So its official, people don’t have to go to the gym or pay a personal trainer for professional fitness instruction anymore. I was a health and fitness manager for 5 years working in the public sector, which basically means running leisure centers and gym’s owned by the council. We knew our market place and we operated at the less plush end of the leisure spectrum offering affordable and accessable facilities without compromising on service. Part of that service was to ensure that the customer had access to qualified instructors and could have all their needs catered for. The instructors would monitor progress and set targets and basically try to ensure that the customer enjoyed their time at the gym and more importantly got the results they were after.
My biggest headache was customer retention, keeping the members from giving up and cancelling their contracts and more often than not the reason the customer did leave was due to loss of interest and part of this loss of interest was due to lack of results.
Now if I had an unlimited labour budget , instead of having a team of just 4 instructors per gym. I’d employ a personal instructor for every member. Ensuring 1-1 care for all. Every customer would have daily contact with their instructor. They’d receive words of encouragement, advice and recepe’s for healthy eating available not just at the gym but accessible at home or in the supemarket. Scientific feedback i.e. intensity, calories burnt, durin and after their workouts that can be compared to the same work out four weeks ago in an instant. Technique advise ensuring correct posture, reducing risk of injury and optimizing results. But as you can imagine this would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and simple is not practical. Only the rich and famous can afford a personal trainer and lifestyle coach, but even then to have that person available at the drop of a hat or click of a button would require a purse the size of a real hollywood blockbuster.
And all the reasons above are one way that I can see how new technology is changing and developing the way society uses information. The consumer can now have all of the above with a combination of a few things I have been looking at in this blog. The information that the consumer needs is accessible and it is enabling them to get out and do it for themselves. mp3′s, mobile phone’s, podcasts, blogs are all out there making it possible for us to put together our own lifestyle regime its bigger than what I could ever offer at the gym 10 years ago, its the whole package.
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