Expectation vs Experience: What’s the Difference?

TRANSCRIPT: Expectation vs Experience: What's the Difference?

The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast

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Michelle Pascoe: Well, welcome everyone to today’s podcast, and once again, I must say, my amazing EA Sarah has sourced out another phenomenal woman in leadership in the registered club industry to share about her journey, but also very much about the connection with our customers, our amazing members and guests. So let me introduce you to Tracey.

Her career in hospitality began almost by accident. After completing a hairdressing apprenticeship in the early 1990s and realising it wasn’t her passion, she asked her chef father to help her find a hospitality job while she worked out what came next. Now nearly 30 years later, that decision has shaped a diverse career across hotels, restaurants and clubs.

Beginning with Parkroyal Hotels and later the SPHC Group, Tracey developed executive operational experience, including opening restaurants from the ground up, creating concepts, establishing operations, developing menus, recruiting and training teams, and preparing venues for successful handover.

But it was her curiosity that led her into marketing and loyalty, where she built much of her career by seeking out mentors, asking questions and learning from those around her. Her passion began when it came to customer behaviour, loyalty and the psychology behind the customer experience.

Today, Tracey is joining us from Maroochydore RSL, where she is the Executive Manager of Hospitality and Customer Experience, and as my listeners know, that is my passion and my absolute core. So I can’t wait to have a conversation with you, Tracey.

You are a passionate leader, you’re a mentor. She particularly enjoys supporting young women to recognise their capabilities, build confidence and pursue leadership opportunities. For Tracey, great hospitality leadership is ultimately about people, understanding them, learning from them, developing them, and creating experiences that make them want to return.

Thank you so much, Tracey, for joining me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

Tracey Boeck: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Michelle.

Michelle Pascoe: So let’s give us a little bit of background. You’ve shared with us your journey, which is fantastic, that quick little snapshot. But tell us about Maroochy RSL, about the team, their commitment to the customer experience. Because you can have a great leadership team, or someone like yourself who is passionate about customer service, but it’s not always handed over or delivered by the front line. So tell us how you get them engaged.

Tracey Boeck: Look, it’s a hard thing to transfer. I think hand-picking particular staff, especially in middle management, is probably where I started in my role, to try and change a bit of culture and a bit of understanding.

We have 130 staff, and they’re made up of a diverse range of people, which I’m really proud of. We’ve got some staff who’ve worked for us for 30 years in gaming, a couple of 20-yearers, and a handful of tens. That’s probably the cornerstone of our team, having those mature leaders within our training group, but we also have a great range of younger people.

I’ve been on a bit of a journey in the last couple of years, because it’s a different generation. I’m a 1974’er, so when I was coming through the ranks, you just did as you were told. It was a natural hierarchy that you obeyed, and you didn’t have to understand why you were pouring that wine or why you were upselling that Crown Lager. You just did it because you were told to.

So it’s really been a journey for me, with children in that similar age group, understanding our team and what drives them, and how to get the buy-in. That journey has made me reflect on how I lead and how I get the best out of those guys. Why would someone who’s at uni doing a marketing degree care about keeping our customers happy? They don’t, unless you give them a reason to.

So that was my charge: to have those kids understand and buy in on why that customer experience is so important these days. There were a few strategies I went through, some that didn’t work and some that worked really well, and we’re sticking with that plan, of course, but it is trial and error, because it depends on the circumstances.

Michelle Pascoe: And I was sharing with some clients the other day that this is the first time in history where leaders and managers like yourself have had such a diversified group of employees. Usually you’d have one or two generations at a time, but you’ve definitely got four, and some clubs have five, with Alphas coming through and working in the bistro at 14 or 16 years of age. It’s a different way of having to think about things, and I’m sure at times you can pull your hair out, and other times you think, what made that click, how can I replicate that?

Tracey Boeck: Absolutely. And I think there’s also a view about hospitality that it’s an easy job, and anyone in the industry knows that’s absolutely not true. I put an ad on Seek and get responses from tradies and people who work in retail who’ve never picked up a coffee cup to make someone a coffee. They’re not transferable skills, and it’s really difficult to explain to people how important skilled people are in hospitality.

