From Click to Court: Making Tennis Easier to Join from a Parent's Perspective
Welcome to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger Racquet's leader. Your hosts are Kim Basketball, a former All American Tennis player and now the director of professional rackets management at the University of Florida. And Simon Gale, the USTA senior director of Racquet Sports Development. Here are Kim and Simon.
Kim Bastable:Welcome back to Racquet Fuel. I'm Kim Bastable here with Simon, and then we have a special guest today. And this is our episode today. Many of you have likely heard the tagline, what's in your wallet? Well, today, we're going to explore what's on your website.
Kim Bastable:We're studying the plight of a mom who's tried to, wanted to sign up her kids for tennis for the winter session. But in her words, she got overwhelmed and she gave up. The information she needed wasn't clear or wasn't easily available. And we're gonna find out from her what broke down in that process. We often don't know those people leave and we never hear from them and we don't know what frustrated them in the process.
Kim Bastable:So, Simon, I think this is something that we can really learn from today. I know you said this has been an ongoing conversation at the campus.
Simon Gale:Yeah, and beyond the campus, this has been something that I've always paid attention to throughout my career and running multiple clubs and trying to get this right, and and there's more options out there today to automate and so on, but as you said in the intro, we lose people and we don't even necessarily know why, so I think this is gonna be a great conversation today. I'd like to welcome Cate. Thank you for joining us today. Cate's a mom trying to manage busy schedules for two kids. She's got a background in marketing and knows the the industry, but she also understands user experience.
Simon Gale:She understands brand friction. She's in real estate, so that's a big customer service hospitality industry as well in terms of relationships. So, Cate, welcome, and thanks for joining us today.
Parent:Thanks for having me, guys. Longtime listener and excited to actually be on it.
Kim Bastable:So let's put some context on your situation. Can you share what you were looking for with for your kids, their ages, just kind of why you wanted you you're not a tennis player yourself, but, obviously, you thought it might be good for them. So give us the context and the story.
Parent:Sure. So I've never played tennis. I have a memory of using a tennis racket and a balloon once as a kid, and that was the only lesson I ever had and hit balls with my dad, but beyond that, never took lessons. Something that I've learned as I have done some marketing work within the Racquet sports industry is just how wonderful tennis is for kids for learning leadership, but also it's a lifelong sport. So it's something that they can do throughout their entire lives once they know the basics of it.
Parent:So it was a sport that I wanted to get them into. My kids are seven and 10 and don't have any experience in it. So this winter, I started looking for classes. Just like we have to sign up for summer camps ahead of time, I assumed that signing up for tennis was the same way. So I started looking, and I got really frustrated with the process.
Kim Bastable:So what information confused you, or was there information lacking? So I think we're trying to understand what part of the I know you're it's a puzzle when you're trying to put together activities for kids. I think you said you were looking in the winter, but you were also thinking long term, maybe for summer. I mean, summer schedules winter schedules are different. So give us some what what was missing or what did you need that you couldn't find?
Kim Bastable:Or what did you what did you read that confused you?
Parent:Well, one thing that I know is the importance of having a certified pro. So I knew that I didn't just want a high schooler to be teaching my kids or a college kid to be teaching my kids. I definitely wanted somebody with experience because I have seen what happens when they don't have experience, and that's only hurting the players. So that was important to me. So I went to a couple of different clubs in the area and tried to look on their websites.
Parent:And one of the websites, there was just a flyer. I mean, there was no information. They said you need to call to sign up. I'm like, I need to look at schedules. I don't even know when these are.
Parent:Does it even fit in my schedule? So that was tough on that website. And then I went to the other one and I had to download the app. I had to become a member. I had to wait to be approved as a member before I could even see what the schedules were.
Parent:And then when I could see the schedules, there's, you know, red ball and yellow ball. There's different color balls. And I don't know with my 10 year old who has no experience, is she using one of the colored balls that's the soft foam one, or is she big enough and has the, I don't know, intelligence or skill set now where she could jump into normal tennis balls, but she doesn't know what she's doing. And so there was a crossover and a challenge for me with the age and experience and where do they fall within that that bracket. I asked Google.
Parent:I didn't get solid information, and there was nothing on the website that made it really clear for me.
