OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE
Innovate & recruit She adds: “As I say, we’re at the beginning of our journey, but our Product Development Managers have already been tasked with looking beyond swimming to the pool-side experience, be it products – both digital and physical – or build and layout. “We’ve also created a brand new pool-side experience manager role to deliver these products and manage the pool-side team, with a view to contributing to the customer experience beyond lifeguarding. “Good pool-side experience managers have been hard to find, because it’s a role and skillset that doesn’t exist elsewhere. In fact, finding people generally who can bring a customer mindset to pool-side and swimming is hard. However, we’re working to build a team that can help us do things in a new, customer-centric way. “Of course, none of this is rocket science. The problem is, continued high demand and a lack of available cost- to-serve data means there’s no commercial imperative to address pool-side’s obvious issues. And so pools trundle along looking rather like gyms did 30 years ago. “We’re committed to our pool-side proposition, but recognise that it’s time for us to be much more thoughtful about how pool-side delivers for our customers.”
Finding people who can bring a customer mindset to pool-side and swimming is hard.
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STATE OF THE UK SWIMMING INDUSTRY REPORT 2023
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