The Many Ways of Validating the Customer Experience

Someone at Sports Illustrated is clearly paying attention to the latest trends in online surveying. They've come up with a survey front-end to tabulate the first ever (to my knowledge) Fan Value Index. They're asking fans to rate elements of NFL teams' stadiums on a 1 - 10 point scale. The aspects of the stadium experience include the volume of traffic surrounding the stadium, the fan atmosphere, the tailgating experience, and the physical features (seating layout, viewing angles, etc.) of the building.

While being "fan validated" could certainly become a unique selling proposition for a floundering team, I wonder if the folks at SI have their methodological ducks in a row. Using the internet to capture feedback about an offline experience is certainly being done in many sectors, most notably hospitality, where after-visit e-mail surveys have become a staple. But doing so without first capturing demographic and psychographic information, as the SI survey neglects to do, scuttles so many insights and removes the possibility of tactical segmentation. Moreover, their survey comprises 8 open-ended questions; the law of diminishing returns would suggest that this is bound to invite respondent fatigue.

Alright, maybe I'm being a little bit harsh. After all, listening in this way is a good first step. How long have fans been grumbling that team owners have been inattentive to their complaints about things like parking capacity and ticket prices? Avinash Kaushik has blogged persuasively about using visitor loyalty benchmarks to measure success on pure content sites, and I think this approach would translate well to the SI survey. After all, stadium attendance tends to ebb and flow with a team's performance on the field, so measuring gate receipts only would paint a poor picture of whether or not the fans are actually enjoying the venue. Another method of validation is needed, one which we've been been championing for years: the voice of the end user.