Simon Gale:So how does that how does the Tennis sign up experience firstly, I'm sorry I had to go through that. Are the things these are the things we talk about often in leadership, and Kim and I have talked about just the there's a customer journey and how how many people do we lose before we even get them in the door that we obviously, as I said earlier, we don't know about. But even once they're in our doors, I don't think as an industry, we do as good a job as we could at supporting, educating, and and making sure parents do understand. We we talk about being transactional. We take money, and then we ask for more money in week eight when it's time for re re upping and re registering for the next session in between, what do we do with those customers to keep them connected?
Simon Gale:So I appreciate you being honest and open about this, but tell us a little bit about the Tennis Sign Up experience compared with other activities that you do sign your kids up for? Things that are easier to get into. Explain that a little bit.
Parent:Yeah. So I guess the the comparison that I would have would be we did rec soccer through the city. We did summer camps through a school, and then we did volleyball. And the volleyball was just about as painful as the tennis one and that was painful because, again, we have very minimal sports experience. So they were doing these four week They called it a spring fling and they were doing this thing and you could sign up for it, but it wasn't clear, Is this for absolute beginners?
Parent:Is this for more experienced people? So I would say that experience was similar to tennis. Soccer was pretty easy because it was just rec. We started that when they were in kindergarten. So you're signing up with your grade.
Parent:And summer camp is different because of age groups, but it it had its own clunkiness to the system because it's really hard when you're trying to sign up for activities and and we're a split household. So I don't have five days a week I have my kid to sign up for classes. Their dad isn't necessarily gonna take them. He has a history of not showing up to the things that fall on his days. So if I want them to get to actually go to lessons and do the things, I have to do it on my days.
Parent:So I'm limited to two days a week that I can do that and weekends. So the scheduling is tough, and there's no system that I have found yet in my experience where there's dropdowns with enough filters where you can sort through the things that you need in order to make it with the right ages, potentially the right gender, the right experience, the right classes, the right days, the right times, all of those things, that would be really helpful for me as I'm trying to book and filter through things.
Simon Gale:So one of the things that we try and work on a lot is being less wordy. There's a lot of information on the average tennis website. There's a lot of levels. There's a lot of class descriptions, and it's totally overwhelming. It's a new language that you're trying to learn, and I think roughly about three quarters of parents who sign their kids up for tennis never played tennis.
Simon Gale:So it's a whole new language even before you try and find classes and so on. So it's almost like you need that red easy button, I'm new, and it takes you to a different page and a different site that makes navigating a little easier versus I'm a tennis player and I understand all the language that you're talking about, red, orange, green, yellow, that sort of thing. So it feels like though, you tell me, based on your your situation with two kids, limited time to register them for things and days that you can get them into activities, if the process is a bit broken and you are forced to call or email to get to the finish line or even get some basic information, that's potentially a leaky funnel that we have in our sport. Do you do you get to a point where you just say, I'm done? Obviously, you did in this case.
Simon Gale:But in other sports, would you would are you okay with making that call? Does it give you some clarification if you talk to someone versus I wanna just do it all online? Where do you where do you live on that spectrum?
Parent:I wanna do it all online. I'm busy. I'm doing a million things. When I'm sitting down and I am trying to knock this off of my list, I just wanna knock it off. I don't wanna call.
Parent:I don't wanna wait for a callback. I'm not gonna send an email because that may get lost in the Internet world. I'm also a millennial, so I just prefer it to be really easy and clear, and I I want a good user experience. With Volleyball, I did end up sending an email to get that figured out. And even then, I was like, I don't even know if I did this right.
Parent:Is is she gonna show up and be the only one with absolutely zero experience? So even when they responded to the email, they're in the industry speak. They're in their head and their world of to them, it all makes sense. But to me, I have no idea what's going on, so it makes zero sense. And and from a a user experience, I love the book StoryBrand by Donald Miller.
Parent:And in that book, he talks about taking things down to a level zero for the customer to understand. So get rid of your industry jargon. Get rid of the industry speak. Just break it down basically so a kindergartner could understand what it is that you're trying to do. Because those of us on the website have that have no experience have no idea what we're looking at.
Parent:But I need you to tell me exactly what it is and exactly how to do it.
Simon Gale:So what are those things that are most important when you get it if we peel all the jargon back, as you say, and we get down to the level zero, I like that. From that beginner experience, how old are your children?
Parent:Seven and 10.
Simon Gale:Seven and 10. Right. So they're getting started. I know nothing about the process. I don't know anything about red, orange, green, yellow.
