The trampoline park industry is one of the fastest growing entertainment industries in North America that offers friends and families a new fun and engaging experience. With so many people finding these expanding businesses, the operators have needed to develop their wrist band programs to increase their customer base and overall satisfaction.
Control Play’s Adam Melrose works directly with park owners to create useful and automated audio messaging to help the businesses manage their jumpers and time cycles.
Melrose explains the basic concept of wristband programs as a way to track the purchase of jump time in units of 30, 60, or 90 minutes, and to monitor their validity until a specified time. He states that their system helps automate this process.
Rather than having floor personnel or staff going through the park and explaining to each jumper with specific wrist bands that their time is up, operators can use automated messages from Control Play to inform everyone in the park.
Not only do these messages help regulate times and jumpers, but they also keep turnover times fast, efficient, and consistent.
Melrose explains how, prior to becoming Control Play customers, many parks would have to ensure someone remembered to manually announce the changeover at the designated intervals.
“What happens, is that they’re ten minutes late, they make the message, and someone else is upset because they got less time. The execution,” Melrose emphasizes, “of that messaging is where we deliver huge value.”
The owners simply can send their schedules and messages to Melrose and his team who then create the automations with Control Play’s software tool. Each message is seamlessly integrated into the playlists they already have.
Beyond keeping the messages properly timed, Melrose finds that the automations do another very important thing for businesses: they keep the tone and delivery consistent and clear.
When it comes to creating the right automated messages, Melrose can his customers offer both generic and customized messaging. He explains how, once upon a time, generically colored wrist bands of red, blue, or yellow would be used, but there were “the crafty people out there” who would find those generic wrist bands and use them to con jump parks. Having the option for more customizable messages allows park owners to keep their wrist bands updated and changing.
“A lot of the big groups we work with will have their own specific schedules that they make, and we’ll make custom announcements for that.”
When enough customers begin using similarly styled wrist bands, Melrose continues, his team will often turn messages for that style into a generic form so that more customers can access it.
Control Play is also the preferred messaging vendor for one of the largest trampoline park companies in North America, helping to distribute consistent audio automations to over 300 locations. Melrose’s team is well-versed in handling any kind of message with an intense amount of variety. Any company, whether it has a single location or a hundred, will see the benefits of automated messaging throughout their parks.
“The work is very similar,” he says, when discussing what it takes to work with small versus large companies. “We’re still programing similar music for the vibe they’re looking for, and, if anything, it’s nice for the guy who owns six to ten locations because he can just let us know to ‘cookie-cutter this.’”
Whenever Melrose signs up a new client, the first thing they need to know is what the average week the park has. That way, he explains, they can figure out what type of music plays when and how best to incorporate the automations. Regardless of the size of the park, a blueprint is quickly laid out for their automations and playlists revolving around the wristband schedules.
“It’s just having a quality conversation about what are the demographics and the different parts they see throughout the week,” he says. With the client knowing the schedule, it makes it relatively easily for Melrose’s team to input the necessary components into their system.
“Most of it is pretty repeatable,” he continues, remarking on how many of these parks’ weekly schedules remain the same, often only being updated quarterly. When large groups rent out the entire park, however, is when the automations need to change, but Melrose ensures how easy of a process it is on both ends.
Ease of use and peace of mind are the focal points of Control Play’s automated messaging service for these jump parks. The day-to-day business for the owners becomes simple and manageable, as they can focus more on the customers. Meanwhile, the customers themselves have a more positive experience as the service limits confusion.
“There’s no rocket science to what we do. Do you have the time and effort to put into, and is your time worth less than paying a monthly service? In most cases, that answer is no.”
Melrose and his team take all the busywork away from the owners – like finding the hottest tracks, updating music playlists, and recording announcements – so that they can focus on the big picture of their business.
“Our approach is to serve as a trusted consultant and partner, ensuring that all needs are attended to and reducing the burden on our clients. It’s just one less thing for them to deal with,” he explains.
He does understand and know of numerous jump parks that aren’t subscribed to Control Play, and how, at the time of the interview, 2:20pm, there would be employees pausing the music to make their manual announcements. Melrose emphasizes how the messaging and automations they make for clients is not impossible to be done without Control Play, but the number of headaches, as he puts it, that they alleviate for these owners is uncountable.
“It’s one more moving part that they need to manage.”
Another thing the automations include is any safety messaging that is often required of the parks by insurance companies. Their system retains records and logs of what was played throughout the day to help protect the parks for legal reasons. This would be much more difficult and tedious with manual messaging.
“As much as it’s about rotating the floor and reminding people you’re selling gift cards or to hit the snack bar after they’re done, it’s also about promoting safety and making the guests aware.”
Melrose often will hear of operators discussing increased traffic and sales alongside their new automated messages, particularly for messages promoting gift cards, special events, and promotions. Tangible purchases such as gift cards or tickets to special event parties can often be directly tracked to the messages included in the daily rounds.
“If they sell pizza at the snack bar,” Melrose describes, “and we’re promoting pizza, and the snack bar personnel comes over and says, ‘Hey, let me know when you’re going to play that, I’m running out of pizza’ – I love hearing stories like that. It’s a total success to what we’re doing.”
Working alongside Control Play leaves jump park operators with three key takeaways: peace of mind, particularly regarding appropriate music playlists; proper messaging execution, including consistency and automations; and the service’s customizability for their venues.
