Some Improved Functionality For The Add Prospect API
ClubReady has had an add prospect API for a while that when called can add a prospect, automatically give the prospect consult credits ready to book and email them a welcome letter plus login details, but the API required somebody with a good web development background in order to use it. It’s not something that can just be pasted onto a club website by the average club owner.
So…with that in mind, and with some ideas from a club new to using ClubReady - we’ve added an extension to the API - that lets a club paste a small line of code on their site & voila they have a prospect form that uses the API
So - just a small line of code, copy & paste anywhere on the clubs website and a prospect form will appear
The form has full validation including rejecting bunk emails, prospects get added to ClubReady ready to get managed thru prospect management, depending on how the API is setup - the client automatically can get a welcome email, free credits and a system login - all automatically. The club can also get an email notification whenever a new prospect uses the form.
Multiple Bookings Tool Improvement
We’ve added a few improvements to the multiple bookings tool.
The tool is very flexible at finding alternative slots based upon whatever scope you allow it but there was no review step to review the proposed bookings before committing to them.
This is important because some clubs use this tool as part of the sales process - checking that the prospects desired slots are available before they commit.
The output of the tool has also been changed - rather than a list of bookings - the bookings are shown on a calendar so it’s easy to see at a glance what available, available with changes and not available.
When finalizing the bookings - the calendar approach is also included together with the detail list that was in place already.
Customer Training Commitment Levels & Tracking "Lost Sheep"
A new feature has been added to keep a close track on a clients commitment level / week for services like personal training.
Each sales package can now have an effective bookings/week level set & when the package is purchased the customer will be set at that level.
Their completed bookings / week then shows on their detail page vs their target commitment level.
This also shows in the trainer login area so trainers can review their customers compliance to their plan.
This is important because if a customer is not keeping up with their commitment made at the original sales step then they may be losing motivation and long term sales revenue will probably be lost.
This then leads on to a new report called "Lost Sheep" - this lets the club owner list who is falling behind so they can be followed up with. The new report is in Reports > Customers > Lost Sheep
The lost sheep report shows every customer who is under 100% of compliance to their commitment bookings/week level. The analysis can be done over the past week, two weeks or over the past month. An average/week vs target is show and a % compliance.
For membership clubs - the lost sheep report is a little different, it also has a report of members who have not visited the club in the past month - in addition to the service bookings compliance detailed above.
The next addition to this feature will be the ability to automatically email customers who fall into lost sheep status.
Client Nutrition Improvements & Meal Planning
Some new things have been added to nutritional logging in the client login area. We’d thought about adding meal plans in the past but standard ‘meal plan templates’ seemed so boring and although it’d be easy to add in standard meal plans for different calorie target levels - it wouldn’t be so easy to have plans that matched whatever nutritional %breakdown a client might have. A 1700 calorie plan is just fine - but what if the % carbs in the plan is 60% and the client has a 40% carbs target?
We’ve taken a different approach. There is a lot of food logged in ClubReady - in terms of ‘days of food’ logged (ie 1 whole day of food logged) - there is almost 40 years worth of food logged to date & it’s growing at a fast pace - so why not let people share with others what they eat?
This is exactly what we’ve added. A new tab ‘Meal Plans’ has been added. In addition we’ve added the ability on the food log to save a days worth of food that can be then used later to create a meal plan day.
Using the users calorie/day target and also their % target of Carbs/Protein/Fat - users can now create plans that lookup what other people with the exact same goals have actually eaten and it uses that real data to make a plan going out upto 90 days.
Choosing ‘Make Me A Plan’ populates the meal plan going out for the number of days selected. Each day will match the users nutritional targets very closely and be actually what somebody else with the same goals has actually eaten.
You can see in the example above - the calories for the day are almost exactly the same as the target and the Carbs/Protein/Fat % is almost exactly on also. If the user doesn’t like a specific day then they can quickly swap it for something else - either another matching food day, or switch it to one of their stored food days.
Clicking on ‘Move To My Food Log’ - moves the entry right across in to the food log. Typically meal plans are never followed 100% - they are really a big help for people to get an idea of what to eat. Using the meal plan - items can be moved across to the log easily & non plan foods can still be entered into the log as normal. Then the whole food day can be saved to use again in a plan.
A shopping list of items in the plan can also be created.
We plan to add to this further to give trainers (& the club) the ability to create meal plans that can be saved and then also show as a user option for creating a meal plan.
Club Amenities
The ability to create amenities has been added. Amenities are things you might offer your customers as part of participation in your club (eg Day Care, Tanning, Certain group classes etc).
Amenities are added in setup and can be tied to sales packages, so different packages have different amenities.
When adding amenities to sales packages it’s possible to indicate if an amenity is not included, always included or part of a menu where say 2 out of a possible 4 available amenities can be selected by the customer at time of purchase.
Amenities show when the customer checks-in
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.
