Nicer gyms have a problem—they’re getting killed by budget gyms. If you (or they) are wondering why, look no further than gym-goers. In their eyes, too many gyms provide a building, not a service.
Why overpay for access to a building? Upscale gyms should see this for what it is: a major customer experience problem and a gaping hole in their businesses.
But unlike tight household budgets or a mixed economic forecast, it’s a membership hurdle they have the power to change.
To better understand the problem, we benchmarked the entire UK gym-market (from budget to premium tier), which included analysing the in-gym and online experience for Virgin Active, Gymbox, LA Fitness, Nuffield Health, Fitness First and Easy Gym.
We used interviews to better understand the needs of gym-goers, commissioned quantitative research to validate those findings, and performed our own ethnographic and heuristic analyses (for more on that, see the full results of our survey here).
Here’s what we learned: Gym-goers wanted more advice and support (i.e. service).
- 95% of people would value getting advice on exercise and helpful input on their fitness goals
- 89% of people would appreciate health and nutrition advice.
The trouble gyms have? Too often, when their salespeople hear the word “advice,” they smell an opportunity to push for expensive personal training packages—something the customer never asked for. In the end, the customer walks away feeling unheard and pressured by a sales pitch and joins another gym or no gym.
In fact, for gym-goers, “membership,” means finding a supportive partner for a fitness journey that spans physical environments and digital ecosystems, which dovetailed with other statistics we compiled:
- 90% of people who don’t workout with wearables will consider using them in the future
- 91% want a custom gym app to help them keep track of fitness
Beyond that, gym customers know that advice often lives in the digital space (along with easy transactions, transparent cancelation policies and customer support), and that’s often where they look for it.
From intuitively designed, transparent websites that make it easy to sign up and view cancellation policies, to apps and social channels that provide advice, community and fitness trackers to support the overall fitness journey, a major space in which gyms can reach customers—current and future—is their own digital domains.
Get equipped
So remember that statistic about 95% of people wanting fitness advice? The truth is that without a digital overhaul, many gyms are in fact not equipped to answer a huge part of that demand (while also losing a chance to digitally differentiate their brand identity).
That is the very essence of a missed opportunity. The good news is that where there’s a will, there’s a way. If gyms can find the right digital tools and tactics to better engage their customers, then there’s no reason why the future of the gym market can’t be a bright one.
But time is of the essence—volatility doesn’t wait, and neither do impatient customers.
By Alistair Millen (strategy director) and Shey Cobley (director of UX), Critical Mass