Simon Gale:What does that look like in terms of a website description when you get it down to zero? I get what you're saying, but what does that have to look like to make it as simple as possible for you? What does that sound like? What does it say? How do we make that better?
Parent:I almost look at it and this is just off the cuff right now, but almost look at it like or picture it like a chart. You know, when you're trying to sign up for a software plan and you have three, in this case, three different levels of software, and there's all of these different things. So on the top, it's the different levels. On the side, it's all of the the features that you can have. So there's just like a dot filling in all of the squares for, okay, if your kid is this age and this experience, they need these things.
Parent:These are your options or something like that. Because I think for me, the biggest pain point was I felt like my kids were in between or at least my oldest one with the age and the experience. So I wasn't sure where she fell into that mix.
Simon Gale:Is that your 10 year old? So she's you know, a lot of parents start their kids at five, six, maybe seven. So technically, she's five years behind, so to speak, from starting point and needs to come into the pathway somewhere as a beginner, but there's a lot of those kids who attend have got three or four years experience, so she's not gonna fit with them. And that's where our sport gets complicated. So it's it's not easy to onboard somebody who's 10, 12 years of age and not played.
Simon Gale:It's not difficult if you've got a clear pathway, and that's what it sounds like maybe you're looking for is, hey, come on. I'm a new player. These are the programs for you, and this is when we offer them, but this would be perfect for you because you're a beginner 10 year old or beginner seven year old and here's the pathway and how we progress you through our system, but I don't think a lot of places have that visible. They might have it internally, but is it visible to the customer in a dumbed down way, so to speak, that anyone could read it? A kindergartner could read it and understand where they might start their journey.
Simon Gale:Is that fair to
Parent:Yeah.
Simon Gale:To say?
Parent:Yeah. I think that's fair. And and even if if the answer is, hey, get her in three private lessons, something like that so that she's caught up and ish, you know, has has a better idea at least how to hold a rack and how to hit a ball and how to stand, just the basics. So she's not jumping into a class of being too far behind where she doesn't even know those things, but she's also not in a class with five year olds where I can tell you right now, she will never go back if she's in a class with five year olds.
Kim Bastable:Oh, absolutely. That's understand. Yeah. That's And and I think the other thing that's interesting on this as I listened to you is, was there ever an option or anything that said, you know, thirty minute free assessment so that you could have come in to have that assessment and to have a a pro explain to you what you would need? How would that have felt to you had you been offered even a fifteen minute free assessment?
Kim Bastable:Would that have been worth it for you to get some information?
Parent:I 100% would have signed up for that. I would even pay for that. Okay. Maybe not fifteen minute, but a thirty minute.
Kim Bastable:A thirty.
Parent:Forty five minute. I mean, I would pay for that just to know where I start.
Kim Bastable:But that would need to be easy for you to click and just get.
Parent:I would have done it instantly.
Simon Gale:What does that process look like, Cate? Because I'm Kim, I'm I'm glad you said that because I literally just wrote down free 30. We offer a free 30 here at the campus, but I've offered it at multiple clubs now, and and we convert about 70% of people who come in for a free 30 into paid programming participants. The reason we do it is for people like you who, for thirty minutes of your time, even if you drive fifteen, twenty minutes to get here, say it's an hour and a half of your time, you'll have spent more than that online going through this process and then given up. So if we can get you in easily and have somebody guide you through our system and our pathway and they hit a few balls with both of your kids at once and say, this is where they should sign up and these are the days and times and you could do it right at checkout as you leave.
Simon Gale:That process sounds like it would have been something you would make the effort to drive here versus spending three or four hours online and getting nowhere.
Parent:I would have booked it instantly.
Simon Gale:So how does the booking look, to Kim's question, because this is something we talk about, if you have to make a phone call or go back and forth with three or four emails to get booked in for that, that's where it feels like the millennial in you will say, that's too many steps. I'm out. So it needs to look like what online?
Parent:A a book now. Like, you know, if if they my just initial thought would be that this happens every Wednesday at this time block. So it's just a set time. And maybe there's not enough people for that to happen, but to me, that would make it easy. I will rearrange my schedule for something like that if that's the only time that I can go.
Parent:And and it's just a a sign up now.
Simon Gale:But I don't wanna have to create an account. I don't wanna have to become a member. It's literally book now, no strings attached. I know I'm locked in. I get a confirmation, and I turn up, and at the end of that time, I'm able to register for something.
