1Life sees significant decrease in attrition with new leavers’ survey

1Life has seen a significant decrease in attrition since introducing a leavers’ survey late last year. Any member wishing to cancel their membership must complete the online questionnaire as part of the exit process.

“As well as making the exit process quick and simple for members, we wanted staff to be able to see the reasons members leave, so that we could track trends and improve our service delivery and provision,” says Neil Harrison, Commercial Manager – South for 1Life.

The survey, which is completed via 1Life’s website, has been specifically designed for the operator by leading customer insight provider for the active leisure sector, Leisure-net.

Mike Hill, Leisure-net Director says: “1life wanted a standardised approach to gather information about how and why people cancelled memberships, so they could understand the key issues causing people to leave, both across the group generally and the differences between individual leisure centres, enabling them to immediately respond to members leaving due to reasons that could be addressed by the centre, such as poor customer service or did not achieve goals.”

1Life, which manages 32 sites for a number of local authorities across the country, reviews the results daily and shares the data with its general managers to enable them to target customer engagement with specific actions. “Attrition has fallen in the last six months due to the increased engagement we are able to offer using insight from the data. If we can flag up a common issue we can we can work to address it, whether it’s customer service related or something physical we could improve within our facilities. The leavers’ survey, along with the new direct debit collection process we have in place, have contributed to a 1% decrease in attrition across the entire estate that we manage, which represents a lot of members.”

Moving out of the area is the main reason 1Life members give for leaving, although it is closely pipped by ‘other’. 1Life Harrison continues: “The results are pretty much as expected, with the trend and pattern of leavers similar month on month. We are pleased to report that the facilities and being unhappy with the service consistently score the lowest on the exit survey. The ‘other’ category can include anything from exercising outdoors to lack of time due to work or family commitments. Unless the reason is unavoidable, such as a medical issue that we cannot support, we contact the member to find out more.”

Contacting members about their exit survey has lead to a 5% turnaround of cancellations. “We weren’t tracking why people left before, so we weren’t able to be focussed on the reasons why and how we could offer a better service to encourage them to stay. Now, if we are able to help with their issue, we can approach the member and work with them to resolve the problem and persuade them to stay,” says Harrison.

1Life’s attrition reports are also reviewed to determine whether additional staff training is required. If a customer service issue is flagged, staff can be signed up to the 1Life Way Customer Service Training programme, which is carried out on a local level with the site manager.

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For further information contact:
Abigail Harris at Big Fish PR
Tel: 07738 331019
Email: abigail@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk