Member Experience Assessment

Ensuring fitness experiences that create belonging for new & returning exercisers

Familiar with the idea of the Secret Shopper? That’s the vibe with this service.

In this signature service, I’ll complete an assessment of your member experience by participating in your programs from the lens of new and returning exercisers. After engaging with the member-facing elements of your business, I’ll provide a detailed report highlighting the areas of success and specific areas for growth.

Assessing the Key Elements that Make Up the Member Experience

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White male back squatting in a gym

Attract, Support, and Retain Members

Your operational systems are the framework for the member experience.

When attracting and retaining members, it doesn’t matter if you have the best instructors. If the new exerciser never makes it to a class because the registration process isn’t clear, the member experience is poor.

This assessment will give you a comprehensive and detailed review of your systems and where to make adjustments that improve the experience for all, but especially those new or returning exercisers.

White women with red hair in a bun, sitting on the floor playing with a dog
Kettlebell in the foreground, red yoga mat and hands in the background
Focus on white women dancing in blue tank top and blue pants, with class behind her
Back of women lifting bands in a triceps extension
from the back, a yoga class in a seated position doing a lateral stretch, focused on a white man with an orange shirt

The Benefits

The Member Experience Assessment provides two major benefits:

  1. Getting a unique glimpse into the member-facing elements of your business that you cannot otherwise see: how the staff interacts with members, how the member navigates through your website, systems, and facility, and generally, how it feels for members to exist in your space.

  2. Specific action items that will help you better support those new and returning to exercise, leading to increased retention.

Functional exercise class, with the focus on a white women with long dirty blond hair lifting and archored barbell

Here’s How it Works

  • Set up a free discovery call to discuss the process, your goals, and any specific areas you want special attention to.

  • Timeframe, number of programs, group fitness formats, etc., and I’ll provide a project cost.

  • I will attend the programs and services, signing up and engaging just like a new exerciser would. After each engagement, I will use a self-developed rubric to assess each experience based on the key elements: operations, communication, community, programming, customer service, and the gym experience.

  • After completing the assessment, I’ll provide a detailed report and presentation that will include the areas of success and areas for growth in your member experience—giving you the necessary data to know where to put your effort and focus.

Reasons to Invest in a Member Experience Assessment:

  • You’re receiving average-to-poor member satisfaction results

  • Not meeting your revenue potential

  • Low member retention

  • Low new member recruitment

  • Gathering data for strategic planning

  • Just curious! The business isn’t at full potential, and you’re curious about what you could be doing better

Christin Everson kneeling on a red yoga mat, smiling as she is tightening her pony tail

Why I do this work…

After 16+ years as a professional in the industry working as a director of fitness programs, health coach, personal trainer, and group fitness instructor, and professor of kinesiology, plus a regular participant in fitness spaces, I am uniquely aware of the needs of new exercisers. I understand the concerns and fears of those entering fitness spaces for the first, second or even eighth time.

Most importantly, I recognize that fitness spaces are not always welcoming, safe, or fun places for someone new or returning to exercise to be. It requires so much courage to enter a gym environment, and the last thing we want is to make it harder for folks to adopt exercise habits. After all, the entire purpose of our role as fitness professionals is to help folks move!

So, let’s consider the experience you create and ensure that it creates belonging for all.

New & Returning Exercisers Need Us the Most

These are the folks that need us the most. The CDC estimates that 25% of our population is completely inactive, while another 60% do not meet the requirements for physical activity. If we optimize our operational experience for those folks, we can increase our retention of those members and drastically improve their health.

How does this affect our regular exercisers, you ask? Positively! When we consider the experience of the more vulnerable members, we also positively affect the ones who need us a little less.

Assessing the overall member experience and the potential for a new or returning exerciser to have a sense of belonging in your space.

Real Talk: You’re Too Close, and You Know Too Much.

It’s challenging to assess your own member experience because you know too much! It’s been too long since you’ve been a new exerciser, and you’re too deep in the operations of your business to see it for the first time again.

You simply cannot experience your facility the way a new exerciser would.

 FAQs

  • If you’d like specific feedback on unique Instructors/Coaches/Trainers, that can be added on to any Member Experience Assessment. The standard assessment feedback includes the top three areas of success and areas for growth for each Instructor/Coach/Trainer.

  • This is totally up to you and what will work best for your team!

  • The report will provide the top three areas of overall success and growth. It will include both qualitative and quantitative data demonstrating the experience, 2-5 specific recommendations for each element assessed. Most reports are 5-20+ pages long.

  • Once you receive your report and I provide my recommendations for what to improve, we can set up a Custom Engagement contract where I will help you implement.

  • Once the goals are agreed upon, the assessment will take between 1-6 weeks to complete depending on the size and scale.

  • Depending on the scope of the project, the Member Experience Assessment can cost $2,500-$10,000+

  • Excluded from every project is a review of any physiological assessments. I personally feel that body fat testing and the standard fitness testing processes are not only unnecessary but have a large capacity to cause harm to new and returning exercisers. I will not assess these programs because I do not believe we should be using them in the first place.

Book a Discovery Call

Interested in the Member Experience Assessment? Let’s chat and see if it’s a right fit!

Questions? Let’s chat.