CASE STUDY
BOOKING SERVICES FOR LOYAL CUSTOMERS
European golf retailer American Golf relaunched its customer loyalty scheme this May and is using booking and reservation technology to draw customers back in-store
H
aving launched its new ‘AG Club’ loyalty scheme this year, American
Golf, one of Europe’s largest golf retailers, is using real-time distributed booking and reservation technology to schedule new in- store services for a million of its most loyal customers. The retailer stocks a full range of golf
equipment for golfers of all levels including irons, drivers, putters, balls, shoes and clothing sold both in-store and online. AG Club members receive free benefits,
including a custom fitting session, PGA lesson and golf MOT which can all be booked online through a branded version of the BookingBug reservation system. “BookingBug is vital to booking the
lessons or club MOT online,” Daniel Gathercole, head of marketing at American Golf, told Retail Technology. “Customers can also book free custom
fit appointments online through the new bookingbug interface. We’ve done some focus groups in last few weeks too and feedback from consumers is that the PGA
46 Autumn 2014
pro lessons are the main benefit and mixes really well with a broad range of consumer groups. American Golf wanted to link its online
presence and its stores more closely, using the web to drive footfall into its stores. “Research shows that people visit our
online store and then visit or physical store and vice versa, so it’s part of that multichannel experience,” he said. “We wanted to driving people into
booking a 30 minute appointment with a member of staff.” The retailer also wanted to roll
out a booking solution to capture data effectively. “We were doing a lot of in- store fitting appointments but none of them were getting tracked,” explained Gathercole. “We wanted to offer a better customer
journey: to send them an email when they booked, followed up by a phone call or email and by the ability to check in with that customer in six months time and ask them how they are getting on with the new
clubs. The main reason was data capture and triggered email. This was critical to the launch of our loyalty scheme.” The BookingBug system is linked into
American Golf’s database system, to ensure that PGA pro lessons are only booked once a year. “BookingBug talks to our GI Solutions
system to see if someone has already used their credit and alerts them on the website.” The retailer said it had noticed the
work Bookingbug was doing with the likes of Pets at Home and that when it approached BookingBug, it was interested in the administrative side of the solution. “There are a few online booking
solutions out there, but this is the easiest one. We have 105 stores and a lot of our staff are PGA golf pros that are not that ‘online savvy’. We needed the admin side to be easy to use and manage. “The solution’s really simple from an
admin and consumer perspective, very easy to set up and use. The benefits are there
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