More importantly, with that new age group, it’s about finding the personalities that bring the excitement, and then upskilling those people, because you can’t teach personality, but you can certainly teach how to make coffee. So the concentration for us, especially for me over the last year, has been recruiting personalities, kids, because that’s the majority of our workforce, who really understand why they’re here and what we want of them, and why it benefits them to give that great customer experience.

It’s about what they get out of creating that great experience, and how transferable it is into what they may be studying, or if they’re a career hospitality person, how it strengthens their career and their portfolio moving forward. Because understanding what the customer wants is the most important thing.

Michelle Pascoe: Yeah, and those customers can be delightful one day, or at the start of the day, and a very different personality later on. You’re right, hospitality skills can transfer into any industry, because it’s that tolerance, but it’s also that connection, making people feel that they belong. Every business needs that, but hospitality is the cornerstone that really shows people how to do it.

You’ve been in this industry for more than 30 years, you’ve worked in a lot of different places. Can you give us an idea of why some people choose one club over another, and then keep coming back? What’s the one thing about customer experience that most club leaders still get wrong?

Tracey Boeck: I think this is an evolution. If you’re a clubby and you think you’ve got the recipe, that recipe will be completely different in three years’ time. What customers want, what they’re demanding, their expectations and their desires, completely changes all the time. So it’s really important to stay engaged with your customers.

One of the things I definitely do is run my own market research groups. Look, consultants can come in and do this for you, and it’s quite an expensive, lengthy exercise. I prefer to do it in-house. I grab my marketing team, I grab someone in the front-of-house team who’s a senior leader, and we conduct them ourselves. We keep the group small, and we make sure we have a diverse group, so we’ll use some really high-end players in gaming as one group, and our level quartz members, who might visit us once every six months, in another group. We drill down and find out what our competitors are doing that customers love, what we’re getting right, and what they love about what we’re doing, and we collate that information.

I also grab what I call the staff influencers, the staff who get those feedback forms where customers think they’re the only one who works there, the standout people. I gather them up and ask them what we’re getting right and what we’re getting wrong, and they’ll tell you. You may not agree with everything they say, because they may have a different agenda, probably to make their own life easier, and we get that, it’s hard yakka. But it’s getting that information from your customer, rather than looking at your competitors and going, “oh my god, they’re doing this, we’ve got to do that too.” They shouldn’t be your measure. You should be looking at your business and asking what’s best for our customers, what’s best for our staff, and what experiences can we create that are purely ours and that they’ll respond to. That’s the number one important thing: don’t try to keep up with the Joneses. Make your own path and your own interesting things.

Michelle Pascoe: That’s right, you be the leader and let others follow you. You talk about these staff influencers, and that’s great, you’ve got those who naturally bring sunshine to the whole environment. But how do you actually get all of the team included in this passion for creating these amazing experiences, even when it doesn’t come naturally to them, or they’re just in one of those moods that day? How do you transfer that skill of getting them to realise how important the customer experience is, and that it comes from them, that it’s a non-negotiable standard?

Tracey Boeck: I think there’s a combination of two things. It’s creating experiences for our staff, so they understand the importance of an experience themselves and feel rewarded. And the second part is helping them understand how important that visit is for the customer, making it relatable to them. I call it the Splendour in the Grass syndrome.

Splendour in the Grass is a wonderful music festival, well, I don’t know if it’s still on, I’m a bit out of touch, but I think making staff understand that Bob, who comes in every Thursday for his hot roast pork, that’s Bob’s Splendour in the Grass. Bob saved up for that roast, it’s really important to him. He parks his car in the car park, he’s already thinking about it, he’s decided what he’s going to eat. And if anything gets in the way of Bob getting that roast during his journey into the club and down to the bistro, that’s affecting his experience. He has an expectation first of all, but we want to exceed that expectation for him as well, so it’s about having his beer poured as he approaches the bar. It’s all of that expectation versus really treating him, that’s the difference.

