QubicaAMF Worldwide EMEA regional manager Roger Creamer has brought the company’s training courses for operators of bowling centres to the Middle East for the first time.
“We run a free three-day course for managers and supervisors of bowling centres mainly to try and help them understand the way a business runs, because to be honest my opinion of middle management here is pretty poor,” said Creamer.
“My view of the success of the bowling business, and my business too because I am trying to sell the bowling equipment, is how happy people feel about a visit to a bowling centre; if they’re not happy about the way they were treated they are not going to go again. If an investor isn’t making the money he thought he was going to make, 1) that is not a good example for another investor and 2) the investor himself is not going to expand. So my belief is my business depends firmly on the customer, that is the person that takes his family or wife and spends a few hours there,” added Creamer.
The training course, therefore, focuses entirely on customer service for one of the three days.
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“There is an assumption by management that people know how to do their jobs, but in terms of looking after customers they spend no time on this, so we focus the whole of the last day on how you plan a programme that you can use with staff,” explained Creamer.
This is even more important, he continued, because of that fact that fundamentally bowling is “boring” so “the only thing that makes bowling fun is the people around you”.
“And if you’re in a commercial bowling centre the people include the staff; they add or detract from the experience,” added Creamer.
“If I go to a hotel and pay AED 20 (US $5.4) for a coca cola that I could buy in a supermarket for AED 1 (30 cents), I want someone to add something for the AED 19 ($5.1). I don’t mind paying it but I want to see what the difference is and too often I don’t see the difference, so we developed a management school around 15 years ago,” he explained.
The first regional training course was held in January at Dubai International Bowling Centre, with 12 participants from Dubai, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Creamer said there would be another course in Kuwait City on 6-8 April at Cosmo Bowling, two courses in Istanbul in late May and then another course in Dubai in June/July, with a maximum capacity of 15 people on each course to ensure interaction.
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