Day: June 9, 2021

Feedback, failure and asking how you can improve

by
Man happy against blue brick wall

In business, humility is a virtue. We cannot get everything right the first time, every time. 

And no matter how hard we try, this is no less true in the Gym and Fitness Club business.

Machines will be over-used or break, members will be stressed and won’t achieve their goals with the best will in the world, the coffee might be luke-warm on coffee Friday. 

It isn’t about the mistake or the short-coming, it is about how it is addressed. In this short blog we will be looking at quick and easy ways to ensure that the valuable feedback that your members have can be communicated, harnessed and actioned.

 

Feedback Boxes


This is a classic across many organisations and with good reason. By placing several Feedback boxes in prominent positions across your Gym or Fitness Club and making sure that they are regularly monitored, you’ll be helping to ensure that your Member’s feel like they have an omnipresent way to make their voice heard.

Don’t fall into the trap of putting feedback boxes only in the lobby area, foyer area or entrance/exit corridors. This will be the area where your Members will be focused on arriving or leaving.

It might seem intuitive that this will be the place where they have the most cumulative experience at your Gym or Fitness Club, while leaving. However that does not mean they will be particularly interested in breaking down the nuances of their good or bad experience. They will most likely want to get back home and eat, or get on with their working day.

I know after an hour and a half of working out, the last thing I want to do is fill out a form detailing everything that sucked.

As such, feedback boxes should be placed primarily on tables in the workout area itself. In addition, encourage and normalise staff to refer members to these boxes.

Furthermore, if the staff are willing and capable at doing so, ask them to listen to the concerns of the members and then write in the suggestions verbatim themselves.

This will allow all the feedback to be centralised even though it is coming ad hoc and at various members of staff. 

 

Ask Them

 

Not to sound like an agony aunt in the papers, telling someone to just talk openly with their spouse. But it really does work!

Set up a doctrine with your staff that will allow them to spend a certain amount of time just talking to willing (emphasis on Willing here!) members about their workouts and experiences with your Gym or Fitness Club.

This will enable your staff to harvest more feedback for the strategically positioned feedback boxes and more importantly, allow them to easily address issues on the spot.

In this culture of increasing impersonal gyms, there is a habit among a growing number of gym-goers of the 2020s to stick to themselves, do their workout and not question anything that may not be to their satisfaction.

This is disastrous as it means that dissatisfaction and resent towards an institution can grow without any indication from the member. It is important that we, as Gym Owners and Staff, attempt to combat this apathy and learned helplessness.

We have found that one key way of empowering members is to simply get the staff to ask them. Some members may take a little coaxing and you should never ask your staff to force their conversation upon someone who wants to be left alone.

But you’ll find if a member is comfortable in your Gym or Fitness Club (and this may not happen immediately), then they will be more than willing to tell you what hasn’t been to their satisfaction!

Specific Questions

Set posters near your Feedback Boxes, or get your staff to ask specific questions that will help coax out feedback from your members.

“Which equipment had a long wait time today?”

“Which equipment did you want to use but couldn’t because it was broken or being maintained?”

“Have you stopped coming at certain times because it is too busy”

“Do you like the music we play?”

Having these questions displayed in prominent positions, or having them on the lips of your probing staff will make all the difference in extracting the information you need to know to improve the experience at your Gym or Fitness Club. 

 

Collect and Collate your Feedback 

 

These last two stages are the hardest part unfortunately. However, they are also the part where the most reward can be reaped from this entire process.

All of your feedback has been flowing into your feedback boxes from various sources. Whether it is members, staff, or a combination of member testimony as written down by staff. You now have several bulky wads of paper.

But bulky wads of paper do not correct a mistake or flaw in your Gym or Fitness Club.

It is important you design a system to break down this feedback into usable data.

One easy way is by making the feedback form structured. Include certain sections that can be easily identified as yourself or a staff member are sorting through hundreds of feedback papers.

By having a format, this can greatly reduce the time taken on trying to parse each individual series of sentences.

Another way could be by eliminating hand-writing all together and having a series of tick-boxes. This has the advantage of not trying to dissect cursive, but also will limit the options that can be fed back on.

