Bringing guests through your doors is essential for any family entertainment center. However, it’s not enough to merely sell party packages or game cards – i.e business as usual. To grow and separate your business from the rest of the industry requires more. It requires your customers to become product advocates of your company.
Winning the AMOA’s Innovator Award for SliderMech at the 2021 Amusement Expo was a huge honor for us. Winning the Operator’s Choice Award for Paystation Wally was a humbling experience we will never forget. But the most impactful takeaway from the show was discovering how satisfied our customers are with our product, service, and support.
We were overwhelmed by the number of customers who brought other potential customers to our booth to show them our system. Many were willing to get in front of the camera to share their experience with the world.
In Ken Blanchard’s acclaimed book, Raving Fans, he introduced the framework to turn customers into advocates. It starts with a service vision that focuses on the ideal way to serve your customers. Then you uncover what your customer wants by listening and creating a feedback loop.
Once you have those foundations in place, you combine them to deliver what they want—plus more. We all know what it means to go above and beyond, right?
To give you more practical ways to turn guests into raving fans, here are a few we came up with:
Turn your staff members into raving fans
As the renowned speaker and author Simon Sinek wisely said, “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” Let that soak in for a minute.
Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.
— Simon Sinek (@simonsinek) April 16, 2014
When many owners and operators struggle to hire good help in a time in our industry, getting referrals from your staff members is crucial. If your employees are not willing to tell their friends how amazing it is to work for you, there may be something missing.
If you’ve ever been to Disney World, you know the level of consistent service you get. That’s because they do a great job of attracting, hiring, and developing raving fans. Highly engaged team members are also more willing to help you deliver the extra 1% service to your customers.
Focus on the guest experience at every touchpoint
Our company motto is, “Focus on the guest experience, all else will improve.” We live by that and do our best to incorporate it into our products and service. For us, it’s equally important to give an excellent experience for our customers as it is for our customers’ guests.
A simple framework to improve the guest experience is to look at the customer’s steps to go from strangers to paying customers—and customers into advocates.
Start by taking a good look at everything your prospective customer sees and every possible way they interact with your brand. Then put yourself in their shoes and determine whether or not you’re delivering on the vision and wants of your guests.
You’ll probably find opportunities to enhance the quality of touchpoints as they progress through the path to purchase. Maybe your kid’s birthday party page on your website is confusing, or they’re experiencing slow response times when someone inquires about hosting a group event online.
From first impressions to the post-purchase experience, the more you continue to improve the touchpoints, the more raving fans you’ll create.
Make your guests feel good.
Humans are emotional creatures. When your guests are angry, we all know they channel their emotions into a negative review on Yelp or Google. Even Disney World theme parks aren’t immune to guests lashing out on review sites.
The key is how quickly you respond to the issue and find a way to make them happy. The longer their negative emotions fester, the more likely they’ll tell their friends about their experience.
On the contrary, you can invoke positive emotions that create an emotional bond between the customer and your center. That’s where emotional branding comes in.
When you think about it, consumers identify themselves by drinks they consume, schools they attend, and where they hang out. Why not become their favorite place in your community to hang out?
To become the place to be for parties, try focusing on both their immediate and anticipated emotions. Immediate emotions are the primary emotions they feel when they see a product, service, or offering, which influences their decision to take action. Anticipated emotions create a mental picture of the future experience.
Let’s take a customer planning a birthday party, for example. They may be excited about the new kid’s birthday party page you just created, which directly influences their decision to book online. Their anticipated emotion is all the joy and happiness they will feel during the big celebration.
When you’re able to deliver on both and keep those emotions positive, you’re on your way to building loyalty and advocacy.
Build a community
During our customer and partner appreciation event at Amusement Expo, we made an interesting observation. Our customers connected and shared a ton of great tips on how they do things at their arcades.
According to Oxford Languages, a community is “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.” Chances are, you’re in a Facebook Group or two where members help and support each other on various topics.
Since the digital world and physical world go hand-in-hand these days, you can bridge the gap by organizing people with similar interests. If you’re a laser tag center, you may be able to organize events so players can befriend each other. The same applies to classic arcade fanatics who are always trying to get the top score.
You can host events like tournaments to bring guests with similar interests together. While they’re at your center, please encourage them to join your online community. For a step-by-step guide to launching an online community, check out this post.
Start your journey today
Turning your guests into raving fans can have a lasting impact on your business. As with most business strategies, it’s a journey, not a destination. By getting your team to think about ways to build advocacy, you’ll be setting up the conditions for long-term success.
As for us at Amusement Connect, we’re constantly striving to improve the business of our advocates every day. If you’re shopping around for a complete arcade card management system or if you just want to know more about what we believe, please give us a call.
Amusement Connect is a game card system that combines the latest technology with business intelligence to optimize the player experience.
We are powered by people and our collective mission to bring innovation, value, and the best possible experience to our customers and their players.
