“[App My Community] has definitely helped our business and I would totally recommend them to anybody else that has a campground with this sort of customer base.”
– Brittany Plue, co-owner of Red Eagle Family Campground in Coe Hill, Ontario
The Customer:
A Family-Owned Lakefront Campground with Loyal Seasonal Residents
Nestled on the shores of Ontario’s Wollaston Lake, Red Eagle Family Campground promotes a family-friendly atmosphere for its seasonal residents. Boasting a picture-perfect sandy beach, swimming raft, water trampoline, and water slide, this summertime retreat offers endless hours of recreational fun, including themed activities like beach volleyball, horseshoe tournaments, relay races, and more.
Home to community hiking and biking trails and located just a short drive from scenic waterfalls and epic ATVing, this family-owned campground attracts vacationers of all ages.
The Challenge:
Managing Paper-Based Forms was an Overwhelming Chore
Loyal seasonal residents return to Red Eagle Family Campground each year, and they are required to sign a new seasonal agreement prior to the camping season. Previously, campers completed physical forms for a variety of campsite services, including repairs and RV winterization requests. Each of these needs required filling out a printed contract or form, which was then managed by front desk staff, who served as middlemen for everything from work orders to propane purchases.
Keeping track of these forms and routing requests to the correct staff members for resolution was a cumbersome task. “If a customer wanted some work done at their campsite, they’d have to go down to our store and fill out a form,” said Brittany Plue, Red Eagle co-owner. “Then it would come back to the office, and we’d have to direct it to the staff to complete that task. Sometimes it felt like there’d be a little bit of ‘broken telephone’ with things not getting communicated.”
The Solution:
An App-Based Request Process that Eliminated the Middleman
In early 2020, the campground’s owners met Rose Duemig, co-owner of App My Community, at a local conference. The Red Eagle team immediately saw the potential to streamline their process by making their forms available via an app, saving the campground staff a lot of wasted time and frustration.
“Now, we get [campers] to fill out the work order form right on the app,” said Brittany. “We have it set up so it goes directly to our maintenance [team], so they get it right to their phone. There’s no middleman anymore. It’s really helped cut out having misplaced papers, and now we can just quickly pull it up through the app and see if a task is done.”
Brittany said the onboarding process for managing the app was seamless, thanks to the team at App My Community.
“Rose had a bunch of great learning opportunities,” she said. “Different tools, question and answer sessions, and videos on how to start things up. She’s been great if we have any oddball questions here and there, and she gets back to us right away with how to troubleshoot and fix any issues we might be having.”
App My Community has made maintaining the app so simple that Brittany has been able to easily train her staff on the process, freeing up time for her to focus on other aspects of managing Red Eagle. She explained, “They put out a lot of helpful information and training tools, so if I have a different staff member working on the app, it’s easy for me to get them up and running on how to use it.”
The Results:
Gained Efficiencies Improved Operations and Communication
In addition to providing a more streamlined process for submitting and managing Red Eagle’s many forms, the app has provided a myriad of communications solutions for the campground.
“It’s helped with notifications,” said Brittany. “If we’ve had an unexpected water leak and we need to quickly shut the water off to the campground, we can send out a notification right away. Before we didn’t really have a great way of communicating to the entire park. So, it’s helped with better communication to all of our customers.”
She added, “It’s also given them a resource that if they see something, like a tree falling down or a bathroom needing toilet paper, they can report it as an issue. This also goes directly to our maintenance team, and we know about it within seconds. There’s a lot of efficiencies.”
The app has been extremely effective, with user engagement growing each year. Brittany said that paper forms remain available; however, they are now rarely used, as residents prefer the app-based system, which has become essential to the business. “It’s increased the efficiency of how information gets to us and gets to our customers so much that I think there would be a major disconnect if we no longer used the app,” Brittany said.
The Future:
An Easy Way to Source User-Generated Marketing Content
In addition to using the app as a digital solution for campground forms and widespread communications, Red Eagle recently began utilizing it as a marketing tool.
“Being able to submit photos through the app is a newer feature that our customers really seem to like, and we find efficient too,” Brittany said. “We’re mostly using it for marketing content. We have a photo contest through the app that people can submit photos for us to use on social media because some of our customers get way better photos than we can get ourselves.”
Whether Red Eagle is looking for a solution to an existing problem, or seeking new ideas to help them grow, Brittany said she can count on the team at App My Community to serve as a critical thought partner that is always there to dream up new app functionalities that meet the campground’s needs.
“They’ve been great,” she said. “If we ask a question, they’re pretty quick to get back to us. Sometimes there’s already a functionality that we haven’t been taking advantage of that could meet our needs, and they’ve always got something that’s in the works. App My Community has been great at keeping that open communication and being willing to work with us on what our needs are.”
