What were the pool sessions like in your OW course?

[emoreira]

I've done the survey. Nice.
My numbers are too big to fit.
I had 16 pool sessions plus the pool exam.
When I finished the course, I wanted more, so, fortunately, the scuba school had the pool reserved for ex-students and students to practice, rent tanks, reg and BCD and free use it.

 

[gypsyjim]

As Coleman's girlfriend said at the end of "Trading Places" when asked whether lunch should be shrimp or cracked crab...

"Can't we have both?"

Frank, you're echoing one of my rallying cries here. There are "divers" and there are people who "want to go diving." The dive industry has never understood that these are largely two different groups of people. Sure there is some overlap... and one needs to be in the latter group first. However, the industry needs to recognize them as different segments, they should be treated differently, and we should have different expectations of them. It's the most basic of customer segmentation approaches.

The industry needs to...

1. Focus diver acquisition efforts disproportionately on attracting people with a disproportionately high likelihood of staying with diving. Those who will "become divers." (Finding out who they are requires a little bit of effort, but it's fairly straightforward. Though it's NOT as easy as saying "non divers look just like divers demographically.")
2. Accept those people who respond to our acquisition efforts but merely "want to go diving" with open arms. But spend disproportionately less effort/time/money trying to force them to "become divers." Doing so will waste our efforts and actually scare them away entirely. Make it efficient for them to get started and efficient to "become a diver" if they want to, but don't hit them over the head
3. Focus diver retention efforts disproportionately on keeping those people with a disproportionately high likelihood of staying with diving. (See Step 1 above.)

Businesses like Walmart understand that there are customers who will only spend a few dollars a year at Walmart and that there are people who will spend thousands. They have efforts to attract - and keep - both. But those efforts are very different.

My guess would be that some ops will always seem to have a much higher rate of "..attracting people with a disproportionately high likelihood of staying with diving..." than other ops, and I would suggest that this is not in the "attracting" part of the equation, but rather in the satisfying, fully training, and inspiring part of the equation. Some ops and Instructors are just going to be better at motivating and inspiring their students to really commit to the sport enthusiastically, than other ops and Instructors.

It would seem to me that this might have less to do with the raw materials they start with, than the product that they deliver, and the follow up services that bring the "new diver" back for more, and more.

I am not an Instructor, a DM or even an operator, so this is purely my observation, after having "sat" through several OW classes.

 

[stuartv]

One thing about the survey: It asks questions about pool size adequacy and about class size. It doesn't really ask about the ratio.

I answered that the pool was too small. It was an Olympic sized pool. But, we only had the last two lanes going crossways across the deep end to use. And that still would have been fine, except that we also had 8 students plus about 4 or 5 Instructors and DMs. So, it wasn't REALLY too small. It was just too small for the number of people we had. Swimming around during "play time" was an exercise in not running into people more than a chance to practice skills.

I also answered the class was too big (I think), for the same reason. 8 students wasn't really too big. It was just too many for the amount of pool space we had.

I don't think the survey questions would afford the ability to draw the conclusion that the student to pool size ratio was too high. Only that pools were too small/too big/just right, and the classes were too small/too big/just right.

 

[RJP]

I would suggest that this is not in the "attracting" part of the equation, but rather in the satisfying, fully training, and inspiring part of the equation. Some ops and Instructors are just going to be better at motivating and inspiring their students to really commit to the sport enthusiastically, than other ops and Instructors.

From a "marketing" perspective, almost every customer retention problem I've ever seen was actually a customer acquisition problem... just a little further downstream. The problem is not "attracting the wrong types of people" but in not realizing you've attracted different types of people.

Of course, if there are issues that prevent the right people from getting further down stream that's a huge issue.

If I owned a shop I'd have distinct acquisition strategies to attract four distinct customer types:

1.) "People who want to be divers" (Dedicated Divers)
2.) "People who want to go diving sometimes" (Vacation Divers)
3.) "People who want to go diving once" (Bucket-List Divers)
4.) "People who want to try diving." (Potential Divers)

Retention strategies would be tiered accordingly, with more effort focused on those higher up the ladder.

