AusLeisure

Singapore-based The Entertainment and Education Group (TEEG) is heading into a new phase of its long-running digital transformation in focusing on customer experience analytics.

Speaking at the recent IBM THINK 2019 conference in San Francisco, USA, TEEG's outgoing Group Head of Digital Ross Hoier laid out the company’s digital journey and its likely next steps.

Hoier explained “we’re a venue where customers come to bowl or play games, but it’s really occasion-based, such as for school holidays, work team events, or to just have fun with friends and family."

The company has consistently been trying to engage with its customers in a more personalised way, with Hoier recalling that when he started out with Ardent Leisure's AMF Bowling business (which TEEG acquired early last year) just 1% of transactions were performed online.

He advised "a big ambition for me was to take that to 50%. We didn’t quite get there, but we went from 2% of revenue from online to 27%, which is a huge transformational shift.”

As reported by itNews, Hoier advised that, in addition to driving up online revenue, TEEG’s efforts were about better using data to personalise the way it interacted with customers.

Advising that prior to the transformation, online as a channel for engagement didn’t really exist, Hoier stated "it’s been a big education piece because customers in Australia are used to either walking into these types of venues or picking up the phone, so a real behavioural shift was needed.

Seeing data as critical to personalising marketing efforts to customers, Hoier noted "a big thing for this business is people say, ‘I love bowling’ or ‘I love playing laser tag’, and then the next question is, ‘Well when did you last come?’ ‘Oh, five years ago’.

“A big thing for us is to stay top of mind and implement some nurture and engagement marketing strategies.

“It’s about delivering the right message at the right time. You really need something compelling to get them back.”

The company overhauled its booking engine, integrated it with a Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM system, and started using IBM’s Watson Campaign Automation to, as Hoier advised, “engage and nurture those customers, but on a more personalised basis”.

“We didn’t want to be just marketing to customers with broad brush communications. Instead, if we knew they came for a kid’s birthday party, that they always come back in school holidays or they came for a work team building event, then we could start to push them down the path (to return).”

TEEG was also able to contextualise why players visited its arcades, for example, by digitising paper tickets that games used to release that could be redeemed for prizes. For a number of years now, it has used a 'debit style card' instead.

Though Hoier has now exited TEEG, he said there is more digital transformation to come.

Seeing further opportunities for TEEG - and the family entertainment sector generally - around gamification and mobile, he concluded "one thing I don’t feel has been cracked in the bowling space is gamification around your bowling scores.

“Deeper personalisation in a business like TEEG could be achieved around scoring.”

Images: Zone Bowling Clayton (top) and the Timezone New Zealand National Championship (below).

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