Why People Cancel Their Gym Memberships & How You Can Prevent It

Aug 20, 2022

Whenever new members join a gym, they are always brimming with optimistic energy and are excited about the great intentions for which they decide to join. However, these members soon start doubting whether they are hitting their targets fast enough and whether the money they spend on club memberships is worth the return.

According to the IHRSA, 50% of new gym memberships get canceled within six months. It becomes essential to understand the common reasons behind these membership cancellations so that you can take measurements to prevent them from happening.

Most Common Reasons Why Gym Memberships Are Canceled

Members Not Achieving Their Fitness Goals

People usually join a gym after being motivated to set personal health goals. However, many members face the struggle to start gym workouts on their own and fail to achieve desired results. It results in motivational loss and eventually leads them to cancel their memberships.

Most successful gyms help members set goals and assist in achieving them. It’s essential to have staff check in with members regularly and discuss and help overcome their struggles. Encourage them to participate in group exercises or utilize personal training.  It will help them maintain their motivation and make visits more often, resulting in more members meeting their goals and higher retention rates for a gym.

Lack of Sense of Community

A sense of community is critical for any fitness business. Research has established that members in groups are more likely to remain long-term as environments that bring together members with similar goals and aspirations result in more achievements and motivation. An article published by Forbes says the sense of community is a top motivator for members to join and attend gyms. A good way to do this is to get involved in local community initiatives and become a part of the community the gym operates in.

Building a strong community in a gym provides customers with engaging training sessions, supportive environments, and encouraging social experiences that eventually result in higher member retention and referral rates for that gym.

A Lack of Diverse Workouts and New Experiences

Members have difficulty sticking to regular training routines, especially when they get repetitive and lose excitement. A lack of diverse workouts and unvaried environments can greatly diminish retention rates and lead to losing loyal customers.

Requesting feedback from members on the kind of training they would like to experience is effective. Sometimes, organizing a few off-site diverse workout sessions such as mountain climbing, beach workouts, or park boot camps can prove quite helpful. Social interactions that promote innovative group classes for gym members to initiate different group classes create new experiences. These diverse experiences greatly work as incentives for the members to continue coming to gyms. The benefits include increased customer satisfaction, revenue streams, retention, and referral rates to name a few.

Poor Customer Service

An important reason for canceling gym memberships is the inability to provide good customer service to members. It negatively impacts retention rates and the success of a fitness center. A few statistics that give a perspective on the importance of good customer service are

  • 68% of consumers willingly pay more for products and services from brands offering good customer service experiences. (Souce: Hubspot)
  • 89% of customers are more likely to continue purchases after positive customer experiences. (Souce: Salesforce Research)
  • Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% increase profits by 25%- 95%. (Souce: Bain and Company)
  • Almost 3 out of 5 customers report that good customer service is vital to their loyalty to a brand. (Souce: Zendesk)
  • Good customer service heavily impacts recommendations and consumers who rate the service of a company positively are 38% more likely to recommend that company. (Souce: Qualtrics XM Institute)
  • Investing in new customers is 5-25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones. (Souce: Invesp)

Great customer service is more than just being friendly to members. It is about the entire customer journey and starts from when they become members. Gyms need to give their customers the desired results, create personalized experiences for them and provide them with a trained staff that can assist their queries for reducing the cancellation of gym memberships. It is important to note that happy customers become loyal and result in higher retention rates, referrals, and business revenues.

Achieving success in the fitness industry is challenging because the competition is tough. On top of that, all the processes to succeed can also be very financially demanding, albeit necessary. In such a competitive scenario, partnering with an experienced Business Process Outsourcing company for outsourcing customer services and engagement tasks can be the edge that businesses need.

Club cancellations are a high-volume occurrence, and they need a significant amount of human effort to execute. It can get tough for your staff to respond to all of the cancellation notifications that come in through phone calls, emails, and in-person visits. If staff members hurry through the process, they are more likely to miss key chances to keep the member or receive any unpaid balances.

First Credit Services is a BPO company with 25 years of experience in the industry. Our Cancellation and Retention Services enable you to divert all your cancellation requests to our club-branded Member Experience Center. Our customer experience team will professionally handle all the inquiries directed towards you and will follow through with all efforts that let you retain your members and also recoup any missed payments.

Also read: 9 Proven Gym Marketing Ideas to Get More Clients in 2022

Contact us today to know how we can help.

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