Parent:Yep. I'll give you my name, my email, my phone number. I understand you're gonna put me on your marketing emails whether I want you to or not. Fine. I will do all of that if I can just do it right in that minute.
Simon Gale:And the motivation for that is is it time? What's the number one reason that because you you can hear in your voice that I'm totally in on that, but is it just time and convenience? What 's the driver of that?
Parent:Convenience. And there's a word I'm thinking of, not coming up with it. But knowledge, basically. Like, I'm gonna be given an answer when I get there. So the confidence.
Parent:So convenience and confidence. That I can do it right now, and then I'm confident when I get there and when I leave, I'm gonna have the answers that I need in order to move forward because all I want to do is move forward.
Kim Bastable:Right. And you made the comment to me, which I thought was insightful, is that even if you had signed your kids up for a tennis lesson based on, you know, without this thirty minute free assessment, you would have wondered what do they need to bring? What do they need to wear? Will they be inside? Will they be outside if the facility has both?
Kim Bastable:Like, do they need water? Just all these expectations of an unsure mom to not to so so you would probably even have had that had you signed up for the free thirty minute. You might need to know, make sure that the club would say, you don't need a Racquet. You need this type of shoes, not this type, you know, non marking soles or whatever the parameters of the club is. And that's information that would assure you that you weren't showing up because I think there would you agree there's a little bit of a fear of even if I sign up and I show up, I might be ill prepared, and my child might We be ill
Parent:ran into that with volleyball. I asked them, what do we need? And they said, nothing. Just a water bottle and show up. And I was like, okay.
Parent:And we get there, and they don't have knee pads. Well, I briefly played volleyball when I was my daughter's age and in middle school, and I know you need knee pads, but they said you don't need anything. So I didn't bring anything. And she wasn't prepared.
Kim Bastable:Well, the other thing that I think tennis has that's interesting and that many people wouldn't know is that at many ages, there are both genders play together. We don't necessarily separate genders. Would you have been an expectation of a purely girls or purely boys class?
Parent:No. No. That wouldn't make a difference for me, or I have no expectation with that. For me, I think it's it's experience level.
Simon Gale:What if it was a free trial class? Same concept, but now you're in an actual class versus a a more personal free 30 where you get some time with someone to help you navigate the process?
Parent:I at first wanted to say yes, but then I go back to I don't even know what my kids should be in. So if I'm signing them up for a thirty minute class and my 10 year old walks into a class with a bunch of five and six year olds
Simon Gale:She's not coming back.
Parent:She's there is no way she's coming back. And and that's my other pain point with this process is I don't even know what class to be signing them up for, or I would've signed them up.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. I think the free class is a bit risky. I can see that. And I'm speaking now from a grandmother perspective of how sensitive grandkids can be to a one experience, and it definitely could be particularly because the class would be an hour long. It wouldn't be thirty minutes, and that's a long time for a child to be uncomfortable.
Simon Gale:But it's quite common in our industry is come for a free trial class, and you see it in a lot of other youth sports as well. But what I'm hearing is the bit more personalized experience so that we set you up. Because I look at you as a ten year customer with that seven year old. Our goal is to have you through 17 and have you go through an entire journey and end up playing on the high school team and and wanna play this sport for life.
Parent:Then she's gonna get into corporate, and then she's gonna stay in the industry because there's so many pathways Yeah. Beyond playing Yes. And
Kim Bastable:Not only your ten year customer, your your future
Simon Gale:Your life your life on industry person. Absolutely.
Kim Bastable:Your future direct I wanna go back to your statement about Google search. You made the comment, I did a Google search. What did you what did you ask? What did you search? Or I asked Google, you said.
Parent:I can't remember now, but it was I just remember the results coming up, and it again, it felt like it was very age based around the color balls instead of experience Okay.
Kim Bastable:So, yeah, it didn't describe the nuance.
Parent:Yeah. So and I'm sure maybe now even in the last few months, it's gotten a lot better. And if I would go back in if I if I cared enough, I was just so frustrated. But if I cared enough, I could have gone into it and said, okay. Well, here's the exact scenario.
Parent:Based on the industry as a whole, where do my children fit in? What should I be signing them up for? But but at that point, I was waiting for my membership to be approved from this one organization. And so it was just I was done temporarily.
Kim Bastable:The idea that you have to download an app and and become a member is certainly a roadblock. Yeah. Did you look at those sound like clubs. And the reason you didn't look at a public park scenario, or did you look at a public park scenario might have been the certified pro comment. I don't know.