Recognizing they are different customers, with different desires and motivations is critical to attracting them... and keeping them. Irrespective of their differing lifetime value as customers.

---------- Post added March 31st, 2015 at 03:37 PM ----------

One thing about the survey: It asks questions about pool size adequacy and about class size. It doesn't really ask about the ratio.

I don't think the survey questions would afford the ability to draw the conclusion that the student to pool size ratio was too high. Only that pools were too small/too big/just right, and the classes were too small/too big/just right.

Oh ye of little faith!

Since I have all the data for pool size AND class size for each respondent I can determine a relative "ratio" of one to the other. This will actually be far more reliable than trying ascertain what actual pool sizes were, how much room was allocated to the scuba class, etc.

Your answers are consistent with you're experience. Assuming everyone else's answers do as well... affords a perfect opportunity to draw conclusions. Especially since the back-end analytics provide the ability to cross-tab and test correlation between and among subgroups.

 

[stuartv]

Oh ye of little faith!

Since I have all the data for pool size AND class size for each respondent I can determine a relative "ratio" of one to the other. This will actually be far more reliable than trying ascertain what actual pool sizes were, how much room was allocated to the scuba class, etc.

Your answers are consistent with you're experience. Assuming everyone else's answers do as well... affords a perfect opportunity to draw conclusions. Especially since the back-end analytics provide the ability to cross-tab and test correlation between and among subgroups.

Maybe I'm misremembering. I thought the only question you asked about pool size was whether I thought it was the right size. Similar for class size.

If I am remembering the questions correctly (which I could totally NOT be), you have no way to look at the data I gave and determine whether the pool was too small (absolute), or too small (relative to class size). I would have had the same answers if the pool was a backyard above ground pool (too small, no matter the class size) and the class size was 50, with one instructor (too big, no matter what confined body of water was used).

 

[RJP]

I don't want to get into too much about this, lest it dissuade people from participating (which it has a high likelihood of doing) but the fact of the matter is that absolute pool size is somewhat immaterial. If you thought it was too small... it was too small. If there was a need for gathering absolute pool size - and I thought I could reliably gather it - I would have attempted to do so. But since the range of options there is nearly limitless (I'd need to gather, depth, width, length, shape, what proportion was allocated to the class, etc) the likelihood of getting accurate data would be low, and the likelihood of respondent fatigue and drop-out would be high. In the end... I'd end up with LESS ability to draw conclusions than with the given Goldilocks approach.

 

[gopbroek]

My pool sessions were several hours in Akumal bay during a 4 day OW referral course in Mexico. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was one on one instruction. As skills were taught we then progressed. Once certified I dove heavily for the next week and that I found to be the real training. While this was a very minimalist approach I was OK with it.

 

[gypsyjim]

Certainly attracting the best potential customer for your product is always a part of the equation, but so is quality of service after you have attracted any customer.

Good customer service, product and personality has often turned "just a casual browser" into a loyal customer for a great many products and services.

Some dive ops are just plain better at what they do, and a higher percentage of their students become long term Divers, while, no matter how high a quality student some ops attract, they tend to be much less effective at inspiring a love of our sport, because of their methods, attitudes and personalities.

 

[RJP]

A bunch of us were chatting at a scuba trade show over the weekend about the best structure for pool sessions for an initial scuba certification course: how many sessions, how long, how many students, etc. We all decided that we were in agreement as to what WE thought would work best.

However, we also decided that we had no idea - nor had anyone ever specifically asked - what the students thought about the way the pool sessions were structured.

Thought it would be interesting to find out, so here's a quick survey that I hope folks will take:

Pool Sessions in Initial Scuba Training Survey

If you've already taken the survey - thanks!

Will report full results out here on Friday.

If any shop, instructor, group (or dare I say agency) wants a separate link to share with their own mailing list/FB/twitter, etc PM me. Such a link will allow me to give you a separate data report for just your participants.

Thanks!

 

[Roman_66]

Done, You concentrate on pool questions, but some scuba courses are not includes pool at all.
So question "HOW MANY pool sessions did you have during your initial scuba certification course?" should have also option - 0
I mean my all course was in open water starting from first lesson.