But the other thing is, when you’re dealing with younger staff who’ve probably never had a glass of wine in their hand, it’s about creating those experiences for them so they understand how joyful it can be for people. So we try to do a couple of things during the year. We do a great activity with staff we want to motivate, or whoever’s showing great signs of leadership, and we partner with a company called 8th Mile here on the coast, who are ex-military guys, a lot of them Afghan vets. They take the team to a gauntlet, a hardcore day of going into pits, doing gel blasting, going through the bush, and it really demonstrates personality and gets them out of their comfort zone. Then we have a chat afterwards about their experience and what they got out of it and enjoyed, and we say to them, “we wanted you to enjoy this because we want our customers to enjoy what you’re offering, so if you’ve learnt anything from this experience…”

It’s definitely things like that, but it can be as simple as getting your suppliers in and leaning on them. We invite lots of local suppliers, we try to use local produce where we can, we get our winery guys in, our gin guys in, and ask them to do a half-hour session at 2.30 in the afternoon after lunch, and talk to us about their products and why they’re so great. The staff really absorb it, because it’s such an interesting thing to go, “we really like this wine,” and there’s a bowl of musk sticks and aniseed, really interesting, relatable smells, and the staff will smell those things and go, “right, this is what Moscato is like, it’s got this beautiful sweet musk to it,” and they go, “wow, that’s really interesting.”

The transfer into the customer experience is when customers come in and ask what wine we’d recommend, the staff feel confident, and they’re like, “oh my god, Margaret, you’ve got to try this new rosé, it’s amazing, it’s pink, it’s got a slight bubble through it, the label’s really great, and the brand’s doing great work with recycling and cleaning up the waterways, here’s why you should buy it.” It makes the customer feel special, we get an upsell, it’s win-win.

That’s really how we’ve gotten that buy-in. It’s through education, really soft education, but they get a lot out of it and really enjoy it, because they feel confident talking to the customers, they’re proud of what they’re selling, and it gives them something to talk about too.

Michelle Pascoe: Because I think for many of them, it’s starting that conversation. When you talk about having your local suppliers coming in, we saw that a few years ago now with that farm-to-plate scenario, where different farmers would come and talk to the team, not just the chef, but the waitperson too, so they could share where those potatoes were from, just down the road, or literally in the garden that morning, or where that piece of beef came from. But now, extending that to what you’re doing with the beverages, it gives them pride, but it also gives them something to talk about and to share, and it really gets the customer interested, because it’s not just, “can I have a gin and tonic,” it’s, “this is the best gin because of X, Y and Z,” so it must be really good.

Tracey Boeck: It really is. And it goes to that standard, I guess, expectation versus experience, there’s two different things. Everyone does a chicken parmi, everyone does a steak, but do they do a steak that the 20-year-old can talk to you about and recommend, and explain why they recommend it? That’s the difference between expectation and experience. They’re two very different things.

Michelle Pascoe: And you touched on before, when you first started out, it was, you just did it because you were told, you didn’t ask questions. How do you think having this information and sharing it with staff has changed the customer experience for the customer?

Tracey Boeck: I think, as I said before, it’s that expectation versus experience, it’s an immersion. People want to feel special, they want to feel listened to, they want to feel heard, and that attention to detail is what people are craving. I mean, everyone’s a Masterchef now, everyone cooks wonderful things, everyone’s so clever, and everyone will tell you your diane sauce is the best they’ve ever had. People are food experts now, so the customer has definitely changed in that way, but being able to engage and have a conversation about food matters, because people like talking about food, looking at food, eating food.

Getting that buy-in from the supplier is really interesting, because it transfers into sales. That person has that meal, or that gin, and thinks, “that Maroochy RSL, they’ve got the best rosé I’ve ever had.” That’s why it becomes an experience in itself, because it’s a journey for them, not just lunch.

Michelle Pascoe: Yes, it’s something very special. So how do you then go from this conversation to actually getting people to return? We can have those one-off experiences, can’t we, we go, “oh my gosh, that was the best rosé,” we have a nice time, we walk out the door, but life gets busy, we’re going out somewhere else in a few weeks. What brings those people back to Maroochy RSL?

Tracey Boeck: I think really, we have a great marketing strategy here. We use all the tools we’ve got in front of us, with patron engagement, really drilling down on how your booking platform works. I’d estimate most clubs and pubs probably use 50% of the potential of those apps, they have fantastic marketing tools, and if you’re not using them, review your contract, because there are products out there that can harvest non-member data, which is brilliant, and you can set up automated return messages to your customers: “hey, you really loved it, come back, have a drink on us when you come back.”