Kim Bastable:But there are certified pros at public parks. So did you look at any other types of entities?
Parent:I did look at the public parks. The I think it was timing. I couldn't sign up. They may not have had anything available until the spring or something.
Kim Bastable:So I don't They're just outdoors.
Parent:Yep. And it was outdoors, and I was like, I don't wanna deal with outdoor courts. So I was seeking indoor at that time.
Kim Bastable:Okay. So back to the comment about I think you were headed toward the AI, and I do think we also have a different situation. Private clubs would really only be marketing to the members that are at their clubs through their whatever their channels are. It might be internal newsletters, might be internal websites. But it is possible now, and I I tried it in my area to do an inquiry of what's on the Internet, something like with chat GPT where I honed in on my county, not just my city, but my county, and asked for a program with weekend classes for an eight year old beginner boy.
Kim Bastable:And AI returned five clubs, largely rating them in order of their Google reviews. So would that have do you think going forward you would be using AI to help answer these questions or not?
Parent:I would be using AI before I would be picking up the phone or sending an email.
Simon Gale:And are you using that primarily to get research on best providers in the area and appropriate programs for seven to 10 year olds, as as Kim kinda put in there? What's your main pull from AI that you're looking for?
Parent:For me, it would have been, this particular situation, it would have been the experience levels. So not as much the locations as there were two I had my eyes on, but one of those, due to reputation and then proximity, but one of them had zero information on the website. So I'd be curious if it actually populate in an AI search because I could find nothing.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. It certainly is an interesting era that we we are in now where that really does now come out in AI is whatever's on on your website. So the user experience is the most important thing for, I would say, before they get to the sign up phase. What would you what would have been your reaction had there been a short one minute, two minute video explaining this and giving you insights into maybe some of the questions, sort of an FAQ. Would you have read an FAQ or would you have watched a short video if we would have explained the jargon and the lingo or maybe explained what to do about a beginner 10 year old?
Kim Bastable:Which of those would have been enticing if either?
Parent:I don't like videos. So I'm not gonna watch a video. I will download the transcript. I put videos on and podcasts and everything on usually two x. So I just wanna get through it.
Parent:I'm a reader. So even give me two pages, just something to look through. It's easy to read. I can skim it, and it's clear on what I need. But I personally will not watch a video.
Parent:That's not to say that other millennials or people with parents with kids my age don't prefer videos. My boyfriend loves them. I just can't
Kim Bastable:sit there. Well, so that's an option, Simon. I don't know what you think about the idea of creating even, you know, we might do a a video that shows what's the customer experience when you walk in, what will you expect when you walk in the club, when you enter the court, what can you expect? That type of thing to help someone feel comfortable. What about giving them information through video or through FAQ?
Kim Bastable:Have you have you tried either of those?
Simon Gale:Yeah. I think it's both. I think we've tried to invest in doing more videos, So now Cate's making me question that. But as she said, some people like them, some don't. I think you need a bit of both.
Simon Gale:Give them the option to to search or experience how they wanna experience it. But I think the a welcome video from the the director saying, welcome to our facility. This is our philosophy. Here's our process. If you're new to tennis, here's how it works.
Simon Gale:Go to here. Click there. We do a free thirty. What something that gives you the answers you're looking for within thirty seconds to a minute that maybe attaches a person to the program too versus you've got to go to the about us page to see who our staff are. Is the other staff attached to the page she's looking at with a welcome from the 10 and under director, for example, which would be inappropriate for your two kids?
Simon Gale:I think it's gotta be a combination of both, but can't be too wordy because some people get lost in the words and say, I'm done. I I can't keep reading. I need to just click the red button that says sign up here to your point earlier, Cate. So I think that's one of our challenges as a sport is there's lots of ages, stages, levels, ball colors, racket sizes that go with those ball colors. You can't turn up with grandpa's old wooden racket from the eighties and seventies and have your five year old come out with that.
Simon Gale:So there's a lot of education. And how do we do that concisely in a way that let's get you in the door first and then make sure we educate you along the way so you turn up to the first class the right way? But it's too much to give all in one one hit because we'll lose people as well. So it is a real challenge for our industry. It's not like booking that plane ticket or that hotel room that we talk about.
Simon Gale:You know, you click and you're done. So I'm learning a lot here, but I I hope technology will help with this as well.
