fbpx

Blog

by Ty McDowell, on Thursday September 17, 2015

Scott Barron loves to see the added revenue that his mobile app is driving in enrollments – especially in special events. But he admits that the increased revenue was never his main goal in developing Barron’s app.

“My goal with the app was to create a customer service tool that provided another way to communicate with parents and offered them another way to register, check dates and times and confirm information. It cuts down on the question and answer traffic at the front desk because people find their own answers.”

Better Customer Experience

There is a lot that’s covered in the customer experience: everything from communication methods to ease of business processes like enrollment and payment. But the benefits they produce can be very different. Some benefits are very obvious in the way they impact the bottom line and others – sometimes called soft benefits – are more difficult to track and impact the bottom line in more indirect ways. For example, parental happiness is difficult to track because it doesn’t show up as a line item in your P&L, while push notifications result in customer experience benefits that do show up as a line item and produce revenue that you can track to your bottom line.

Push notifications have delivered improvements in the Barron’s customer experience. Getting information to parents via push notifications requires minimal effort on the part of Barron’s staff yet benefit parents by keeping them in the loop in a way that is convenient and effortless for them. In fact, Scott notes that his gym parents are very enthusiastic about their push notification option.

“Push notifications are absolutely awesome because they allow our messages to immediately show up on the devices of parents who’ve chosen to get them. We can use the notifications for promoting special events or early enrollment or for conveying critical facility information. And they enable us to directly link parents to specific information or pages where they can immediately do whatever they need to do.”

How do organizations benefit from using push notifications?

  • Use of their app increases dramatically.
  • No complaints because parents choose to get them.
  • Money and enrollments come in more rapidly and less effort is spent chasing them.

Circle Back to Revenue

For Scott the existence of his app doesn’t depend on its ability to generate revenue, but he admits that reporting the revenue it produces is a nice bonus.

Using the push notification feature in their mobile app to promote special events during the past year, Scott has noted a 4.5% increase in the revenue associated with these special events. And that is an impressive boost.

The Big Picture

It’s more about the big picture for Scott. He’s focused on improving the customer experience and when that happens, Scott knows that growth for the gym will follow.

His app drives improvements. Parental happiness, enrollments and revenues increase, while front desk traffic and errors decrease. Communication with families is better and cash flow is more consistent.

“The mobile app is simply another way that we can offer our exceptional services to families and enhance the experience that they have with us.”