New Year, What’s New?

Wow, the start of another year. 2020 is here and with the January rush of new and more engaged members, it is easy to forget about retention the first couple months of the year. However, remember that retention plan you created in the past? Well, now is the time to put it to work.  There’s no better time to test your new initiatives than now. 

What is new for you this year? What did you add to your 2020 plan that is a new focus or rifle shot for your club? 

We put into play two simple additions we think will give us better member feedback and help us understand a little more about what caused the member to cancel, identifying potential frustration points. We are experimenting with a self-serve kiosk in the club to collect member feedback. We want to hear and record real-time feedback so we can better correct it in the moment. If the member experiences a maintenance issue, has a suggestion or voices a complaint, the instant feedback will be used to make operational adjustments and adjust the flow of the member journey.

The second initiative we are adding to our 2020 plan is a professional cancellation survey. It will be a short survey, as a follow up to complement our in-person debriefing cancellation interview, and will allow us to collect and organize members’ feedback better. It has the goal of providing a non-threatening way to receive feedback, since not everyone will express and fully explain their reasons for cancelling in person. 

If you have not already reviewed your retention plan for 2020, take a look at 2019 and see what you want to scrap from your plan. Scrap actions that had low results to free up time to focus on higher retention efforts. Identify what was working in 2019 and keep those actions. 

Lastly, decide on what you are adding as a new action item. By trying these two retention efforts this year, we expect to learn from the members’ experience to improve future experiences. If we learn from the past, we can change the future. Creating a better and longer member journey is our retention goal. 

What are the two new initiatives you are going to try? Please share your ideas by emailing me at abarranco@merrittclubs.com.