Kim Bastable:I'm thinking that. What about the chat? What about an online chat in the corner where you could open a chat to talk to somebody? Would you have done that?
Parent:Possibly. It depends on the chat.
Simon Gale:Not a chatbot who probably can't give you all the info you need. They're gonna end up eventually pushing you to make a call. You need a live chat where you can get some answers potentially or not.
Parent:Not even a not even a live chat because I think the AI chat has become so good now that I could get the answers that I need. My hesitation with chats is sometimes I you pull them up, and it's just lead generation. So they're trying to capture my information and then it's gonna go into something that isn't giving me it's too robotic. They're just trying to grab my information. So I get really hesitant with chat.
Parent:I just wanna jump in like I'm going into ChatGPT, and I just wanna ask a question, and it spits out an answer. And if after that, you ask for my information, would you like somebody to follow-up with you? Absolutely. Here it is. But don't start it.
Kim Bastable:Don't start with the ask for the email. Yeah. I'm curious to know what time of day you were doing this research.
Parent:After hours. It was dark outside.
Kim Bastable:It was dark.
Parent:I remember. But it was winter.
Kim Bastable:Thing that's fascinating. So call calling may not have been an option at that time, depending on what how late it was to get someone, which I think is definitely something we have to consider. So it would have involved an email or a voice mail, and that does revolve around a future communication.
Parent:Mhmm.
Simon Gale:No. And I'm guessing doing it after hours and then the the club's operating hours being eight till six, pushing it to the next day, we've probably lost you by then as well.
Parent:Yeah. Because then I'm getting my kids off to school, and then we're getting home and doing dinner, and, yeah, I've checked out.
Simon Gale:Let me ask you something. This is this is, I think, part of the registration process as well as, let's say you got to a point where you were able to sign up for something. How do you feel about commitment versus flexibility, for example? So it's Tuesdays from five till six for twelve, fourteen weeks, for example, a ten week commitment versus I want flexibility to be able to come and go as I please. Where do you stand on that in today's day and age of where there's a lot more flexibility and and freedom for the customer than maybe there used to be?
Parent:I'm not exactly sure how that flexibility comes into play, but I do know something we we have run into with sports is soccer is six to eight week, and they do great in the beginning. And by the end of it, neither of them wanna go to practice. They don't wanna go to the games. And, course, I make them go because they made the commitment. But it's it's a long time when you're not super into something.
Parent:And what we did with volleyball was and it it was exactly what she needed. There were mix of people that have a little bit of knowledge and people that have no knowledge. So it was a good mix, but it was only four weeks. And that was the perfect amount of time to just test it to see if this is even something we wanna continue before investing eight, twelve, however many weeks into something that we're not into.
Simon Gale:So if it was four weeks and then let's say our regular session goes ten weeks, but you had for a beginner class, it's four weeks. In week two, if you're loving it, we're asking to see if you will continue for the remainder of the session and commit to the next six weeks so that you fall in line with our session. That would be more appealing than I need to make a ten week commitment and I'm not sure if I even wanna do this.
Parent:Absolutely.
Simon Gale:Okay. Interesting.
Parent:But I feel like, you know, I go back to piano lessons. I was I did very few athletics as a kid, so bear with me with my references here, but we did piano lessons. And as far as I know, as a kid, looking back, there wasn't a period, or same with therapy, there's not a period timeframe at which you sign up for something. It's just you go every week and they stack the knowledge on top of where you were the week before. And then if you you decide not to do it anymore, you you just stop doing it.
Parent:And I know that tennis wouldn't exactly work that way because it is important that you're stacking the different skill sets and things that you're learning. But, yeah, having a much shorter commitment for people that have no idea what's going on is very appealing to me. And and I'm not that parent that's gonna force my kid to do something that they don't wanna do because I want them to enjoy what they're doing. We're not gonna be pro players in anything, like, most likely. So I'm just in it for the skill set, the experience, the activity.
Parent:And if they're not in it, we'll find something else.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. I think that's good advice, the idea of short sign up sessions for the beginners. I think there's a lot of motivational theory that goes behind. If you stop while they're still excited about it, they maintain that I wanna come back. I wanna oh, wow.
Kim Bastable:I don't have tennis this week? Bummer. I wanna go back to tennis. So I would say there's a little bit of a like, do the four four lessons, and then give them a week off and see if they don't ask about it. See if they aren't excited, and then they're gonna come back for four more.