Finally, you can have exclusively blank pieces of paper that the customer can free-style write whatever they please on.

This will have advantages, you are more likely to get detailed feedback through this system. But it will also take longer to reduce this into manageable data.

This is a personal decision that must be made based on your staff, your Gym or Fitness Club and your personal preferences.

With that being said, our advice would be to structure your form with questions and then allow boxes for the member or staff to write out the answer. This is a good compromise between both systems. 

 

Act on your Feedback!



The final stage should be unsurprising if you’ve been paying attention. Enact that feedback! Now that your feedback data has been broken down into easily manageable and parsed data. Make the changes.

Have you learnt that the best machine in the gym, the Rear Delt Fly Machine is in constant use between 5pm and 9pm, Monday to Friday. Maybe it is time to consider getting another?

Has the Chest Press been busted by a Lou Ferrigno or Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe several times in the last few months. Maybe it is time to have a talk with them, or get a more sturdy chest press!

Are an overwhelming amount of people saying the changing room is cold, or their favourite electrolyte drink isn’t being stocked? You know what you must do.

Some of this may sound petty or silly but it is the little changes that can really make a difference and the big changes that will transform your membership satisfaction.

If members see your Gym or Fitness Club shifting based on their advice, it will make an impression that won’t soon be forgotten and it will boost retention in a very satisfying way.

 

Grow with Us 

Now that you are thinking of professional growth and development, it is time to meet a business partner who can help you. 

There are many aspects of a Gym or fitness club that need to be worked on. Marketing, software systems, payment, collection, retention strategy. The list can seem daunting, especially when you’ve got to run a Gym or Fitness club, everyday, BAU. 

Ashbourne Membership Management might have the solution.

Get in touch for a full demo of our software, our principles on website design or to simply have a conversation about how we can help you and your gym achieve its full potential. 

Price Freezes, Pricing Structure and Competition While Exiting Lockdown For a Gym or Fitness Club

by
2kg blue weights

No man is an island as John Donne said, and neither is any business. Your Gym or Fitness Club will naturally be affected by the competition that surrounds it, and this has never been more pertinent as Lockdown is being lifted after this most recent (and hopefully last) wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic. 

As such, the Fitness Club and Gym market finds itself in a unique position. How does our industry act moving forward? After over a year of either Pay Freezes, Price Freezes, mass cancellation and the rise of Home-Gymming. It is time to take a look at some of the basics as we move forward out of Lockdown.

So to bring it full circle from the beginning of our introduction, do not ask who the Dumbbell tolls for, it tolls for thee. 

 

Keep your area or each area in mind

This will be easier for a Gym or Fitness Club owner or manager who only deals with one building.

Knowing the area is vital. This isn’t as simple as knowing the competition. Understanding transport links, demographics and other external factors is vital.

Not only that, it is important, now more than ever, to not take this knowledge for granted. Just because you have operated in your area for five or ten years, doesn’t mean it looks the same post-Covid.

Demographics

Some estimates say the population of London dropped by nearly 700,000 people over Lockdown. If you operate in London, that is a lot of potential members gone. If you operate outside of London, that is a lot of potential members gained.

Cities, in general, saw a reduction in population outside of a few outliers such as Bristol and Edinburgh. Towns and Suburbia saw an increase as the British population wanted to enjoy gardens more, and cramped city flats less.

This means the demographics in your area could’ve changed dramatically.

 

Working from Home

Not only that, people have started working from home more, and this is not a trend that shows any sign of abating.

Over the entire lockdown, many traditionally office-based sectors such as the financial sector, software development and investment all moved to a work from home structure with significant infrastructure investments.

Costly offices have been shut down entirely during the last 15 months and working from home has never been so widespread or viable.

As a Gym or Fitness Club Owner or Manager, you need to be looking at how this affects your place in the market.

Was your Gym full of financial sector office workers because of its position in the city centre? Was it next to a suburban development that has just doubled in population size due to the urban flight?

One of these businesses is going to have significantly more members, and another might now have significantly less. You need to understand where your former members are now, and where your potential new members might be.

