I feel like an oxymoron saying this out loud, but here goes: customer satisfaction is dangerous. Yes, you heard me correctly. Satisfaction is dangerous! I was alerted to this paradox last week at the National Sports Forum in Orlando, where Disney — and the in-venue fan experience — took center stage.
Disney has been making a name for itself in sports lately, teaching teams how to better curate the fan experience, which they say is tantamount to fan loyalty and profit. As sports teams we sell experiences. The fan experience is our product. A satisfactory experience is a neutral experience, much less than we should strive to deliver as we fight to earn our shares of consumer discretionary spending.
OK, Pat, so how do Disney and customer satisfaction relate to my mobile app?
Glad you asked. You see in addition to Disney talking about the fan experience, the Sports Forum also featured much talk about the state of mobile devices and mobile connectivity in the sports world. This chatter had two recurring themes: First, the mobile device will play a pivotal role in improving fan experiences. Second, most venues lack sufficient connectivity to make mobile really work for fans. Translation: We’re having trouble watching videos in our venues.
As I sat listening to teams bemoan the fact that their venues lack sufficient bandwidth to serve videos to fans via a mobile, I couldn’t help but think that they’re missing the point entirely.
Surveys say our fans are (barely) satisfied with team mobile apps.
In January, my company Coyle Media conducted the Social Sports Poll, which surveys fans on social media and mobile platforms. The results were bad for team mobile apps, with fewer than 50 percent of fans reporting their favorite team app was easy to use, let alone useful. Less than 40 percent feel their favorite team app functions well and less than 30 percent feel strongly that their favorite team app delivers something they can’t get anywhere else. To say fans are satisfied with our apps is being generous, but then again fan expectations of mobile in-venue are very low at present. Veteran fans are accustomed to having trouble connecting, and they don’t blame the team or venue, yet.
Will pushing mobile video get fans off the couch and into stadiums?
Take a close look at team mobile apps in any league and you’ll find they all look similar. They even sound alike. App store descriptions promise that teams apps will “enhance your game-day experience” with news, stats and video on demand.
I believe this content-centric perspective is preventing teams from innovating in mobile and, without rapid innovation on this front, the fan experience will begin to erode. I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea for teams to include news, stats or even video to their official apps. But there is mounting evidence that teams cannot compete with ESPN on the content front, so they’d be well advised to take a new tack.
Despite poor connectivity and lack of mobile video on demand, 60 percent of our respondents said the stadium is their favorite place to watch games while just 30 percent would prefer to stay home. A large portion of ticket buying fans doesn’t care about getting replays on demand. Even if every in-venue fan did want replays on demand, adding sufficient connectivity to serve video on demand at scale requires a healthy seven-figure investment, which most stadiums can’t afford to make. Despite this reality most major leagues seem hellbent on finding ways to push video to mobile, hoping to replicate the home viewing experience. I believe that as long as we’re focused in solving this huge technical problem, we’re not addressing smaller issues we could be solving for fans via mobile.
If Disney ran our mobile strategy, they’d say you don’t need to “go the extra mile.” You only need to go the “extra inch.” Do the little things. Solve the little problems, and you’ll delight your customers.
The first question we should be asking isn’t “how can we push video to the phone in order to compete with the home viewing experience.” We should be asking, “How can we leverage the ubiquitous smart phone to enhance the ticket ownership experience?” Think driveway to driveway. What would help our fans?
We should be thinking about the problems we can solve for our customers. That’s how you design a valuable product, and that’s how you surpass customer expectations. If we want fans to engage with our apps, we need our apps to be compelling products. Even as the screens at stadiums are getting bigger, the smallest screen deserves more careful attention than it is getting.
I believe that improving the fan experience is the key to keeping stadiums full, and mobile can play a role as long as we think of apps as products.
Why am I beating my chest about improving mobile products?
Disney says the key to great products is to BE INTENTIONAL. Over manage things that others under manage or ignore. As I watch teams play follow the leader on mobile, each imitating other teams, doing just what other teams do, I see opportunity for improvement (and I see danger if we don’t improve).
Fans are having experiences (outside sports) which will be impacting their expectations of sports. We need to take off our blinders and get busy going the extra inch. We can leverage mobile to do more than simply push content. We can make the fan experience better with mobile. This will help us sell more tickets and help our sponsors reach our fans in more powerful ways. If we don’t address the mobile fan experience, we may be left with a gradually declining base of satisfied customers.
Pat Coyle is a sports marketing consultant, Sports Fan Graph Creator and Sport Entertainment and Venues Tomorrow speaker. He can be reached by email at pat@coylemedia.com and on Twitter at @sports20