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Jerit Pogue of Athletic & Performance Arts was the development resource, beta tester, and first customer to use Mobile Inventor’s custom mobile app. When Jerit Pogue began talking to his friend (and Mobile Inventor co-founder) Ty McDowell about the mobile apps he was creating for organizations like gyms, dance studios and swim schools, he wanted to be involved.
“This is a fantastic idea. Our organizations need to reach out to parents with conveniences in every possible way. Why every parent may not now use a mobile app – many are thrilled at the possibilities of having one to use.”
When Ty saw Jerit’s enthusiasm for the app, he immediately enlisted him for his expertise and knowledge of parental preferences. Does it do what you need for it to do?
That was the question that Ty posed to Jerit after he had turned one of the development revs over to Jerit for testing. After all, this was the critical question that would help Mobile Inventor create an app that parents would adopt and use.
“Jerit’s input was critical to our being able to make the app appropriate and intuitive for use by parents of our Activity Center students,” notes Ty.
With Jerit’s help, Mobile Inventor learned such data as:
- The specific actions that parents want to be able to do at the spur of the moment.
- The types of devices most used by children facility parents.
- Frustrations and challenges that parents face in doing business with children’s activity centers.
- Nuances that were observed when parents were in the activity center environment.
Adding the Right Features
Without Jerit’s input, Ty wouldn’t have been so sure that adding a convenience feature like using QR codes for recording attendance was viable.
“It’s another convenience feature. It helps the front office to be more efficient and to automate the way they record attendance in their class management software,” notes Jerit. “It’s a powerful option that facilities with large numbers of students will want to use. And it’s one of the more leading edge technologies that people are using for lots of things.”
Jerit was instrumental in helping Mobile Inventor tweak this feature. He put quite a commitment in effort in on testing and provided incredibly detailed input that made it straightforward to make the product tweaks.
“Our user-ready product was amazing as we released it as an option to all clients. Sometimes products miss the mark, but out QR code piece was spot on – and largely due to Jerit’s input,” says Ty.
From the Client Perspective
Jerit’s experience – beyond his development input – is as a client. Jerit owns Athletic & Performance Arts and has offered his custom mobile app to his parents with great success. With his roll out of QR Codes for Attendance, Jerit has been able to add to his valuable convenience options that make his facility’s parents very happy.
What makes Jerit happy is the how Mobile Inventor nurtures its clients.
Mobile Inventor is:
- Reachable
- Approachable
- Responsive
- Informative
- Helpful
“Basically, the people who can answer your question or fix your issue are the ones you deal with. You don’t have to ‘go through’ anyone in attempting to make you needs known,” comments Jerit. “Of course, that is one of the beauties of working with a lean team. But everyone at Mobile Inventor is genuinely committed to helping their clients offer the best possible product to their parents. Anything short of that just isn’t acceptable to them.”
“My experience is indicative of the experience of every user,” he adds.” I don’t get preferential customer service because I helped out. I’ve seen the way they treat other clients and it mirrors my own. ”
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Securing a presence on smartphones is advantage for gym. Technology comes closer every day to offering a central device where we can do absolutely everything we need to do. Actually, the technology is there and it’s the service providers who have not quite completed this circle. Major organizations and institutions such as banks, media, utilities and medical facilities brought this into the main stream and others such as department, big box and drug stores and restaurants have wisely following suit. Workout facilities, salons, golf courses and bakeries are seeing the advantage of not only doing business online but creating apps to make that experience easier and better. We have apps for operating our garage doors and security systems. The advantage to appearing on the home screen of the device that most people use for everything from banking to entertainment has become obvious.Children’s activity centers are no different. In fact, having that presence on the smartphone screen was the very reason that Frank Kudlac set out to create an app that Achievers Gymnastics could offer to its parents.
“We see our parents using their smartphones to do everything. And that made me ask the question, ‘Why can’t they do what they need to do with Achievers from their smartphones as well?’”
Creating Value
That point or realization was when Frank contacted Mobile Inventor. Achievers wanted their app to be a great convenience for parents: an app that wasn’t just another feature of the gym but one that added value to the relationship.
Adding value is critical to the app’s success. When it comes to their children, parents want to have complete and immediate information and they want to be able to act on it when it’s convenient to them. By offering easy access to the activities and important data that are important to them, parents are compelled to use the app often.
