The company is a large fitness chain. They have 100s of gyms and fitness centers in multiple cities. The brand competes with a lot of local and regional gyms that offer services at a much lower price point. So, the brand is dependent on attracting discriminating clients who enrol for a premium experience. The ability to maintain the premium experience across all centers is a critical lever for sucees.
The company operates 500+ fitness centers. Many of these centers are franchised. The company had a very robust ERP implementation. However, running a large fitness center that was constantly expanding and shutting stores was impossible without a lot of tailor made software. Because of the rapid growth, some centers started receiving less than ideal ratings from their customers.
One of the main reasons was that different centers were operating at different standards. The Operations teams were constantly solving issues at different centers. The company had no way to oversee operations across such a large network without physically visiting and auditing them, which was impractical.
The company's SOPs for operating every center was often not followed. One of the chief issues for this was that a lot of the detail and nuance was lost in translation between the enterprise, regional divisions, and ultimately to the center supervisors.
Multiunit enterprises rely on surprise visits and audits from regional and corporate HQs to ascertain adherence to standards and processes. This was next to impossible while managing a wide and large network of centers. And mistakes happen between visits.
Compliance is insufficient unless it is ongoing. In this case, ongoing compliance was the responsibility of the individual center supervisors and their diligence. While many centers thrived, there were always some with frequent complaints from members about equipment or cleanliness levels.
You can’t maintain ongoing and proactive adhere to SOPs with WhatsApp communications and random audits.
The client considered different approaches to solving their multiunit member experience challenges. But they could not find any software to solve their unique needs. The client explained the issues to Hubler and Hubler proposed a solution.
Hubler suggested that the client run a pilot with our Compliance Checklist solution. The checklist was tightly coupled with a Service Ticket solution.
Hubler built out a comprehensive set of checklist questions for opening, mid-day, and closing based on the company's SOPs. Operations team members and regional teams had the ability to create and modify the questions. They could also deploy these questionnaires to center supervisors on a schedule or on-demand for surprise audits:
1. Center supervisors had to submit their checklist questionnaires as per schedule. For example, 6 AM, 1 PM, and 9 PM. They did not have the option to skip questions.
2. Many questions needed photo or video evidence that had to be taken live with the camera on their phone. They could not use a saved photo from their gallery.
3. Some centers were sent surprise audit checklists. Supervisors had to perform the checklist when they were notified on their mobile apps.
The appropriate regional and Operations team members were always aware of which centers complied and which centers did not comply through dashboards and reports. Through the pilot, the client was able to imagine a best practice system for ensuring adherence to SOPs at the global level.
The Checklist was only one part of the solution. A big part of the negative member experience was related to broken or faulty equipment. While the checklists bridged the inspection gaps that led to unnoticed issues, it did not solve the problem of the faulty equipment itself. That's where Hubler’s Service Ticketing software helped.
The center supervisors could now lodge requests right from their mobile apps about equipment that needed service, repair, or replacement. The requests were automatically routed to the right people within the enterprise and a ticket was opened with clearly defined accountabilities. This ensure that the company was able to close the loop through software-driven processes instead of random emails or texts from supervisors.
Hubbler has helped automate a complicated, multi-level business process in less than a week. Our processing time is now 60% faster and everything is approved on time. Our team likes using the slick mobile app and our vendors love the self-serve portal.
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