’s the point of listening.

in my opinion this is one of the reasons why quite some dive shops open, run for some years and then suddenly disappear again. in a startup phase (as in every other business) everyone is excited to be part of it and suddenly when the first months are over you realise: it's work! this is exactly why i am saying that customer satisfaction and marketing support are crucial to this kind of business!

people starting with the attitude "let's start a dive shop people will come on their own" will most likely not get far - since the leisure industry is a hard business where you have to earn every customer. to get happy customers you have to work even harder. this is exactly why i dedicated a service to assist diving business owners. most of them don't like terms like invoicing, process analysis, value chain or customer satisfaction BUT these build the foundation for a solid and sustainable business. there is not much of a difference to "normal" business.

thom

 

[clint@uniquescuba.com]

Pete, this is an industry still ran by the first and second generations of divers. Many of the leaders of this industry have been doing this 40 - 50 years and more. They are old timers and extremely resistant to change of any kind....unless it's their idea. Sure, there is a lot of new blood coming into the mix and I believe those are the ones that would fully embrace your message.....and they would also GET IT!

Don't get me wrong, those old timers are also wonderful, friendly people. They just aren't going to magically start listening one day.

 

[Leadking]

It has long been my (as well as many others) view that the majority of dive stores are run by hobbyists who opened a store for a second income, fam trips, and equipment at wholesale. The lack of professionalism is seriously lacking. For years I traveled the country stopping in at dive stores, and never revealing my identity, to see how I was received. What an eye opener. Most stores had limited vision. They wanted to create divers in their own image of what a diver should be. Forget what the customer wants or expects. My advice to dive stores was, and is, find out what the customer wants from diving, provide it's to him at a reasonable profit and take tzhe money to fulfill your dreams and ambitions. Don't confuse your goals with the customer's.

---------- Post added May 17th, 2013 at 08:19 PM ----------

Sorry for the typo's above. Cannot find how to edit a post.

 

[The Chairman]

Hobbyists are often their own worst enemy. They often don't have the depth of experience necessary to run a retail outlet profitably. Rather than devising a business plan with structured growth, they do a Ralph Cramden and start coming up with various get rich quick schemes for their dive shop. That doesn't mean that a hobbyist can't succeed and make the transition from being just a good diver to being a great business owner/operator. It does mean that they need to redirect their focus from simply having fun to actually enabling fun.

Yesterday I dove with Rainbow Reef for the first time ever here in Key Largo. DJ, the owner happened to be on board because we were taking Gabe Spateros, the person responsible for Key Largo getting the Christ of the Abyss statue on his first dive with the statue. It's an interesting story and I'll be posting elsewhere about it all, including video. A number of things really impressed me. Of course, it's always nice to be on the boat with Captain Dean. He has the most customer friendly attitude of any captain here in the Keys. DJ was smart in hiring him and keeping him as he's a huge asset for any dive operation. Second, DJ has an excellent cadre of interns he uses as Dive Masters. Ours was Kelsey and she was simply awesome. There were interns on the dock ferrying gear for the clients. Even Captain Dean pitched right in and they would not hear of me carrying my tanks on board. It's obvious that the clients had an awesome time that day even though the seas were a bit dicey. They accommodated an 81 year old diver who was legally blind. They were very careful and respectful and they listened to the directions given by Gabe as well as the Diveheart people. No doubt about it, but there were only smiles all around even as a few cast their bread upon the waters. Dean, Kelsey and even DJ were incredibly in tune to what their customers wanted. Water never had to be asked for it was simply there if you looked even a bit parched. If a student looked a bit daunted by the gear change over between dives, one of them were right there helping out. Mind you, DJ was a plus for the crew but there is no doubt in my mind that they would have dealt with every want/desire without his help. It was obvious that they were listening and had listened to the clients before as well.

Now here is where it gets interesting. On the way back, there was a bit of travel and Kelsey had taken care of everyone. LowVisWiz and I were on the back of the boat and she sat with us for a moment making nice. Well, I had to complement her on how she took care of her charges and then Wys said, "Yep, she's no Gilligan!" This was in reference to a previous trip he and I were on: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ba...u-do-if-first-mate-your-charter-gilligan.html No, she didn't understand the reference, so Wys and I clued her in laughing the whole time. Then she asked me why I wasn't on their boat before even though I lived less than five minutes away. I answered honestly that I hadn't been invited before. If you aren't familiar with Key Largo, it's way crowded with dive ops. We have far more dive ops than we have gas stations. More than we have convenience stores. I think there are more restaurants, but it's close. So, I obviously go with dive ops that make it easy for me to do so and it's usually when a ScubaBoarder comes down and wants me to go dive with them. Now, I have no idea if Kelsey immediately went to DJ to tell him this or if DJ intuited it on his own, but he stopped me on the dock to be sure that I felt welcome to come on his boats anytime. He even mentioned that a group of ScubaBoarders were coming down and asked for me personally. I was impressed. No, not because I was invited back, but it shows that DJ "gets it". His staff "gets it". Not only that, but he wants them to "get it" even more. He wants to improve his Social Media standings because he knows it's going to grow his business. Here's another example. During my brief conversation with Kelsey, I pointed out that looking for customers on Facebook is like dropping a hook in the middle of the ocean with absolutely no reference. There are a lot of fish out there, but finding the right one takes a lot of time and luck. On the other hand, looking for customers on ScubaBoard is like fishing an overstocked pond. We have the divers the dive ops are looking for. Last month we had well over 700,000 people visit us. That's not page views as those are huge but unique visitors. That's actual people looking for information on diving. Anyway, during her debrief at the dock she not only mentioned trip advisor and facebook, but she also asked them to post about their trip on ScubaBoard. She says it's going to be a standard part of her debrief from here on out. That's listening and then putting what you've learned to good use. You can bet that I'll be back on their boats in the future!

BTW, Gabe was finally able to confirm delivery of the statue!

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