I think initially you’ve got to spend that money before you get that emotional attachment to the venue, and that’s what we strive for, an emotional attachment to our staff, to the standard we stand for. We’ve got a lot of clubs and pubs around us, yet we’re the diamond, I like to say we’re definitely the diamond choice. They’re allowed to cheat on us, they’re allowed to go down to the surf club, and I love that they support the surf club, we all work really closely together on a lot of initiatives and community stuff here on the Sunshine Coast. But why do we stand out, why do people come back? It really comes down to your marketing at that beginning stage. Definitely don’t be afraid to give them a free drink. I know your membership might be $5.50, but give them a $6 drink on their second trip back in. Your CFO won’t understand it, but stick to your guns, because that second visit, they get the same experience, they understand the consistency.

If your marketing message is that there’s something on at our club every night that you’re going to enjoy, trivia, steak night, they’ll see those messages in that sign-up. We love our reception team, every single enquiry at meet and greet or reception, “that’s great, Carol, this is on Friday night, let me get those tickets for you, is your phone number still the same?” It has to be that way, we need those contacts, the marketing team can’t reach out to people without that information, so it’s so important.

It’s the offers too, everyone does food and drink offers, but what makes them special, I think, is starting to evolve those offers into experiences rather than expectation, doing different things, like MAFS watch parties. We have a great book club that we started about five months ago with one of the local radio stations, it’s a spicy book club, a romance novel. We thought we’d do one or two of them and that would be it, and it’s just created traction, bringing new people in all the time, word of mouth. Again, it’s an experience, it’s not just, “here’s your parmi, here’s Friday night steak night,” it’s something people can bring guests to and really get involved in the club with, see it as a community club with activities, rather than just food and drinks.

Michelle Pascoe: I love that idea about the book club, not so much the spicy part, but the book club, because it makes some of our staff a bit perplexed as to why there are all these ladies screaming and laughing over their cheese plates, but it’s a very fun night.

Tracey Boeck: There’s so many concepts to think of, and I think it’s really important to get those ideas from your staff, because you can’t just rely on your marketing team. Go back to your influencers, go back to your general staff, have those conversations, what have they seen, what did their grandparents go to, what did their parents go to, what’s exciting, and build on those concept ideas.

Michelle Pascoe: Now, I was going to say, when you were talking about that technology, you don’t have to get the support company that belongs to your software, there may be someone in your team who knows how to use it, or has got that mind, they’ll look at it and go, “did you know it can do this,” and get really excited as well.

Our little book club that we meet down here, we’re part of a national one in the Southern Highlands, we go to our local Mittagong RSL, there’s six of us, and apart from my daughter and me, the other four had never been into the club before. They said, “okay,” because we tried a coffee shop and it was just you couldn’t sit there and talk, so we said, let’s just go to the RSL. Month in, month out, we do it and they love it. Now they say to me, “we only met on Saturday, we’ve been back a few times now, this is a really great club.” Because not everybody is a clubby, I think it’s in our blood, it’s in our DNA, Tracey, but for others, it’s not.

You also mentioned a moment ago about community work, and I know we’re talking about customer service, which is absolutely key to getting people back in, but what we’re starting to find, finally, is clubs beating their own chest proudly, which they should be doing, about what they do for the community. That’s also attracting not only customers, but new staff members, because they’re connected to that community. Do you see that connection piece, because I know Maroochy RSL does a lot of that, you’ve got a great social media page, between what you do with that community work and the expectations of what the service and that commitment and that experience is going to be like from your team when they come into the club?

Tracey Boeck: Absolutely. I think when I started here five years ago, it was still very covidy, and it was actually a great opportunity coming in during that time, because everything had been stripped back. Sometimes we get stuck in “we’ve always done it this way, so we’ll continue to do it this way,” so it was a really good phase for the club and for my career to come in and go, right, what does it look like, let’s build it from the ground up, let’s start again.

