Mystery customer volunteers to replace Inverness Leisure user group
Issued by Inverness Leisure
After being in existence for over 10 years it has been decided to wind-up the existing User Group at Inverness Leisure to be replaced by mystery customer, a customer forum and one-to-one surgeries with Senior Management.
The User Group at Inverness Leisure was made up of members of the public who met on a bi-monthly basis with management to discuss operational issues about the centre and to offer advice and guidance from a customer-perspective. But regretfully membership of the group has declined over the last couple of years.
However despite a substantial campaign by both management and current user group members over the last couple of years to attract new blood to the group no new members have been identified.
For this reason the Board and Management at Inverness Leisure decided to wind-up the existing group and replace it by a new Customer Forum, which will now be chaired by the Company’s General Manager, James Martin.
Speaking about the changes Mr Martin said, “The existing Chair and other members have tried really hard to generate new interest but unfortunately it hasn’t proved fruitful. It is obviously disappointing that the membership of the User Group dwindled, but sometimes after over ten years it just happens to be that something has served its purpose and come to a natural end of its purpose and it is certainly no reflection on the few people who have remained committed to the end.
“It is obviously still very important to us to have some level of liaison with our customers, so we felt we couldn’t just end the User Group without replacing it with something else.
“For this reason the new customer forum has been created. Meetings will take place every two months where individuals, clubs, groups and other interested parties will be invited to become involved to look at issues affecting the centre as a whole.
He went on, “The customer forum will be a short, sharp focused meeting looking at the wider issues. However we are aware that customer may want to take up issues on an individual basis, so after every meeting both Craig Steedman, my Head of Operations and I will be available to meet with customers on a one-to-one basis in a kind of ‘surgery’ set up.
“One of the other areas that the User Group helped out with was undertaking regular un-announced facility spot audits. These were obviously extremely beneficial and both kept the team on their toes as well as offering some high quality feedback at the end of the visit to our Operations management.
“We have decided to also change the format of the auditing and will shortly be looking to recruit a number of voluntary ‘mystery customers’ who would be willing to come along to the centre anonymously and then undertake a similarly nameless online survey about the various aspects of their own or their families visit to the centre.
“This way we can get a much greater cross-section of our customers feeding back to us as well as being able to focus on very key issues at particular times of the year. The results of the surveys will be viewed and audited by the customer forum members Board members and management.
“If anyone is interested in becoming a mystery visitor to Inverness Leisure then they should keep an eye on the centre’s Facebook page and website for the invitation to take part.”
Speaking about the imminent changes, current User Group representative on the Board of Trustees Anne Eames said, “We are all really excited about the upcoming changes which centre around the introduction of the new Customer Forum, the Senior Team Surgeries and the new Mystery Visitors.
“Although I am a Board member, I am also a very regular user of the centre myself so I can see things from both angles. It is so important that our hundreds of thousands of customers have a voice and feel they have a link with the Board and management. And this is what we are trying to achieve with the new initiative.
Mrs Eames, who will become the new Customer Forum representative on the Board concluded, “The User Group has played a really important role in the changes and improvements at Inverness Leisure and I have no reason to doubt the new scheme will not see us through the next phase in our development.”
With invitations being sent out from the General Manager over the next few weeks inviting Clubs and individuals to join, it is hoped that the first Customer Forum meeting will take place early in the New Year.