What a missed call really costs your golf club
On a Saturday in July the phone rings in the office while two visitors are standing at the desk and a member wants to know whether the course has reopened after the storm. One of the three has to wait. Usually it is the one on the phone, because they cannot see what is going on.
What gets lost in that moment can be put into figures surprisingly precisely. Not because the numbers are the same for every club, but because every club can do the same sum with its own.
The time the phone eats
Let us be careful: in season an office spends 15 to 20 hours a month on the phone. That is a deliberately cautious assumption, not a measurement — check it with a tally over one week. At €22 an hour that comes to roughly €400 a month, for telephoning alone.
The larger part of those calls is information, not advice. What does the green fee cost on Sunday. When does the course open. When does entry close for the club competition. Do I need a handicap certificate as a visitor. It is always the same questions, and they have all been answered already — just not on the phone, but in the head of the person who cannot pick it up right now.
The call that never arrives
More expensive is what never rings. A fourball that ends up at the neighbouring club because your line was busy is €240 to €320 of green fee gone. Not postponed — gone: anyone who wants to play on Saturday morning and cannot reach you dials the next number.
Once a week is enough, and you are over €1,000 a month. And that is the part nobody at the club ever sees, because a missed call leaves no trace. There is no list of the visitors who did not come.
The awkward property of this loss: it appears in no report. It looks like a quiet Saturday.
What is actually avoidable
Not everything. A conversation about membership belongs at the desk, not with a machine. So does a complaint about the state of the course.
But the information questions — green fees, opening hours, competition dates, directions, course rules — can be handled by somebody else, as long as that somebody knows your club's answers and not just any answers. That is exactly what a phone assistant does once it has been set up with your green fee rules, your competition calendar and your daily course note. It picks up when the line is busy or the office has closed for the evening, answers the question and sends everything else to the office as a message.
The side effect is the one that matters most day to day: your team can look after the people in front of them without the phone in their ear.
Run the numbers for your club
Take three values you either know or can collect in a week:
- How many hours a month does your office spend on the phone? A tally over five days, scaled to the month, is enough.
- What does an hour of office time cost you? Gross, including on-costs.
- How often a month is the line actually busy? Many phone systems show this; otherwise ask your team, they know roughly.
Multiply the first two, and set the third beside it, valued at your green fee. What comes out is not a marketing figure. It is your own.
If you like, we will do that sum together — on the phone, in twenty minutes, with your club's numbers. Write to info@vogelsai.com.