Technology takeaway at 2018 Retention Convention

Delegates at the 2018 Retention Convention were treated to a series of technology takeaways as speakers from across the world gave their take on how the digital revolution will change the face of health club membership as we know it.

Dr. Paul Bedford’s fourth annual Retention Convention, hosted by industry stalwart, Dean Hodgekin, welcomed 150 guests representing 63 operators across the UK, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Thailand, Columbia and KSA, as well as Germany, China, the USA and Israel, between them running 951 facilities and serving 2.1 million customers every year.

Global technology expert, Bryan O’Rourke, opened the day-long Birmingham event last week, saying most businesses use less than 1% of the data they hold and 77% of customers are under serviced. He asked operators ‘how are you really competing?’

“The world is going through a period of rebirth and all industries are shifting. It’s happening faster and faster and the customer journey is getting more complicated. It forces us to ask better questions. Customers don’t care what we think, so we need to rethink the things we believe are valuable that aren’t in the eyes of the customer,” he said.

“Adopting the right mindset and how you approach change is vital. If you’re not relevant you can have all retention strategies in the world, you still won’t be relevant. For those that get it, and understand where they are going, the opportunities are huge. Our market will triple in size in next eight years.”

O’Rourke’s five key takeaways, which he says separates the winners from the losers are:
Get personal – use data in a meaningful way to target the individual
Make it easy. Remove the friction to let people buy with ease
Facilitate shopping in different ways and places
Invest strategically. Use mobile and video and innovate, don’t recycle
What is old is new again. The older brands have a median age of 65 years but are finding novel ways to create new experiences for their customers.

Creating habits

Israeli entrepreneur, Shai Neiger, then introduced delegates to the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) outside of the movie I, Robot, explaining how their innovative virtual coach uses AI-driven behavioural psychology to help people make exercise into a habit. CoachAi acts as a personal companion, interacting via the members’ smart phones.

“It’s a common story; the new member starts enthusiastically, but gradually attendance trails off and before you know it, they’ve cancel their membership. You did everything right, so what went wrong?” said Neiger. “Lifestyle change is not about motivation, it’s about habit. You think you’re making decisions, but actually once you learn a behaviour your brain does it on autopilot.”

Rather than giving insights, AI can directly translate the enormous bodies of data health clubs have in their possession into action, and because it can chat as you would with a human being, it makes personal interaction scalable. “Finally clubs can offer a truly personal service to infinite number of people at once. Supporting members to the point where exercise becomes a regular part of their lives,” he said.

CoachAi has been piloted by 1,000 members across three health club brands in Israel, including the country’s second largest chain, Space, during the last four months. The pilot saw a 71% overall improvement in attendance of existing members, with a third increasing their visits to become ‘regular’ users. Almost three quarters of new members became regulars compared to just under half of the control group.

“Creating a lasting behavioural change is one of life’s greatest challenges. It’s not just about inside the club, but the 23 hours of the day outside of it too. It will be a while before AI can complete with the experience a person can give face to face, but it does have a set of advantages – being able to offer quality care at an unprecedented scale.”

Providing evidence

With so many products on the market, renowned retention expert, Dr. Melvyn Hillsdon, advised operators on how to evaluate the effectiveness of retention interventions.

“Most things are subject to trends,” he said. “The weather, our fitness activity – they all go up and down. Sometimes it’s just the passage of time, so we need to be confident we can attribute any change to something we’ve done.”

Key takeaways included:
1. Always begin by defining the question you are trying to answer
2. Mini me’s – make sure your sample group represents your entire club
3. Never dump any data. All data is good and you may accidentally skew the results
4. Think about timescales. Changing habits takes time, so make sure the intervention is in place for long enough.

Tea bags and chocolate wrappers

TRP’s General Manager, Mike Hills, lives next to one of best leisure centres in country; it’s Quest status and ukactive Flame award says so. But a tea bag in the shower and chocolate wrapper in the teaching pool, repeatedly ignored by staff, don’t back this up.

During his session, Hills talked about leading from the front and utilising technology to provide the ultimate customer experience and create raving fans. He said: “I’m here to talk about learning from the best, to highlight strong leaders who set a standard and create a culture where ignoring tea bags in the showers is totally unacceptable, rather than weak leaders who may write a check list but don’t really care if it’s done as long as the box is ticked. We talk about eating your own dog food – you have to test your own products and services by using them yourself. It’s vital for staff to experience the centre the way the customer does.”

