Guest Author: Bill McBride, President & CEO at Active Wellness
Of course, being a technology company built specifically for the fitness industry means that we believe strongly that gyms should embrace technology as a way to improve business outcomes and processes. Fitness Industry expert Bill McBride, President & CEO at Active Wellness, recently gave a talk and wrote a quick blog saying as much.
Having technology offload work for your customers and employees ensures that you have smooth business transactions and a stellar experience for everyone. Businesses that are able to adapt quickly and put customers first are 38% more likely to prioritize digital transformation initiatives.
This is true for any business, but is especially important for membership-based service companies, and even more so when you are offering a wide-array of services where there are lots of opportunities for a member to have a negative experience.
A specialty chocolate store only has a few components that need to be controlled in order for their customers to be satisfied and, therefore, they can get away with having very basic technology for simple transactions.
Compare this to a health club where not only are you selling products like smoothies and bars but you’re providing a myriad of different services and amenities. Suddenly, keeping track of your employee and member experience starts to become overwhelming.
Even before your member decides to join the gym, or before they decide to make any purchase of any kind, they are online looking at reviews. Ninety-three percent of consumers read local reviews to make a shopping decision, according to a Local Consumer Review Study.
Technology and business are intimately intertwined in ways that you cannot ignore. In a world of choice, deciding which gym to go to, which hotel to stay in or what skydiving company is the most reliable, consumers turn to reviews because they want to have as much reputable and accurate information about what they are buying before they make a decision.
READ MORE: How to Generate More Personal Training Leads using MXMetrics
Reviews are one of the reasons Amazon became the powerhouse corp that it is now; it empowers consumers to make decisions based on “word of mouth”, aka what other people are saying. Getting good reviews is simple - you must provide a great experience that is worth positively talking about.
So how can a gym utilize technology to guarantee that both their members and employees have a fantastic experience from start to finish? And how do you ensure that these members have an easy way to share their positive experience with others? The answer is, you guessed it, technology.
You can’t know what you don’t know. Tech will help your employees sort through the sea of possible rights and wrongs. On top of that, you can use technology to ASK members how they feel about the experiences they have in your club.
Give them the tools to share with you how they feel, and to share with others as well.