This represents a shift in demographics in this country not seen since the Second World War and your Gym or Fitness Club would be remiss and essentially flying blind if you did not renew your market research into the new landscape of your local area.

 

Monitor your competitors and their pricing levels

You should never be neglecting the pricing levels, structures and tactics of your competitors, and whenever we are exiting a Lockdown is absolutely no exception.

Keep a close eye on several aspects of your local competitors’ pricing structure. Is there a noticeable reduction in price across all your competitors in an attempt to win customers back after a period of hardship and separation from their member base? Conversely, has the price risen due to perceived increased demand in your area?

Your pricing decisions should be based on real market analysis, so keep an eye on what they’re charging for various membership types. As we covered in the last section, this could be based on research they have done that has revealed something you do not yet know.

A high tide may raise all boats, but you can still be in the best position to exploit and utilise that high tide. Look for patterns in your competitors’ movement that may indicate where your business needs to look or what it needs to do moving forward.

 

Cancelled Memberships: What happens next

Even if your Gym or Fitness Club froze all your memberships instantly in March or April of 2020 when the Covid-19 Pandemic’s effect became clear. It is likely you have lost some members.

Given everything we have detailed so far with the effect it has had on the country, it is hardly surprising that you may have lost some members. And without open facilities to attract new members, this means most Gyms and Fitness Clubs will be in full recruiting mode.

This will leave most regions and localities looking very different to how they have done in the past.

For once, it seems likely that every Gym or Fitness Club in a given area will be thinking ‘How do I attract New Members within the next month’. Rather than some being at capacity and some being happy just to coast.

This means there will be a lot of competition and one area worth focusing on is the reclamation and consolidation of any members that cancelled during the last 15 months between March 2020 and June 2021.

Utilising your market team to make it clear your Gym or Fitness Club is back open is the first, apparent step.

After that, it will become a matter of offers, nostalgic reminders and events that will have to get them dropping those 5kg dumbbells that live under their sofa and back onto your state of the art equipment. 

 

Frozen Memberships. What happens next

From time-to-time your members might have a genuine reason for not being able to attend the club but recently they’ve had a damn good reason not to attend. As such, many Fitness Clubs and Gyms took the decision at the beginning of the lockdown to freeze membership direct debits until the time it seemed possible to re-open safely, once lockdown had been fully lifted. 

Rather than letting them cancel this allowed for the mass freezing of memberships in a way that hadn’t been done before on a nationwide scale.

However, with freezing comes significant risks. There is a significant chance that even though the membership has been frozen for so long, now the world is opening up the member could turn around at the end of this freeze period, instantly stopping their direct debit now that the prospect of returning has arisen.

It has been proven that many gym-goers are reliant on momentum and habit and those are obviously factors that have been curtailed and shattered in the last 15 months.

Thus it is very important to try and work on a campaign of integration back into the club. This could range from events and clubs, to new equipment, free t-shirts and even discounts. 

If possible, get your staff to contact individual members during this period of unfreezing and lifting Lockdown to determine:

  1.  When the freeze started, confirm the terms of the freeze and then check the members contact details.
  2.  Ask them when they would like the freeze to end and try to encourage them back as soon as safe and possible..
  3.  Try to end the freeze on the phone to reduce repeat admin and increase revenue. But make sure your staff respect the member’s wish if they do not wish to unfreeze yet!

 

Conclusion

The path out of lockdown isn’t going to be easy, but it does represent an opportunity.

A lot has changed and not all of it is necessarily for the worse. We find ourselves in a new environment and that environment comes with its own challenges, trials, opportunities and successes.

As we move into the summer, hopefully, this guide we have laid out will help you appreciate some of the challenges that lie ahead and how to make them work for you! 

 

You needn’t do it alone 

Lockdown wasn’t just an unprecedented time for Gyms and Fitness Clubs, it was also unprecedented for us as a Fitness Payment Management Solutions company.

We rose to these challenges in a big way and as such are now more ready than ever to help your club or gym move into this new future.

If you are interested in how we can help your club enter the post-Lockdown market and really power up your operation, please contact us today for a free demonstration!

We hope to hear from you soon!