GYMetrix - Blog - Can you guess what gym customers say is most important to them?

Can you guess what gym customers say is most important to them?

Here is some very interesting results of over 2,500 gym floor customer surveys, asking customers to rank, from a list, what is most important to them when choosing a gym. I have not met an operator yet who has guessed the top 3 correctly, and yet the top 3 are the top 3 for almost every gym we have surveyed at!

Please see the Case Study - What is important to customers - this is the first time we have consolidated all of the surveys we have done for our public sector clients.

GYMetrix is the first company in the fitness industry to focus on measuring precisely what service level 'equipment availability' is (the inverse of equipment usage) for customers while simultaneously doing questionnaires and measuring customer satisfaction.

Despite the data that we have collected supporting the fact that 'equipment availability' is one of the most, if not the most, important determinants of customer satisfaction, and a key value driver, allot of operators still would tell us that they didn't believe it! They say they simply do not get enough customers complaining about the need for more equipment types nor do they feel customers leave because of it.

So we decided to ask customers how important they thought it was. We went through our early surveys and picked out 10 common positive areas that customers mentioned why they were happy with the gyms we were surveying. We included this as a question in our surveys. We showed customers the 10 aspects and asked them to pick out their top 5, in order of importance to them, of what they looked for when shopping for a gym.

Before you look at the case study see if you can guess what the top 3 will be from;

  • Atmosphere and Environment
  • Good Location
  • Staff Friendly and Helpful
  • Enough Equipment of your choice
  • Price
  • Cleanliness and Maintenance
  • Good Quality Equipment
  • Spacious
  • Opening Hours
  • Nice Change Rooms

Not initially coming up from the gym industry, GYMetrix doesn't know what 'accepted wisdom' is. Only after we got the results did we learn that 'Location' is accepted as the most important aspect to customers, but that's not what they told us ... Outside of London 'Location' is NOT always the most important aspect to customers. Certainly not to 2,500+ customers we spoke to.

Please see the Case Study - What is important to customers for the consolidated results.

In other GYMetrix developments we have now also started to measure temperature in Gyms as another metric that affect customer satisfaction. This followed on from surveys where customers were complaining about temperature of the gyms. This has produced some very interesting results.

Before we even started GYMetrix we did some market research about what metrics operators would be interested in and there was universal agreement that temperature measurement was not necessary as automated air-conditioning takes care of it, so initially we dropped the idea. Only because customers were complaining about temperature in our surveys did we decide to reintroduce it. We have recorded gym temperatures of up to 26 degrees!

We will also soon be introducing Video Analytics to measure areas that our standard sensors cannot measure such as squat racks, performance racks and functional training areas. We recently trialled the system in a study for Stirling University. This will enable operators to see the level of service they are offering customers in these parts of their gyms.

If you are interested in GYMetrix coming and doing any projects for you or presenting our latest findings then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

I hope you find the case study interesting.