Kim Bastable:But if you sign them up for eight or 10 at the beginning by number seven, eight, or nine, you might have a different attitude. So it might be Yeah. Something to try to do the short for for those very, you know, initial beginners.
Parent:But that's part of the pain point too is what I was seeing of there's I'm gonna call them cohorts, and that's not the right word. But seasonally, you know, you've got the winter sessions and then the spring session and the summer session and the fall session. So if you're only signing up for the four week, then am I gonna now miss out on the spring session because we didn't sign up early enough? And now we can't do it again until the summer session. So that was something that I was running into also is in trying to navigate it is, well, are we missing out?
Simon Gale:What are the registration windows? When does it open? When can I first sign up versus I'd missed the window because it wasn't advertised in time or yeah? I understand.
Parent:Do I have to sign up at 12:01? Like, I have to get on at 12:01 in order in the middle of the night in order to get a sign up? Like, how competitive is this?
Kim Bastable:Have you had to do that? Have you had to get on at 12:01 to sign your children up for something?
Parent:Our after school programs, it's it's like 3PM on a certain day it opens up, and if you're not on it, 03:00 on the dot and have everything pre set up, you're not gonna get after school care. It's it's filled within three or four minutes.
Simon Gale:It's like trying to get Taylor Swift tickets, isn't it? Same sort of thing.
Parent:Yeah. Same thing as Taylor Swift. I missed out on those. I was online and didn't get them.
Simon Gale:There you go.
Kim Bastable:Alright. Well, this has been really insightful. I'm sure there are numerous takeaways from this. I think the free 30 would have solved your particular problem. It sounds like you would have loved an FAQ that would have maybe mapped out the dilemmas of cert like, the 10 year old beginner and where do they fit in.
Kim Bastable:I know my daughter as well with a five year old had been told their child needed to be in red ball, and he's a very good athlete, and she wanted to put him in orange ball that would have fallen at the time that she would have had something for her herself at my daughter. Like, there was a mom's class and there was a you know, if she put him in the orange ball, and she did make the conversation to move him to orange ball, and he was fine and successful, but she was super hesitant to do that. And she was a player. She did play before, and she was concerned about whether he was going to fit in. And, again, there's the social implications.
Kim Bastable:He's the smallest in the class, but he's now an orange ball. So this is not this is something I do think there needs to be a little bit of hand holding and communication. But for the beginner, as you say, you're at home at 8PM in the dark. You need more information, or we might lose many Cates in the so I don't know if there's any changes you wanna make in your thoughts, Simon, after this.
Simon Gale:No. I think it reinforces things that we're working on. I think that these are the silent customers that slip away that we don't know about. You know, we're growing, but if we really wanna grow the sport, this entry level entering the arena has to be easy. How many people are we losing just because the process is difficult?
Simon Gale:Because what we know is once they're on the court, the magic happens, and we we connect more kids than we lose. But we're not even seeing Cate's kids.
Kim Bastable:Well, know, it's interesting. I'm just realizing we created rogie, red, orange, green, yellow, for the purpose of catering to these kids, yet we've maybe made it so confusing that if you're a six year old and you wanna just sign up for beginner lessons, that slot doesn't exist. It feels confusing, or an eight year old wanting beginner lessons, that slot, because you don't know where to fit. So it's like we've made it better, made it worse at the same time, and I never thought about that. But we need to just I mean, we need to just better explain.
Simon Gale:Yeah. And and as I think about everything Cate said here and what we've talked about, our biggest competition isn't the tennis club down the road. It's other sports and other activities that are easier to sign up for that is our real competition. Our own competitions ourselves and how complicated we make the sign up process. So I think understanding our language is a challenge, navigating our website is a challenge, the registration process can be cumbersome, and we don't even get to manage the customer journey because we didn't get the customer in the first place.
Simon Gale:Lots of work to do. Hopefully, our directors are making lots of notes, and we will keep working at this and see if we can convert Cate into a tennis fan very quickly. Or her kids, more importantly, get the kids into it. She's already a fan.
Kim Bastable:We get the kids, we might get Cate. She's a pickleballer, so we might need to get her on the tennis court. Well, that's great. We appreciate your time, Cate. It's been very insightful.
Kim Bastable:Thank you for being on Racquet Fuel.
Parent:Yeah. Thanks, guys.
Simon Gale:Thanks, Cate. Appreciate it.
Kim Bastable:Have a great day, listeners. We'll speak to you next time on Racquet Fuel.
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