8 Ways to Improve your customer attendance during your online lessons
During the last national lockdown, many leisure facilities and other types of businesses moved their services online, throughout this latest newsletter we go through some great things you can do to improve the uptake of your customer’s attendance online, to ensure you continue to receive an income and more importantly retain these customers.
No matter their age, trying to keep children engaged will always show its challenges. Taking classes online have shown new challenges from no motivation to limited confidence. Teachers/coaches are looking for new ways to encourage the children to take part in the new online classes.
The success of online classes does not depend entirely on your club. Each and every child is different with many different motivators. This can vary from what their interests to patience, this is what you as a club must recognise.
Some children will be buoyant and excel with online lessons whereas others will value face-to-face teaching. There is no rule on how to increase motivation for online classes, but a key factor is keeping children interested in your content.
So we have put together 8 ways that will help you improve the customer uptake during your online lessons
Get your team involved
A crucial factor in all of this is your team. If your staff members aren’t motivated to teach, then this could result in a lack of motivation to learn from the members perspective, imagine watching that TV show that is not keeping you entertained, what do you do! You change the channel. Keep up with regular check-ins with your team to see how they are coping with the changes, this is all new for them too, it’s key to develop their skills, so we need to understand where they are currently. Having regular meetings will allow you to assess how lessons are going on a week-to-week basis, and the chance to correct anything as a team. If you can get your team to be training online they can encourage your customers to follow and attend more online lessons.
Generating Confidence
All people have different levels of confidence and some members will have little motivation because they are lacking in confidence. If you are only holding live sessions, try pre-recording some classes where students can access it without having to be seen by others. If this is being used for children you can ask parents to send a video of their child completing the task, this will give you a chance to connect with the child and offer supportive critics and praises. Build that confidence by having a short call or message exchange help them to relax, this will lead to more online lessons being attended.
Consider shorter lessons
It is worth considering reducing the time of your online lessons to keep the customers focused. Or you could have different lesson lengths based on their age and ability. With younger children, you may want to reduce the teaching time but have another lesson during the week to keep them engaged. With older customers, your teaching time may be longer, but you may include a break for discussion, maybe of what they would like to do next lesson.
It is always best to trial different tactics with children to see what works best for them and yourselves.
Incentivise participation
People inherently like “FREE STUFF”, now this could mean such things have drinks bottles, T-Shirts, Seminars but it could also mean running online competitions and games. Adding value to these online services will encourage your customers to partake in online lessons. Push the idea that by keeping skills up to date is vital, but why not try and bring in something new to your classes? I.e train with the family. Many of your members will be missing out on just talking to their teammates during this time, so why not include an area where they can have conversations with other members.
Adapting your online lessons
By now, you’ll be familiar with adapting to the challenges of lockdown. Something to consider is whether you have altered your lessons enough to integrate with virtual teaching? Look at what others who operate in the same space as you will always see where you can make and develop changes to your service. Look at the trends that are popular with your industry abroad. It is important to remember that your customers will be missing out on the social interactions from other customers and staff within your facility.
Thinking outside the box
By now, you’ll be familiar with adapting. Something to consider is whether you have altered your lessons enough to integrate with the virtual offering? Look at what other facilities are doing well and what trends are popular with your industry. Try to think out of the box and look at how the delivery of your service and ask for feedback as you value what your customers think. Continuously send update emails and texts messages this will remind your customers of your online offering and should increase the attendance.
Looking at your competition
If you yourself are lacking motivation, you can always see what other facilities are doing – observing others is healthy. You can find motive and inspiration for new class content you have not thought about before. Do not feel bad for developing an existing concept this is how life generally develops. We know of many facilities that work together to pool their experience and ideas to help come up with new and interesting ways to engage customers to help increase the attendance of online lessons.
The nuts and bolts of it
The key and success to delivery online lessons but also making sure your customers actually attend the online lessons will rely on proper planning, in advance preparation, and access to the right tools at the correct time. With proper planning we can replicate remotely almost all activities and experiences we would do in a physical format, it’s just how we communicate and deliver the service. Effective online learning relies mainly on empathy. If you want to provide a better online experience we should not forget about the human component so remember to create a sense of community.
We hope that you have found some useful tips on how you can improve the uptake of your online lessons, we specialise in delivery membership management to facilities just like yours. At SimplyCOLLECT we provide you with the tools that allow you to get back to what you love. For more information on how you can make your online classes awesome we also have a PDF guide we can send you, please click the below link