Hills said operators often invest in technology because they think it will do job for them. “It’s not going to do that. It still needs leadership and direction. Be proactive or you will end up with biased feedback, and engage with people at different opportunities and based on different aspects of your club. Make it user friendly. I fill out every survey I get, but if after five minutes the progress bar hasn’t got past 25% even I close it down!”

Hills praised tmactive’s CEO, Martin Guyton, who checks his weekly Net Promoter Score (NPS) report each Monday morning before he’s even got out of bed to monitor customer feedback.

“You need a finger on the pulse of what’s going on,” Hills said. “Technology can help make that happen for you, automating analysis and reporting so you can understand what customers are telling you, act on the data and make better decisions as a result.”

Digital doesn’t care about your gym

Self-proclaimed digital evangelist, Life Fitness’s Leon Rudge, advised operators to look at the growth, loyalty and retention of wearables and Apps for new ways to engage members.

He said: “Commercial fitness is growing, but if you look at health and fitness as a whole it’s growing exponentially. There’s been a 49% increase in the use of workout Apps compared to a 9% growth in general health and fitness App usage. And with 96% of people using just one fitness App, they’re a pretty loyal bunch too. They don’t want to come into a facility and be told what App to use. They expect you to help them use their own.”

People don’t need to enter a classroom to learn any more or a travel agent to book a holiday. They don’t need a gym to work out either, and Rudge said operators need to understand the gap between clubs and digital fitness and adapt their business models to embrace the digital world.

“Use wearable tech in your marketing,” he said. “FitBit is top in the App store every Christmas, but I’ve yet to see clubs get engaged for the January rush. Why not invite the public to ‘come and talk to staff about using your FitBit’? Or engage with members at 10pm when App usage peaks as they are syncing their data?”

For every three workouts logged inside a gym, five are logged outside, according to Rudge who points out: “Digital doesn’t care about your gym. If you can see where members are exercising outside, get down there with towels and water! If your members are there, non members will be too!”

Taking orders from a rock

Closing the day, Retention Guru, Dr. Paul Bedford, lightened the mood with a tale of taking orders from a rock as he explained the art of persuasive behaviour, which is used in so many aspects of our everyday lives, from the layout of airport duty free to Wagamama’s placemat menu and Schiphol airport’s toilet bowl target.

“The smartphone is the most persuasive tool in the world,” he said. “In TV and film there’s an unwritten agreement between the filmmaker and audience called suspension of disbelief. You know they’re actors, but you still have an emotional reaction. Technology providers realise we’re doing this with our phones too and cleverly market to us, tailoring persuasion through customisation.”

Bedford explained the seven aspects of persuasion technology:
1. Reduction technologies persuade people by making things simpler, such as class booking, where Google knows the more steps you have to go through, the less chance you have of completing the transaction. Google says class booking can now be done in just four steps from search to book, after your first visit

2. Tunnelling, which is how you control the customer experience, mapping out their journey based on the member type. You can tailor member information to make it relevant, but also staff behaviour, directing which members staff should speak to based on their ‘at risk’ score

3. Tailoring, which is persuasion through customisation; having the right content at the right time. If you’re a new exerciser the type of information you need is very different to someone who’s exercise savvy.
4. Suggestion, which is intervention at the exactly the right time, building on existing motivation by asking things like ‘When are you in next? You could come in now, there’s one space left.’

5. Self monitoring to help people modify their attitudes to achieve their goal. Think of black boxes for new drivers. It takes the tedium out of tracking

6. Persuasion through surveillance, where your presence creates a new behaviour. Think about how staff change their behaviour when a manager walks into the room. On a positive slant think of Disney’s Magic RFID band. They know where you are and what you bought so they can increase the quality of your experience. Operators can use this technology to see if equipment’s being used effectively and change the layout accordingly, creating a new member journey

7. Conditioning – reinforcing target behaviours just as you would a child at school. Loyalty cards is a typical example. Positive reinforcements will increase your members’ chances of success. Think about computer games. Each time you jump off the cliff you have to start again, but if you jump the other way you can earn rewards. The gamer soon learns! We are starting to see this in the fitness industry too with the 10pm email Leon referred to, for instance.

“Technology can make things simpler and really enhance people’s experience,” concluded Bedford, bringing the 2018 Retention Convention to a close. “But use the advice you have heard here as a guide. If they say the product improves retention, check how many of the persuasive techniques are included, ask how many extra months of membership you can expect from using the product and use Melvyn’s advice to test it.”

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