RESOURCES / Blog


Its All About Retention

May 25, 2012

By: ABC Financial in Conjunction With The Retention People

Welcome to the first in our series of Retention Newsletters for 2012; brought to you in partnership with The Retention People (TRP). We will continue to deliver you the latest research and news every quarter, to ensure that you are kept completely up-to-date with TRP’s latest findings and developments in the retention field.

What makes good clubs good and bad clubs bad?

The 2012 UK Health and Fitness Industry Loyalty Survey used the Net Promoter Score™ metric to assess the loyalty of health club members across hundreds of clubs.

The results between the best and worst performing clubs ranged from -67 to 76! (For more information on NPS® and the 2012 Survey results visit www.theretentionpeople.com/nps). Over 40,000 members responded to the survey and in this latest research piece, TRP analyzed the feedback from these members to see if we could identify any trends between what makes good clubs good and bad clubs bad.

TRP took the top scoring clubs, with NPS scores ranging from 67 to 76, (fantastic scores putting them on a par with world leading companies such as Apple and Amazon) and combined their members’ feedback comments into one data pool. A second data group was formed using the feedback from the bottom scoring clubs who had NPS scores ranging from -18 to -67 (the worst score ever seen in our industry!)

What did TRP researchers find regarding Promoters?
(These are the club’s biggest fans and scored a 9 or 10 when asked how likely they were to recommend their club to a friend or colleague).

  • In the best performing clubs, there were common themes in the feedback with Staff and Great Service found to be the overriding reasons for members giving the top scores
  • In the lowest performing clubs, again there were common themes but this time Facilities was the most common reason given by Promoters, closely followed by Staff

What did the Detractors have in common?
(Members choosing 0-6 when asked how likely they were to recommend their club to a friend or colleague).

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  • There were common themes in the detractors from the bottom scoring clubs with 1 in 4 members citing Poor Service as the reason for their low score, closely followed by 1 in 5 giving Maintenance as their reason
  • But in the top performing clubs there were no negative comments about their Staff or Service In fact, being crowded / too busy at peak times was the only trend found amongst this group

Conclusions

  • The top performing NPS clubs are scoring highly because of their staff; this included low cost operators, showing that even in a lean staffing model, it’s the staff who create loyal members
  • The common theme in poor performing NPS clubs is a poor service culture and badly motivated staff, creating many detractors and complaints
  • People, People, People! Health and Fitness is a people industry, and we must not forget how important staff are in defining members’ experiences within our facilities.

Get the right team and culture and you will have raving fans, get it wrong and every issue in your club from maintenance to cleanliness will cost you much more than it should.

For the full research article please visit our dedicated Retention News website at: theretentionpeople.com

www.theretentionpeople.com
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