Harness and Leverage Your Customers Behaviours and Interests

2014 saw a multitude of trends that have challenged the traditional business models. Of particular importance to the Leisure & Health industry is the digital revolution trend and the increased focus on customer-centrality.

Technology is influencing the way customers interact with businesses, and as a result shifting the expectation of the relationship between themselves and your facilities.

As customers continue to become more technology-savvy and information hungry, the onus is increasingly on the facilities to be responsive to their wants and needs in ways that suit their technology preferences.

Only when businesses recognise this shift can they start to implement digitally suitable strategy designed to attract, engage and retain customers. Essentially, businesses need to become new customer centric, and do it “digitally”. Simply put they must become digital customer centric.

Regardless of what industries your business falls into, one thing remains constant. “Consumers expect all industries to match or beat the highest customer experience they have already had or simple heard about” (Accenture, 2014).

Be warned. If you fail to deliver on quality customer experience, studies suggest that you could lose as much as 50% of your customer base in 5 years.

To deliver the experience that customers not only want, but expect, businesses will need to invest in technology, platforms and software. This one key capability of integrations that the facility is able to offer the customer should see the customer’s motivation cycled extended.

“In today’s world, Digital + Customer Experience = Customer centricity.”

Notice above that we’ve highlighted “recognise this shift”. As smartphones and integrated digital technologies advance and become more responsive and personalised, data metrics are rapidly emerging that can interpret behaviours and automate interactions to enhance user experience and overall customer satisfaction.

We spoke with some industry experts to get an understanding of the motivational trends of new customers. Here is what we found.

See the graph below of an average leisure club member’s motivation across their initial 12 weeks of their membership. Notice that the motivation tends to be at the pinnacle highest when they first join/commit. Creating measurable change tends to require a commitment and focus. For many members, they lack the strategies and consistent stimuli to maintain their motivation and focus to continue to attend the facilities…leading to a dramatic plunge usually within less than one week of committing!!

But what if there was a way to change the outcome of that curve? Well, there is!

graph 1

By engaging your customers through digital channels and technology, you can dramatically extend their motivation well past the one week mark.

graph 2

Engaging and interacting alone, whilst effective, may not be enough to retain your customers. Plus, trying to consistently engage and maintain this sort of valuable interaction with hundreds and thousand of members would be quite cumbersome, to say the least. By using customer-centric digital technologies, you can monitor and enhance the customer experience.

graph 3