Here at the Gym Owner’s Forum, we have always put a lot of focus and value on retention. Attracting new members is very important, but it should never come at the expense of the members a gym currently has.
It is all well and good to be taking in record numbers of new members every month, but if a gym is also losing record numbers, all they are doing is creating a very narrow and shallow base of support. We won’t try to do meaningless comparative maths here, but a group of members who have been with a gym for a long time sound like a much more solid asset for a gym to have the same number of new members.
But today we are focusing on the worst-case scenario. What if an independent gym or fitness club has failed to retain a member. What can we do, if anything, about cancelling members.
And as anyone who has worked in the fitness industry long enough can tell you, cancelling has many forms. So time to take a look at the different types of cancelling, what causes members to quit and what we as independent gym and fitness club owners can do about it.
What will we cover in this article?
(you can also click to skip ahead!)
There is probably a quote out there that goes ‘to solve a problem, you must first understand it’. If not, you heard it here first.
But jokes aside, it is important for us to understand what we mean when we say cancellation. It can be many different things to many different people. To some it might be indicative of burnout, for others it might be financial pressures, illness or lifestyle change.
A better knowledge of the types of cancellation can inform the questions we are going to be asking. As we have highlighted through our work with Ashbourne Membership Management, we are all about data and feedback. And the data and feedback that can be gained from cancelling members can be some of the most vital an independent gym can get in the pursuit to increase retention rates.
Because while high cancellation rates can be a sign of systemic issues, we must also be sure not to panic at a healthy and normal turnover rate. There are enough hazards in this industry without mistaking Business-As-Usual churn as something more profound.
Obviously a good rule of thumb (and one that hardly needs stating) is that you need more people coming in then going on. But as always, it is rarely that simple.
So what questions can we as independent gym owners ask cancelling members, what feedback can we gather from this important part of the membership lifecycle and most significantly, what can we do to ensure that this information is both easy to collect and utilise.
Cancellation Reasons
So much like our first point, this comes down to leaving money on the table.
But it is more than that, gym owners that don’t have an online store deny themselves valuable web presence and legitimacy as well as some marketing potential.
Any theoretical non-member that starts buying from your webstore has started to build a positive association and trust with your brand. It is also safe to say that if they are buying from your store, they hopefully like fitness.
Who is to say, when their gym membership next goes up or runs out. Maybe your gym’s name will stick in their head just a little bit better.
1. Contract/Membership Plan Ending:
We will start with the simplest. Sometimes a member might be cancelling simply because their existing contract or plan is up and they have decided not to renew.
Perhaps this is due to a change in price since they first signed up, an offer that drew them in initially not being available or simply a pattern of consumer behaviour.
2. Change In Economic Circumstance:
Especially and increasingly common unfortunately. Members are feeling the squeeze and no longer feel able to afford/commit to their gym membership.
Gathering feedback here can reveal it may be related to the economic situation in a given area or signs that the gym’s prices may be out of sync with the local area.
3. Location/Routine Shifts:
Whether moving houses, returning to the office or working from home. More members have been shifting because of their changing lifestyle, especially since the Pandemic.
It is important to capture this information because this is one factor that has relatively little to do with the gym or fitness club. People are just more mobile than they ever have been, between the number of renters and the change in working conditions.
4. Medical/Lifestyle/Schedule Changes:
Similar to moving. It is important to keep track of because it will highlight to the independent gym that it isn’t their fault. People get injured and ill and not much else can be gleaned from a cancellation for this reason.
5. Motivation/Enthusiasm:
However members cancelling who cite motivation issues as a reason are something that any gym should be paying attention to. Unlike medical or location issues, this is something that gyms can work to address.
6. Dissatisfied with the Gym/Poor Experience:
And perhaps the most important category of feedback in our list. Any member citing qualitative problems with the gym or fitness club itself should have special attention paid to them.
Mercifully rare for some clubs and all too common for others, this is one of the most valuable categories of data an independent gym can receive. By asking the right questions to these members, gym can gain insight and feedback into what is going wrong on the shop floor.
Types of Cancelling Member
While this list does not contain all the reasons and more will always be revealed when questioning cancelling members, it does contain the majority of cited reasons in our experience.
Quitting and cancelling members come in all shapes and sizes, even within these categories. When it comes to motivation and health issues, the trend of silent quitting has become increasingly popular as a term amongst many gym owners we speak to.
It is a problem that can be hard to address, especially if the ‘quitting’ in question takes the form of not showing up to the gym itself.
Ultimately it is important to identify and then work to address the cause of the cancellations.
