The Key to Retention: A Member Experience Rooted in Care

By: Christin Everson, MS

Care is the core of our work as fitness professionals: we provide care through education, community connection, healthy experiences, motivation, etc. Care can look like the inclusive language you use in your classes, the personal relationships you develop with your members, the personalized programming for your clients, or the grace you show a participant when they are having a tough day. When considering retention for our business, we can also inject care into our operations and communication plans. The care you provide your members directly correlates to their experience and, thus, their adherence to physical activity and your retention.

Participants experience your business in two ways: The first is the perceived experience they’ll have before engaging, which is based on your marketing. The second is their actual experience, which results in the summation of their feelings about your business. It’s not just what you offer but how it makes them feel while participating. Experienced exercisers are much more likely to overlook a clunky or subpar member experience because they have high self-efficacy in gym spaces.  New Exercisers, on the other hand, are much more affected by a poor member experience and require intentional care that will facilitate their belonging and enhance their self-efficacy. Making the deliberate effort to provide care throughout your member experience will improve their retention.

Here are three ways to best provide care:

1. Understand Their Needs

You can only provide meaningful care when you understand the needs of those you serve. Especially for new exercisers, reflect on their worries, fears, time commitments, values, goals, challenges, and interests. Consider where they are in their behavior change journey and what they need to feel safe in your facility.  Devise systems that help you get to know your new members more. Here are a few examples of how this can be accomplished: A broad membership survey, a targeted member survey, and/or a community survey (via social media, community events, or with other business partners in the area). Create specific questions on new member onboarding forms to help you understand their fears. Provide many and frequent outlets to gather information and get to know your current and future members.

2. Make it Easy

The best way to affect a member's experience is to make it easy! Utilizing your knowledge about their needs, try to deeply understand each person's unique experience when they enter your space. Demonstrate your care by taking all the guesswork out of the logistics of participating. Here are some areas to consider: Make it easy to find and use the basic information about your business (website, location, contact information, membership pricing, etc.), the registration process should be obvious and easy to navigate, provide clear expectations for what you’re offering, and clearly communicated expectations around their experience.  When we think about making the process easy, I always consider this question: “What can I answer for them before they ask?”. Provide a clear roadmap to the information they need and provide clear expectations about what they can expect from the experience.

3. Intentionally Communicate

Your operational communication is responsible for a large portion of the experience your members will have. It tells them what to do and how to do it. This is a great place to start when trying to give more care. Consider your automatic emails or text messages: how can you customize those to include more language that demonstrates your intention to provide care, as well as more information that will help them be successful?

Regularly communicate your policies. While not a fun or sexy part of the member experience, they are crucial. It tells your community how you want them to engage with your business and facility. Regardless of what you’re trying to communicate, be sure to do it in many ways: Utilize email, text, your website, any community groups you have, customer service staff, programming staff, and signs around the facility. Think holistically about what you must communicate to your members rather than just programming information. Be more deliberate with your communication, considering the information they need to know but also going a step further to help them feel cared for.

For new exercisers, entering fitness spaces for the first time can be overwhelming. Focus on providing as much care as possible to help them feel more connected to your business, community, and their wellness habits.