OPERATOR NAME: Mid Sussex District Council/Freedom Leisure
SECTOR: Public Sector
MEMBERSHIP SIZE: >3000
Retention…3 Great Reasons to Care!
After a year of partnership working between Mid Sussex District Council and The Retention People (TRP) we can verify three fantastic reasons to focus on improving retention.
1. Happy Staff!
Traditionally, it has been very hard to precisely value the contribution of our fitness teams. Some operators have even shown that they feel they can simply get by without them.
Working with TRP identifies and measures the value that fitness teams add. This enables regular feedback to instructors showing how many people they have helped – and even more importantly – how much they have helped them.
Imagine you are reviewing conversations you had with over 500 members in one month. In the month before you spoke with them, the average member in this group was only attending your centre 2.7 times per month – significantly less than once per week. However, after you spoke with them, the average attendance increased to 5 visits per month.
These numbers are not made up! Figure 1 shows this is just one of the many fantastic results we could feedback to the team at Mid Sussex.
Figure 1 Average visit frequency pre and post interaction – based on 500+ interactions in September 2009
“Results like this made my team feel recognised and appreciated and so inspired them to look after even more members”, comments Chris Patch, Fitness Manager with Mid Sussex.
2. Happy Members!
The easiest way to assess member satisfaction is to observe their participation levels. Figure 2 shows clearly that the more we talk with our members – the longer they vote with their feet and remain as participating members.
This translates to at least 12 months more participation per member who receives at least 4 interactions. Members who do not receive an interaction are 3.4 times more likely to cancel compared to members who receive at least 4 interactions during the life of their membership. Happy members means increased participation and footfall.
Figure 2 The effect of interactions on member retention
3. Happy Managers
It is only a small step to realise that at least 12 months more membership participation equates to at least 12 months more membership income. If all members who joined during the year of this study followed the green line (4+ interactions) Mid Sussex would earn £281,449 more in that year when compared to all those members following the blue line (no interactions).
The Future of TRP at Mid Sussex
As the first year of this partnership ended, the contract for the management of the leisure centres at Mid Sussex was taken on by Freedom Leisure. As a result of the fantastic results to date, TRP remains a key part of service delivery at Mid Sussex and has since been installed in three other centres managed by Freedom Leisure.
Debbie Reed, Customer Service and Retention Manager for Freedom Leisure comments that “it is fantastic to think that by focusing the team on our high risk members we can increase job satisfaction, increase participation and increase our bottom line by nearly £300,000 in year 1”.