Feedback Questions: What are the questions that Independent Gym Owners need to be asking cancelling members
So while our usual focus would be on how to retain members, now we are going to concentrate on the best questions an independent gym or fitness club can ask members that are departing their facility.
As we covered above, a gym member leaving doesn’t necessarily mean that an independent gym has failed or made any error. But it is important to determine if that is the case.
If an independent gym looks at their monthly roundup and discovers that 50 people have left, that could be alarming. But if they know that 40 left for reasons beyond their control or influence, that allows them to focus on the remaining 10.
Feedback Questions: What questions do Gyms need to be asking on their feedback surveys?
We’ve compiled some popular questions that Independent gym and fitness club owners and management have been using up and down the country to capture valuable data and feedback.
1. Cancellation Reason:
Asking the most vital piece of information upfront. We intend this question to be our ‘categorising’ question. It will allow gyms to sort their cancelled memberships into clearly delineated categories. As covered above, someone leaving due to health reasons requires much less investigation than someone leaving due to bad experience.
Placing this question at the front of the survey gives it the best chance to be answered and answered correctly.
When sifting through feedback, it is important to be able to quickly identify which need further examination and which categories a gym can do little about.
2. Summary of their Membership Experience:
Once our categorisation is done, the next question should focus on whether any aspect of the membership experience was particularly good or notably bad.
It is important to focus on both sides of this dichotomy. While we want to understand the reasons people are leaving, we should also take the time to focus on what they enjoyed. Feedback can be hard to capture from members, so take the opportunity while you can to find out what went right as well as what went wrong.
3. Staff Experience:
As we have talked about at length here at the Gym Owner’s Forum, staff are a very important part of a member’s gym-going experience. It is important to understand whether or not leaving members are partially leaving because of the staff, or leaving in spite of the staff.
4. Improvement Opportunities:
Whether it is new equipment, different classes or better facilities, many cancelling members will be eager to say why and how a gym could be better. While we aren’t trying to please everyone, this can be a valuable tool for retention. Collecting and collating the most frequently requested improvements can be a great way to gauge the mood and demands in your area.
5. Visits Per Week:
This is a valuable grouping metric. How many times in a week did the cancelling member use the gym? If everyone leaving used the gym 5 times a week, it can help give an indication of the sort of member that is dissatisfied with the service. In this case, it may be that the 5 times-a-week members are Monday to Friday workers and dislike the afterwork rush in your facility.
6. Possibility of Returning (And if so, Criteria for returning):
The likelihood of this can often become apparent by the answers to other questions. (For example, if they have left very negative feedback as answers to the first questions, we might safely assume they aren’t in a hurry to return).
With that being said, in our experience and the experience of other gym owners, this results in some very interesting and more importantly, usable feedback.
7. External Factors:
As we covered above, it is possible to do everything right and still lose a member. While it will often become apparent in the categorisation questions above, it does not hurt to ask directly. Sometimes there are multiple reasons for a member cancelling and this can be a good way to catch any other external and economic factors that might have contributed to the decision.With that being said, in our experience and the experience of other gym owners, this results in some very interesting and more importantly, usable feedback.
8. The Recommendation Test:
Again, much as per the possibility of returning. Sometimes the answer to this won’t be much of a surprise. But it is still an interesting insight into both the members and the gym to understand whether someone would recommend your facility to their friends and colleagues.
Word of mouth has become increasingly important in an age of digital referrals. Cultivating an independent gym or fitness club that members want to recommend, even when leaving, is a fantastic indication that a gym is on the right track.
9. Addition Comments:
And finally the classic ‘Any other thoughts?’ It is important to give members a chance to express themselves, every individual is different and if they have made it to the end of a feedback survey, there is a good chance they have more to save.
While these will often be hard to categorise and classify, any independent gym’s management would do well to spend the time looking into these additional comments.
If used correctly, it will help indicate additional questions that an independent gym or fitness club should be asking in their feedback surveys.
Conclusion
By taking this approach and asking these questions, independent gym and fitness club owners stand a much better chance of understanding why their members are leaving, when that represents an issue and when it does not.
But all of that data collection via feedback surveys isn’t worth a lot of gyms and clubs aren’t interrogating and analysing the feedback that they get.
These articles and our podcasts are born from conversations with people working within the
fitness industry, whether they are gym owners, staff or management.
Here at the Gym Owner’s Forum we are always advocating for gym owners and management to make the most of their resources. If you are interested in a data driven, feedback-centric approach, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment, book a consultation or send us a message.
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