Easy access:
- Saves parents time
- Gets parents what they want when they want it
- Keeps parents up to date
The value added by the mobile app will also win you points in the convenience category with parents who are seeking out a gym for their children’s activities.
Frank accomplished all of this with the Achievers mobile app with Mobile Inventor’s help. The design makes it easy for parents to do things like view class schedules, enroll their children in the ones they prefer and pay – all in their app in just a matter of seconds.
Pushing Information Out
Achievers’ app also enables staff to push out special announcements to parents. This is a boon to Achievers’ advertising efforts because special events and classes can be promoted with minimal cost and effort. Emergency notices – such as bad weather closings – are delivered fast. And because it appears on the parents’ smartphone, they get the news regardless of where they are.
“It’s easy for us to let parents know what is going on this way and it’s a bonus for them. Nothing is more frustrating than finding out too late about a cancellation. Unread email messages in Inboxes are useless for such information while push notifications are delivered directly as messages on their devices – getting the news out very effectively.”
Full Use of Idle Time
Parents sit in lines in many places: carpools, doctor’s offices and hair salons. A gym app can be right there among the other apps on smartphones that they find valuable. It’s easier and quicker for parents to do all the administrative tasks they need to do with your gym through the app so they jump on and use everything that they can get to while they have idle time.
Parents can:
- Search for preferred classes
- Enroll and pay for classes
- Look at the activities calendar
- Order leotards and team t-shirts
- Look through competition videos
- Select pictures to save for themselves or order
- Review their child’s skills progress
Parents find answers to questions for themselves and feel empowered through being completely up-to-date with their child’s progress and the gym’s activities.
Bonus for Front Office Staff
Because the app puts the parents in self-serve mode, front office staff is freed from answering so many administrative questions and can spend time discussing more meaningful topics and building relationships with parents. Mundane data entry is eliminated from office staff responsibilities and is practically error-free since parents enter it themselves.
The features that do require staff effort, such as push notifications, are simple and quick to complete and save staff from spending huge blocks of time with individual emails and phone calls.
Mobile apps are truly vehicles that gyms can put in place for parental satisfaction, operational improvement and competitive advantage.
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Parents have access to decision-making details from their mobile device. Brian Foster at Stars & Stripes Kids Activity Center noticed that most of his parents are last minute shoppers. Having a tool at their disposal, like a mobile app, gives parents exactly what they want: complete access to all the information they need to schedule and buy.
“Parents can even schedule events happening within the hour quite easily through the app. Human interaction – such as calling in – is usually slower than using the app. In the end, providing the mobile app is better for everyone involved.”
The mobile app offers parents the 24/7 access they want and feeds their need for spontaneous purchase-ability.
The Revenue Follows
Opening up access and providing more and easier opportunities to buy increases revenues exponentially. Push notifications enable Stars & Stripes to put class and event availabilities and payment methods directly onto the mobile devices that parents are using all the time. Events or classes that may have fewer registrants can be promoted using this push feature and the result is an increase in total enrollments. It follows that revenues parallel this enrollment increase.
“Because of the ability to promote events at a moment’s notice, we can push events with lower numbers up the scale to higher attendance.”
Items that have performed especially well using push notifications are skills clinics. Brian attributes the improved performance to the staff’s ability to offer more information than a conversation allows since the app can display all instances that any particular items are offered. This opens up a time-saver for the parent since they can schedule and pay for all 6 clinics at once. Offering this “bundle” drives a revenue boost, as well, because these kids probably wouldn’t have been scheduled for all 6 events if sign-ups were only offered one by one.
Minimizing Front Office Workload
“We love it when we offload activities from office staff that parents are perfectly happy using an app for.”
With 24/7 access through the mobile app, parents have most of the answers they’re looking for at hand. The app’s menu functionality allows for very quick and easy maneuverability between various types of information like calendars, class listings, enrollment and payment. This allows parent interaction with front desk staff to be about more meaningful topics than these business-related details.
Welcoming New and Innovative Ideas
Mobile Inventor demonstrates openness and flexibility in its relationship with Stars & Stripes. Brian brought into the development cycle some very innovative ideas to give parents a view into what’s happening at the facility within the app. The dev team is working on this as a customization that could work into a new standard feature option.
