Types of Surveys
by Barry Morgan on 01/11/13
Fundamentally there are two types of Membership Surveys: The Strategic Planning process is one that is intended to set direction and policy and therefore requires significant input during its development in order to ensure buy-in from the Membership and Board of Directors with respect to the results and recommendations. By its very nature, this process tends to be long term and responsibility for the outcome rests more with the Board of Directors of the Club, albeit with significant input from the Club's Management. The Satisfaction Review is intended to guide the Management Team in the immediate delivery of services and facilities to the Membership. Members' experiences and opinions will change over time so it is important to measure satisfaction levels regularly and take action to address the issues identified between reviews. While each review conducted may test various areas of the Club, it is often helpful to maintain consistency with some questions from survey to survey to allow benchmarking of the results and to provide the ability to measure improvement. While it is sometimes necessary to overlap these functions to a limited extent, it is generally better to keep them separate since they speak to two completely different Membership mindsets. It is also usually wise to address current operational issues in order to assure the Membership that the Club is in "good hands" before embarking on a process to determine long term objectives.
