In the competitive world of health and fitness businesses, health clubs have to be on top of their game to attract and retain members. The easiest way they can do this is by focusing on member experience across the entire member lifecycle journey. While features like a self-service mobile app and plenty of program offerings are obvious ways to improve member experience, other seemingly unrelated services can also make a world of difference when it comes to how a member remembers the experience they had at your club. While your members all have different interests and will utilize different services and offerings within your club, one thing that is common to them all is the payments and billing experience.
Streamlined and integrated payment processing and billing serves not only your business and your staff, but also your members. Below we outline how a payments and billing solution like Gains can be instrumental in saving your health club time and money, as well as how both of those benefits contribute to providing a better member experience at your club.
Save Time
With a payment processing and full-service billing solution, you and your staff will gain countless hours back in your week. Time previously spent chasing declined payments, updating credit card information, and resubmitting declined cards is now all part of an automated process that is proven to recover more funds with little to no effort on your part. With all the extra time, you can focus on building relationships with your members and innovating new ways to improve their experience.
Save Money
If your ultimate goal is to gain and retain members to build your club, a comprehensive payments and billing tool is absolutely essential to your success. One in three members who experience a declined card cancel their membership within a week of the decline. This startling statistic means that payments problems are not only costing you money in one-time membership dues, but they’re also costing you compounding revenue from long-term members. With features like a proactive card account updater, your club will experience fewer declines which will in turn lead to fewer cancelled membership and more revenue for your club.
Improve Member Experience
Keeping your members happy, engaged, and invested in your club is why you got into the business in the first place. Without support from dedicated members, your health club loses meaning and purpose. Providing an exceptional member experience goes far beyond giving a friendly greeting when someone walks through your doors; it infiltrates every way in which members interact with your club and your staff. Your staff works hard to cultivate genuine, positive relationships with your members based on their fitness goals and interests. Being forced to have a sticky conversation about a declined payment can put that relationship in jeopardy. With a highly trained full-service billing team to take over that duty, you eliminate the risk of a strained staff-member relationship and ensure that your members are receiving professional and polite assistance with their billing.
A positive member experience is built around trust. One of the fastest ways to lose member trust is by exposing their data through a security breach. If your members trust your club enough to share their payment information, you need a payment processing solution that does the utmost to protect it. With a PCI compliant, closed system like Gains that integrates with your management software, you can avoid unnecessary data transfer and minimize risk. Additionally, by taking advantage of tokenization and address verification, you—and your members—can rest assured that their data will remains safe.
When it comes providing an exceptional member experience at your club, it pays to examine every nook and cranny of how you operate and interact with members. Something as simple as providing a seamless payment and billing experience can be the difference in having a one-month trial member or gaining a lifetime advocate for your club.
Ready to improve member experience through seamless payments and billing? Schedule a consultation, today!