“For me, this validates the extent to which Mobile Inventor will go in helping its clients provide features and capabilities that they think are important to their gym’s parents. Instead of putting this off as something that isn’t offered, Mobile Inventor immediately began research into making our ideas happen.”
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Scott Barron of Barron Gymnastics expresses his delight with Mobile Inventor app. Simplicity of mobile app gives parents the features they need and convenience they demand.
Guiding the Process
The results that Barron Gymnastics has seen from its mobile app reflect the careful thought and planning set in motion in the initial meetings that Scott had with the Mobile Inventor team. Mobile Inventor helped Scott to work his goals for the app into the most simple and user friendly design. Mobile Inventor’s guidance helps to ensure that apps meet customer expectations and operate efficiently and effectively.
Barron Gymnastics’ mobile app has:
- Elevated the convenience level of doing business with their gym.
- Supported their place as a leader in innovation.
- Increased parental delight.
- Placed their branding on customers’ mobile devices.
- Proved its value.
Delivering Elevated Services
Barron Gymnastics developed their mobile app with their customers’ experience in mind. The Mobile Inventor team – that is well-acquainted with Jackrabbit – designed a simplified and very user-accommodating process for registration and account management that is conveniently downloaded and used on smartphones.
“We’ve basically put customer portal functionality on their phones – right next to their Facebook and banking apps. We’ve elevated our services for parents and given them conveniences in doing business with us that other children’s facilities aren’t providing.”
Raising the Bar on Innovation
Establishing of competitive advantage for any business involves two things today: technology and convenience. Today’s parents prefer using their smartphones to maneuver their daily activities so gyms are wise to invest in having a presence there. Mobile Inventor has experience in providing app features that operate and are presented in ways that make them appealing for use. Their additional expertise in integrating Jackrabbit’s features into their apps makes them the perfect partner for gyms and other children’s activity centers.
“We’ve definitely been able to set ourselves above our competitors with our mobile app. It has helped us to enhance our customer service and make our company more diverse. This is definitely technology that others with parent-centric operations should invest in to make their parents happier.”
Seeing is Believing
Mobile Inventor’s apps give you return on investment and you have the statistics to prove it. By using the administrative dashboard statistics to track registrations to their source, you can get a clear indication of how many are generated from your app
“We know that our investment in our mobile app pays off. We track our statistics closely so that we know how to tweak our spending decisions to get the best results. Our average of 100 registration per month from approximately 1000 monthly visitors, lets us know that we’ve done something right for our customers. Mobile Inventor has helped us to make a difference in the gym’s reputation and in the bottom line.”
Blog
Mardi Obray of Peak Kids shares benefits of working with Mobile Inventor. Responsiveness and creativity brought Peak Kids’ app from concept to reality more quickly than anticipated.
Surpass Expectations
Mobile Inventor has the process of developing a mobile app down to a science. By providing customers with a template for setting up their app ideas, they give those who may not be able to visualize what they think a place to start. Layering on that the option to customize when necessary, Mobile Inventor helps customers take their apps in directions that they never imagined.
“Mobile Inventor was easy to work with and very responsive to our questions. We were thrilled that the development cycle was shorter than we had anticipated and that – through their creative suggestions – we were able to make our app more than we thought it could be.”
Save Time, See More
Time is a hot commodity for parents. Using their app, Peak Kids is able to provide cutting edge services that help them to make use of idle time and make plans when their needs are top of mind.
The mobile app also helps Peak Kids to expose more information to parents by:
- Sharing the demand for classes so they can enroll immediately.
- Delivering notifications that could change their plans for the day.
- Promoting sell out details with events.
“Parents using our mobile app can quickly enroll their child before their preferred class sells out and they know the second we know that a class won’t be held. It definitely keeps them on the forefront of our communications and helps us to create our own demand factor.”
Be the Cool Gym
Offering the mobile app has helped Peak Kids become the cool gym. Parents have a better way of doing business and enjoy the value that using the app provides. It delivers a distinction from others offering similar services and enhances brand. A mobile app is a great tool to use in conjunction with other customer service and marketing strategies for offering continuous improvements to your customers’ experience.
“We believe that our mobile app has enhanced our business. We’re thrilled with the way that it is seamlessly incorporated with Jackrabbit and excited about the time savings that it offers to our parents and our staff.”
Willis, TX 77318
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