Storing Paper Agreements
Although ClubReady has extensive support for electronically signed agreements, sometimes agreements get printed and signed on paper. They would then normally be stored in a filing cabinet (or bank of filing cabinets!) somewhere.
Now, scanned agreements can be uploaded. In fact any file can be uploaded and stored with an agreement.
So, on the agreement detail page - looking at an agreement that was not electronically signed by the customer at point of sale.
Clicking on upload a file opens an upload dialog and the upload can also be marked as containing a client signature. This is for uploading a scanned agreement document and tying it to the agreement.
So, uploading the file automatically updates the agreement detail page.
This automatically updates all agreement reports, and if you are searching for agreements without signatures then any flagged as having a paper signature will not show up.
File uploads for agreements can be for any client document you might want to attach to the agreement not just paper signed agreements. Coming soon - the ability to fax documents right into the agreement detail.
Some Compelling Customer Survey Results
We managed to get our hands on the results of a soon to be published major health club survey (will be released at IHRSA 2009) and some of the survey results are really interesting. With kind permission - here are a couple of the survey outcomes that are pretty relevant to part of the value ClubReady brings to a club.
The first one is a question posed about customers preferences on how they update their account details.
A whopping 73% want to manage their account online.
The number of actual club customers who are managing their account online is probably less than the preference for using the phone.
The second survey question is similar, but relates to making bookings.
Again, pretty conclusive people want to make bookings online. Only 8% want to make bookings over the phone - yet this is probably the most prevalent booking "methodology" in use in the fitness industry today.
What isn’t captured in the survey is although people want to book online - if your "online scheduling" looks like and functions like it was built in 1985 - then they are going to get frustrated and their desire will turn to disappointment.
Online services, that are usable & well designed - it’s what your customers want, if you don’t have that then it’s a missed opportunity & eventually will become a competitive disadvantage for your club.
Tracking The ROI of Marketing Campaigns
All clubs do marketing - some a lot, some a little, but my guess is most clubs, especially smaller ones, don’t ever get a truly accurate picture of just how worthwhile any specific campaign was. Just exactly what was the $ return on that mailer or radio spot?
A new addition to ClubReady makes that evaluation as easy as just adding your campaign to the system.
The referral types setup has been expanded so you can now mark a referral type as a campaign & tie to it a campaign cost
Adding the campaign referral type means this automatically shows on the add new prospect form. So long as new prospects are classified correctly when they are added - ClubReady does the rest
So - if the prospect becomes a client & they make purchases - their sales data is automatically tied to the campaign and the club can check the real time ROI (return on their investment) at any time from reports.
Information about the campaign is available at a glance - total revenues from the campaign, how much each prospect has cost, how much each new customer cost, how well the prospects converted, revenues per new customer & what the actual ROI is so far. This will track all spending of the clients going forward - so you might find that a campaign that was a loser (negative return on investment) but will ultimately break even. Of course some campaigns might be stars - in which case - do them again!
Add New Prospect Form Gets Some Improvements
Changing a form is not something normally added to the blog - but the Add Prospect form is a key data entry form for any club using ClubReady - bad data in means bad data out.
This form has had many improvements. It’s now possible to define in setup exactly how this form works - what is included on it & what are required fields. The setup is in the customer section of setup
This basically lets a club define exactly what their ‘new prospect’ entry process is and ensures that data is entered consistently, with improved integrity checking of the data entered.
Prospects & Customers used to be on the same tab, but this has now been split to two tabs - Prospects & Customers, with Add Prospect an option under Prospects. All clients added to the system are entered as prospects first.
These changes only apply at the moment to non-membership clubs - these changes along with some other related changes will be applied to membership clubs use of ClubReady very soon.
Flagging Client Bookings With Ease
Lets say you want to standardize how certain bookings are flagged - for example, you want every customer after their 5th Personal Training session to get an assessment, or you want to send a certain email after their 10th booking, or you want to set a reminder to talk about re-signing 5 sessions from their last one plus email them….
Well - the only way to do that previously would be to add a client note tied to a booking. That would be kind of ineffective - for one thing it’s cumbersome to do that for every client & beyond that client bookings change all the time due to cancellations, reschedules and new bookings. What was planned to be a clients 5th session might be their 10th by tomorrow. Booking notes follow the booking - so that would render any such notes out of sync/irrelevant fairly often.
A new feature has been added that makes this a breeze.
- Standardizes a set of ‘Booking flag rules’ - that happen with every client without having to actually do anything
- Moves with booking changes - so if booking 5 is canceled, the reminder flag automatically just moves to the new 5th booking
So, how is this setup? Well for services and classes setup - there is a new option tab in setup for each individual service/class you offer
Then booking flag rules can be easily setup. Once setup they will automatically apply themselves to every client booking and always move to stay with the correct booking
So - lets look at what happens in the schedules. We have a 5th booking rule setup in the example above so lets look at that
Booking flags always show to admins, but they can be setup to show to trainers and also to customers. Sending pre-defined emails based on sessions complete or remaining is a powerful tool. We have in mind some extra developments to this - in the near future we will be adding surveys to the system & we’ll tie that to these rules. So, for example, after say the 5th PT session every client gets a standard club survey.