One thing that really stood out to me was that it was almost a tradition of not bragging about how much money we gave away to the community, and I went, wow, this is really interesting, because I think from a PR point of view, people didn’t want to come across as the club that was banging its own drum. I went, hang on a minute, we’re giving away this enormous amount of support to the community, certainly to our veteran hub and our veterans, there’s a massive Sunshine Coast population of veterans, where else would you want to live, so there’s a great base to support that on, but also the schools, the outreach groups we look after, the all-abilities sport at the Falcons, all those wonderful initiatives we support in the community.

We’re giving all this money away, and we need to get value as a business, even though we’re not for profit. Where are we investing, why are we investing, and why will people come to our club because we’re doing this work? So we started going full on, shouting it from the rooftop. The grant applications went up tenfold within a couple of months, which was great, because it enabled us to recruit into the marketing team to start doing some of that work.

To answer your question why it’s so important to customer experience: this is a guilt-free trip to the gaming room. If you really want to make a difference in the community, you spend your money at our club, you invest in our club, and we invest in Maroochydore, and that’s the transfer. Now that we’ve got that message out there, that we do so much amazing work, and we have so many groups that rely on our funding to exist, they’ve started shouting our praises, telling the community, “we can only do this program because of Maroochy RSL.” So one of the expectations we now put in our grant returns and applications, because we never used to have any expectations, is: please share our specials on your social media, tell your community and your Facebook followers what we do. We call it “support a supporter,” we look after you, please look after us. We’ve definitely seen that transfer into sales and membership, 100%.

Michelle Pascoe: I’ve just written that down, I love that, and I’d 110% agree with you, Tracey. Before covid, I used to say to clients, oh, you’re giving away all this money, so do they hold their end-of-year dance, do they hold their end-of-year awards? No, and I’m thinking, you’re giving these people away thousands, and they were literally just going, “oh, where’s my cheque,” it was just demanding, they didn’t even come into the club. You’re not saying you’ve got to come in and spend all your money there, but you have to come in, because as you said, the money you’re giving them is other patrons from the community giving their money to the club to keep that little sporting group open, or whatever it might be, so it’s so important for them to understand. Do you also think, apart from the club grants applications increasing, and now employing somebody else in HR to go through those, that it can be a way, when you’ve had conversations with new recruits, that they’ve mentioned it as well?

Tracey Boeck: Every interview, that’s what we start with. I always conduct an interview as if I’m selling them our club. We’ve got a great reputation as a great employer, and definitely get a lot of referrals from our existing staff. I start off with the community aspect, that we’re not for profit, that there’s no family going on holiday to the Bahamas based on our patronage, it’s all returning back into the business. The fact that we employ 130 staff in a regional area is a massive responsibility. We have 50 volunteers at our veteran hub, we’re one of the biggest sub-branches as well, so we’re incredibly proud of that.

I definitely think you can’t achieve that volume of staff and employment without having some respectful calibre about you, and that’s why I always start with the community stuff. Last year we gave away $2 million to community groups in the local area, so we’re not talking about pennies, it’s a massive contribution. It’s definitely an incentive to come and work for us and be proud of that group.

Michelle Pascoe: And I’d just like to mention, listeners, that clubs do have a commitment via club grants, they have to give a set amount of money, but I’m sure when you’re talking about $2 million, that’s well above what you’re expected to provide.

Tracey Boeck: Yes, it is, exponentially, we’re very proud of it.

Michelle Pascoe: Which is so important. We’ve talked about the people, we’ve talked about community, but what about decor, Tracey? What about the light fittings, the carpet, the pretty things on the wall? You and I have both been around long enough to remember the thick white cups and the paddle pop stick as a spoon, mind you, I was at a club the other day and they had a paddle pop stick, I thought, seriously. And if you were near the seaside, it was the light blue and salmon-coloured carpet. And they never changed it for years. But now it makes a big difference. How do you see that impact on your members and guests coming back to the club as well?

Tracey Boeck: Look, I’m really lucky that our CEO really entrusts the female decor judges, I like to say, so Alicia, our EA, and I are the sign-off on all things fabrics and furnishings. The reason that’s important, and I’ll make it about gender, there’s a lot of blokes at the top in club land, and I have to say, even going into Bribie Island RSL, beautiful Janelle and her team there, you can tell when there’s a woman at the top, or there’s been some consultancy from a female, it’s those finishing little touches.

