EX-MEMBERS RESEARCH
“It must be possible to treat every member’s
request individually and seriously, seeing it
as an opportunity to re-engage them”
process only took a minute and was a waste of my time as well as theirs!” Neil was even more amazed by his
club’s response. “I didn’t receive any contact from anyone – just a letter accepting my cancellation. Considering the reasons why I was leaving, this made me even more angry.” Dianne, 55, a recently retired teacher,
was asked to go through her reasons for leaving, but as she explains, even this didn’t feel like an attempt to dissuade her: “The young instructor was really pleasant, and just said he needed to fi ll in a form before he could organise my cancellation. I answered about six questions, but he didn’t address any of the points I raised. It seemed a bit of a box-ticking exercise really.” One member of the group – Ben,
aged 45 – actually felt obstacles were put in his way to try and prevent him from leaving. He had a back problem and wanted a six-month break: “If they’d offered me a membership freeze I would have accepted, as I do intend to start again, but they seemed to want to make it quite diffi cult for me to cancel. That just made me more determined.” The main feeling shared by the entire
group was one of indifference. Sarah, 32, a radiologist, said: “They really didn’t seem to mind one way or another, and they certainly didn’t see it as a personal comment on them or their facility.” Evidently the clubs and centres our
focus group used felt no obligation to make members feel valued, or treat them as individuals – both factors proven to drive customer loyalty.
Future intentions So did their treatment during the leaving process affect the group’s thoughts about joining a gym again in the future? Opinion was split: a third said they probably wouldn’t consider re-joining; the others had varying views. Steve, a 38-year-old IT programmer,
explained: “I don’t think I would go back to the same gym, but it hasn’t put me off
64 One respondent was so disillusioned she bought a bike instead of joining a new gym
joining another. To be honest, I wasn’t looking for them to change my mind – I just wanted them to make it as easy as possible for me to go.” Annie, a 19-year-old student,
disagreed: “The whole experience has put me off gyms altogether. I didn’t feel like I was valued as a member, and leaving just confi rmed that. I’m going to give gyms a miss and just buy a bike instead!” In conclusion, the focus group
represented the fi ndings of the wider survey fairly well. While people give a lot of reasons for leaving, most boil down to a lack of motivation (or should that be support?) leading to infrequent visits and therefore a feeling that the membership lacks value. For some people, these feelings are
precipitated by external events which truly are out of the club’s control, but for most they are issues that operators could address if they wanted to, with interaction strategies put into place and appropriately trained staff to implement them.
Hold on tight People aren’t generally looking for an exit process designed to change their minds, but considering that most leavers have only been members for a short time, surely the factors that encouraged them to join couldn’t have changed so dramatically? It’s therefore highly likely that a
reasonable proportion of leavers could, with the right approach, be persuaded to stay and give it another go. An approach that recognised a member’s
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
motivation levels, and acknowledged that life situations do change, would be a good start. It must be possible to treat every member’s request individually and seriously, seeing it as an opportunity to re-engage with them and recover the situation. What is certain is that most other
industries would not accept such a high turnover of customers without investing time trying to recover the potential loss – and, if the member did decide to leave, at least make sure the experience was as good as possible to encourage them to come back when they were ready. What happened last time you tried
to cancel your mobile phone contract, for example? Chances are you were put through to a dedicated team member whose specifi c role it was to keep your business at almost any cost. While I’m not advocating that we take mobile phone companies as our role model, their dedication to keeping your business with new offers and packages designed around your individual needs is surely something we can aspire to. ●
Mike Hill is managing director of customer insight specialist Leisure- net Solutions, which conducted this ex-member research exclusively on behalf of Health Club Management. Leisure-net also conducts HAFOS, call-Focus and the Fitness Industry Confi dence Survey, as well as bespoke research for individual companies. Email:
info@leisure-net.org Tel: +44 (0)1603 814233
January 2014 © Cybertrek 2014
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