What's Your Experience?

We’ve been talking a lot about selling experiences recently. 

As competition intensifies for people’s reducing disposable income, we’re seeing a slow rise in attrition from clubs.

Price increases are needed to meet rising operational costs, including increasing minimum wage.

Most readers will know that reducing service is a false economy – we need to maintain or increase customer service to retain more members.

Understanding, experiencing, and measuring your key customer touch points is critical for all stakeholders in your business. It’s no longer enough for gym staff to be the ones who know about inductions, group exercise instructors to understand what goes on in a class, or for the body composition device to be the domain of the exercise referral team.

How many of your staff have had a (gym) induction? 

Inductions (aka activations, getting started, welcome sessions, step 1s) are a great example a critical touch point. Your gym staff hopefully know the full detail of a textbook induction, but have your other staff experienced this appointment?

If they are to sell it to members (and they need to sell it), receptionists, sales advisors, or anyone giving a tour (casuals, lifeguards, etc) need to have had an induction. If management and back-office staff are to report on and measure the quality of this most critical of first appointments, they need to know how it feels.

Not everyone has to have a full one-to-one activation, but to spend half an hour, perhaps in a small group, with one person role-playing the new member, talking about goals, being introduced to other members, measuring their body composition, and checking the feedback process after the appointment, should be a routine. First aid training is refreshed every year or two to reduce the risk of fatalities on site… refreshing and experiencing the welcome appointment should be a mandatory process for all staff every year, to reduce the risk of cancellations.

The more new member inductions you do, the more first month visits those members will make, which means the longer they will remain members.

Other critical appointments to experience first-hand 

The same goes for health checks, programme reviews, classes, challenges, and any other experiences that are a fundamental part of your member experience. As many staff as possible, from all areas of your organisation should be familiar with how all these interactions make them feel. They’ll understand the feedback better, know how to persuade a reluctant member to take up the appointment or go to a class, and might even enjoy it themselves!

In recent experience, the executive team and trustees are relatively easy to get involved. Regional and deputy managers along with receptionists can be more reluctant, but they are the ones who will make the biggest cultural change, so it is worth persevering. They have the most contact with customers and members visiting, and the day-to-day running of your facility. Rewarding them with a class as part of their working hours or running regular additional induction or coaching sessions to involve as many staff as possible are two tactics that can help. Imagine a club where your front of house staff took part in classes with new members regularly, encouraging and motivating them to come back again.

Multi-site chains can also benefit from comparative site visits, where geography allows. Feedback and collating best practice is good for learning, development, and improvement.

An exception, the mystery shopping experience

One aspect where we don’t advocate staff getting involved is mystery shopping. It can be hard to be subjective, and to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Professional mystery shopping companies employ real people (not fitness industry staff) to tell you how your experience makes them feel. They’ll run a standard shop, e.g. digital, phone, in person, or even join and make a couple of visits, and report back on all aspects of the process, so you can compare months/quarters, sites, and benchmark against others. An ‘internal’ mystery shop will also likely just pick up on the problems, rather than celebrate the wins too.

Get your staff involved, really involved in your most vital processes. 

Just like a great class

 
Recognise and reward staff who get stuck in and call out those who don’t. 

Win over the hard-to-reach staff, and you’ll win over more members, and get them to stick around longer.