How can Mystery Shopping be used in the fitness industry?
The fitness industry continues to grow: one person in every seven is now a member of a gym.
Important aspects of a fitness-related businesses like gyms, health clubs, and leisure centres include equipment (range, quality, maintenance), general facilities, overall upkeep and cleanliness, customer service and overall customer experience. Often, advice, coaching and personal training elements, as well as classes, provide enormous value to members and customers in terms of motivation and in helping then to achieve their fitness goals.
As an industry that’s largely reliant on memberships (and in turn reliant on members actually using and enjoying facilities), effective sales activity is crucial for gaining new memberships, and customer satisfaction is crucial for retaining members and minimising attrition rates.
Example businesses and situations
Gyms, health clubs, leisure centres, hotels with health facilities.
How is Mystery Shopping used and what are the potential benefits?
Mystery Shopping in the fitness industry often focusses on new membership enquiries, and include a guided tour / sales presentation.Every aspect of the customer / prospect’s experience in this area can be covered in detail, from an initial enquiry to any follow-up activity. Reports based on these experiences can quickly help identify ways to increase conversions of enquiries and tours into paying memberships.
The remit can be expanded to include a limited trial period, to help gauge staff performance in relevant areas, overall standards, and customer experiences. These things can be looked at in much more detail via Mystery Shopping than by other methods like customer surveys.
Mystery Shopping can also be carried out on the basis of a normal member visit, to monitor overall standards and establish the experience of a normal paying member.
In person, report-based Mystery Shopping is commonly used in the fitness industry. Telephone Mystery Shopping (perhaps supplemented by online enquiries) can help evaluate how initial enquiries are dealt with and how effectively these are turned into visits / tours.
Video Mystery Shopping can also be used to study interactions more closely, especially in the example of tours / membership sales but also in relation to health and fitness-related advice that is provided, and the sale of add-on or optional services, membership upgrades, etc.
If you would like to discuss the possibility of Mystery Shopping for a business in the fitness industry, please don’t hesitate to contact us.