Why is the beautiful fabric on the chairs important, why is the carpet that flows and matches the background important, why are the handbag hooks important, why are the complimentary chargers important, why are all those finishing little bits of decor, the soft lighting, the fragrance, important? A lot of people don’t get that, they just see the money adding up and think, why should I invest in this when I can just get plastic chairs? It’s comfort, but also, most people are very house-proud, I think most people like a beautiful home. Being in a coastal area, we have a lot of beautiful brand-new units, and a lot of our female gaming skew are affluent ladies who own property and have a beautiful high-rise apartment with lovely furniture in it.

Gone are the days when people think of the RSL and picture the dusty nurse uniform on the mannequin. You want to walk in and be wowed. The events team always say, no bride ever went, “I really want to get married at the rissole,” it’s just not something you think about. But when people walk into our RSL, we get a gasp, we actually get, “I had no idea it looked like that inside, it’s so beautiful in here.”

A lot of it’s to do with comfort, keeping people having that second coffee, being comfortable. We have a lot of older people visit during the day, because we’re in a coastal town with a lot of retirees, so, have those chairs got sides on them, are they easy to get in and out of, are the cups beautiful, does the coffee feel a little bit special when it comes out in a duck egg blue cup with a beautiful spoon on the side and that chocolate freckle? You notice that, it makes a huge difference to your experience, because you’re feeling spoiled and looked after.

So decor is incredibly important. We’re about to go into another renovation shortly, we’ve just finished one, and our sports bar went from a very dark, dingy corner to a very open, lit-up cocktail lounge. If you want to put a bet on, you’ll find that right down the back, there’s a really comfortable betting area if you’re a really full-on better and want to immerse yourself in that, but the rest of the lounge, and I call it a lounge now, it’s no longer a bar, it’s a lounge, has those finishing touches. It has beautiful stones through it, the glasses were really thought about, when you have your coffee come out, it’s really special, when you have your cocktail come out, it’s got a gorgeous flower on it, it’s in a beautiful crystal glass, and that’s so important for the experience.

Everyone’s a Masterchef with the food, everyone’s on The Block, you know what I mean, they know now, so the expectation has changed, and that’s the difference again between experience and expectation. It’s the beauty around you, it makes you want to stay, makes you want to bring your friends, makes you choose to have your book club or your craft group in our venue, because it’s lovely to be around. That’s the importance.

Michelle Pascoe: It is, and you’re right, it’s The Block, it’s Location, Location, it’s Love It or List It, all those shows I watch constantly on repeat, both in Australia and Britain. But it is so true, when you look at those shows, it’s the way that Shaynna Blaze just puts the cushion just that way, and it’s not a karate chop, it’s just there, and you can see people come into that space and go, wow. Yes, they may have pulled down a few walls, but it’s those tiny little pops of colour on the wall, on that cushion, the three vases or the three things that have got to be on the table. I’m in the midst of selling our home at the moment, and I’m watching all these shows, thinking, it’s got to be the three things stuck together on the glass table, and they go, “oh, your home’s like a show home.” I’m thinking, yeah, it kills me every Saturday to put it together, it’s a lot of work. But it’s that experience that makes people go, wow, and that’s what brings them back.

And you used the word “proud,” and it’s so true, it’s not just our team being proud of working in your club and other clubs, but it’s also your club members, your visitors and their guests who come and say, “this is my club,” and they can be so proud of it.

I’m going to ask you one final question, because there are listeners out there who don’t even have to be in a registered club, there are lots of other hospitality and other industries that listen to this podcast, and customer experience and customer service, creating those expectations and delivering above and beyond, is key in every industry. So what would be a tip you could provide them? Monday morning rocks up, what’s the first thing you tell them to fix?

Tracey Boeck: Well, look, it comes down to budget, I think, for a lot of pubs, clubs and restaurants. The biggest thing is to get a fresh set of eyes and look at the clutter in your venue. Have a look at that plastic plant that’s been sitting on the windowsill for 20 years. Fresh eyes are really important, so find someone you trust, it could be a staff member, and have them go through the venue and have a look around and declutter. People don’t mind old, but they want clean and tidy. You might not have the money at the moment, but you want to keep the place looking as good as it possibly can, so declutter.

