“Gemtech’s membership system enabled us to take on staff and manage our members in a centralised location. Poviding our members with, not only a seemless user experience between virtual and in-person worlds, but retaining members with the addition of the food tracker and weight tracker. Everything all just synchronises together for our coaches and members alike.”
Overview
A group of weight loss coaches were faced with the unprecedented bad news just before Christmas of 2021 that they no longer had a job. It was at a time of year when nobody wants to hear the news. But even worse was that the busiest time of year for weight loss coaches was less than 3 weeks away, so to start out on their own would mean a huge amount of work to continue to provide members with a seemless weight loss service.
The issues faced were, how do we manage all our members as a team of coaches if we work together? How are we going to maintain a record of each client and present it quickly when the arrive through the door? How are we going to take payments? Sell our weekly zoom classes? Provide members with the tools they need in a paid only area. How do we manage our sales information and keep up with all the administration of reminding members to attend? There was so much to consider and how was anyone able to afford a developer to create such a huge task and how would you explain your requirements and be up and running within 3 weeks?
Solution
One of those coaches that was made redundant, was also a web designer for the weight loss company that liquidated. Zoe Sterling knew what was needed and how it needed to work, so there was no explanation or scope of works needed to be drafted for a developer. She just got on with it and had a prototype up and running for testing a week before January and we were out the door on 3rd of January with a working online ordering system for our members to book and buy our zoom classes.
Shortly after that we started to add more and more features and reduce the administrative burdens that were slowing us down, converting as much as possible in to automated processes. Then when in-person classes were able to resume (after covid restrictions fully lifted), we were also ready to go with our shiny new tablets with a point of sale for our members. Booking the members in at the entrance to class, taking their payments and then weighing them in and inputting their weights. As soon as the coach had entered their weight, they could view their progress charts in the palm of their hands whilst waiting for the coach to come and do her talk and they were delighted. Our digital online only members were able to log their own weigh-ins from home and any of our coaches could view their entries and provide support and assistance.
Continuing from this our members were buzzing when we delivered a food tracking program that they can use on their phones. Showing them all their calorie and macronutrient information and searching for Irish Food products and getting a result! Our coaches were able to provide direct feedback on what their members had tracked, as it was all in their back office management console.
This system has reduced a lot of our manual administrative work, made the coaches lives easier and given them the ability to manage their members in a way they never could before and given members a reason to return week after week. Our retention increased by 22% with a combination of reminder emails and having our own food tracker and membership area with lots of content like videos and recipes.
Oh and the cost? 2 trading online vouchers.