Some Usability Improvements To The Purchase Agreement Signature Step
A minor improvement has been added to the agreement purchase process. Following a purchase chances are the next step is to book some sessions, make sure the client has their login details, scan a barcode. Previously after a purchase you had to then look up the customer to do these things - now links to all of these are directly on the page that comes up following a successful purchase.
Sending Automatic Booking Reminders By Email And By Text Message
A new feature has been added that allows booking reminders to be sent to customers. Reminders can be added to any service type or class that you offer and can be by email (24hrs prior) and / or by text message (SMS) 2hrs before.
The setup page is in the admin login setup area under the scheduling setup options
Setup of reminders just takes a few seconds. Whatever services / classes you offer are listed and you just click ON or OFF to select if email reminders and/or text message reminders are to be sent.
Sending text messages isn’t free (requires a SMS credit balance) - so a club might want to use just email reminders for most booking types, but additionally use text messages for bookings like fitness consultations. These type of "sales" sessions are critical - if they don’t come in you can’t convert them - so a 10cents text message in addition to the email reminders is a good option in that situation - just improving show rates by 10% when it comes to sales consults could mean thousands of $$ in new revenues.
Also, for text messages - if a club decides to use this for regular bookings - then there is an option to stop sending text messages after the customer shows up for a specified number of bookings - once they hit that number then text message reminders to them would stop. If they didn’t show then they would start up again automatically. Here’s a screen shot showing that option more clearly
The reminder emails a customer receives states the booking details and if the provider has a photo then that is included in the email, especially useful if the reminder is for a sales consult - the customer has a photo of the sales person to easily seek them out when they arrive at the club.
If the time a booking is made is close to the actual session time (within 24hrs) then no reminders get sent - it would be pointless to remind somebody about a booking they just made
Remember as well that club weekly emails also can contain a list of all the sessions a customer has in the upcoming week. We think that plus this new feature can have a really positive impact on show rates - we’ll track that and publish it in a future blog post.
Improvements To Service Agreements Management Interface
Some improvements have been added to the way service agreements (eg customer PT contracts) can be managed.
The agreement detail page has a few additions - the ability to add notes about an agreement directly from the details page has been added & the link to adjust / cancel agreement.
The new button - Adjust / Cancel leads to a new page that provides options for adjustment all in one place.
The top of this page shows all the payments to date on this agreement with the option to refund or partial refund any of the payments & then determine what should happen to any bookings & session credits associated with the payment. If the payment was through ClubReady then an option is to process the refund directly back to their credit card or bank account. This could be done before but the interface was not nearly as nice to use
The bottom part of the page lists any planned payments (EFT) - these can be canceled all in one step now. Also - all the due dates can be changed in one step, or all the due amounts changed.
The last part of the adjust/cancel page has options for notifying the customer of the changes to their agreement and also classifying the change if it means the agreement is canceled
From one simple interface everything about a customer agreement can be managed. Contrast that to the outsourced billing approach - customer signs a contract (likely on paper) - Contract sits on a desk for a few days - gets faxed to the billing company. Customer wants a change or a cancel - contacts the club, who contacts the billing company, who don’t make the right change…customer still gets billed…irate customer calls club…and so on. That model is totally broken - with ClubReady the contract doc is electronic, changes can be made in seconds and the customer is instantly notified. Much more efficient.
Upscale Club In Rhode Island Has A ClubReady Party!
It’s not often that a club has a party centered around their club management system - but that’s exactly what Davol Fitness in Rhode Island did in early April.
Davol has been using ClubReady for a while now to manage their Personal Training services and also their membership leads process, but they decided to have a big official launch to their clients and to make a party of it - complete with a live band!
The focus of the party was a weight loss challenge using all the great client wellness tools found in ClubReady. Over 150 people attended the event - paying $30 each, with many also then signing up for personal training at the same time.
We love to see this kind of thing - it really drives home what ClubReady is all about - making the customer experience different - and driving sales through that. The backend "management system" is what you first think of & ClubReady does that better than anything out there (in our opinion!) - but what really sets ClubReady apart is the direct impact that club customers enjoy. Customers are where all the money comes from, they pay all our wages & if you go into 100 fitness clubs in the US - you’ll find a lot that only offer customers a set of exercise equipment. In 2008 customers expect a lot more! Davol is a club that understands this very well & will enjoy long term success because they are group of smart people who know how to differentiate in a competitive market.
Here are some photo’s from the Davol party
Some More Improvements To Membership Leads Management
It’s been over a month since the last blog post & that’s not because nothing has been going on - its because we’ve been so busy adding new stuff! - so we have a bit of catch up to do on the blog outlining a lot of new things that have been added.
Here is an improvement that’s been made to membership leads functionality.
Membership leads can now be assigned to categories and to individuals
The leads list can be filtered by these categories/people as well as by all the other filters. This assignment can be changed at any time and is also selectable when adding a new membership lead.
Also added is the ability to flag the lead as having visited the club - this is also a filter when reviewing the lead list.