The other thing is probably to come in as a customer yourself. That’s a big thing, and look, they’re going to treat you differently, 100%, that’s always the response, “they’re going to treat me differently, they know who I am.” I know, but you’ll still pick up on things that are vastly important, so I try to come down with my husband, and when my kids are in town, I try to go down with my kids, and when my parents are around, I come down with them. You don’t have to come often, I know it takes up time on your weekend, but you really will get to know where the holes are by visiting your own venue and being a customer yourself. It may be something really small, but if it’s annoying you, it’s annoying our customers. I always think, “that was clunky, that didn’t make sense.” Things on paper may make sense, but when you’re sitting there and someone’s taking your order, and getting a drink is too clunky, or the way something happens for that customer is too clunky, then you need to fix that. Your experiences in your own venue can definitely transfer into better decisions down the track about how you run your team.

Michelle Pascoe: Yeah, definitely, I agree 110% again with you, Tracey. In my early days, when I first started my business, it was setting up offices, and I used to say to them, come and sit in your chairs in your waiting room, what can they see? Are the seats comfortable, or are they something we’ve seen in a lot of clubs, the half-broken furniture stuck out there, “that’ll be okay”? What can they see at reception? Now reception desks are all fully enclosed, but in the old days they weren’t, and you could see people’s legs and handbags and 1001 technical cords hanging everywhere. Do the same in the bar, sit in every different seat, what can they see behind that bar, are they looking out at the washroom, is the kitchen door open, and all they can see is a big dirty mop and a garbage bin? It’s being there, using that space. But I also say, ring the club as well.

Tracey Boeck: Good one, yeah, absolutely.

Michelle Pascoe: What’s the voice message like, what’s the person like, and don’t just ring at 10 o’clock when the doors are open, ring at 9 o’clock, ring at some busy times, and see how that’s handled. The same with your website, have a look at that, do all the links work, the social media, engage on that, all those connections that our members and guests have with us before they’ve even seen us, particularly for guests and visitors we don’t even know could be making that decision. Your family and friends are the cheapest secret shoppers you can ever employ.

Tracey Boeck: It’s the little things, like you said. I came in and there was something open in the back room I could see.

Michelle Pascoe: Yeah, you’re absolutely right, it’s that attention to detail.

Tracey Boeck: Yeah, it’s the little things that count, but they add up to the big things, because that’s what our customers are going to remember, those tiny micro moments that are only minor. But it’s also those tiny, minor moments that make an experience unbelievable.

Michelle Pascoe: That’s exactly right, and will have us back again. Thank you so much, Tracey, for joining us today. Is there something I haven’t asked you about Maroochy RSL or that customer journey?

Tracey Boeck: Oh, look, I think we’ve covered most of it. Thank you so much for the opportunity to do the podcast. Even looking at what I was going to talk about today, going through my mind on how we got to this place with this great customer service, it’s a great exercise to actually reflect on how far you’ve come, and also what you want to do in the future, and how you’re going to bring that team into the next level of experience. So I thank you for that, because it brought up some things for me, where I’m like, I must do that, and I must do that as well. So it’s quite motivating having a chat with someone in the industry about where you’re at and getting a fresh bunch of thoughts into your mind.

Michelle Pascoe: Well, I’m glad I was able to jog the memory, but also to take the time and acknowledge the great work that you and the team have done, and I think that’s important.

Tracey Boeck: Thank you very much, thanks, Michelle.

Michelle Pascoe: Because I think we go from one thing to another really quickly, we go, “oh yes, that looks great,” and move on to the next thing, but actually stopping and looking back and going, “where were we five years ago, or even a year ago,” is so very different to where you are now. So listeners, if you are ever on the Sunshine Coast in beautiful Queensland, you’ve got to hit Maroochy RSL, but it’s Maroochydore if you’re looking it up, so when you put it into your navman, go and see them, because I know I’m certainly going to pop in next time I’m up in Queensland, because the decor and the team and everything you provide there sounds absolutely amazing.

Tracey Boeck: Oh, thank you, Michelle, look forward to seeing you up here.

Michelle Pascoe: Alright, take care, bye-bye.

Tracey Boeck: Bye.

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