“Our previous systems made it challenging to efficiently manage membership dues, class attendance, and revenue tracking, leaving us ready for a more streamlined solution.”
That’s how the Wisconsin Athletic Club (WAC) described their struggle to keep up with the demands of their growing 8 full-service health clubs. Outdated systems and manual processes were creating bottlenecks, leading to frustrated members and overwhelmed staff. It was time for a serious upgrade.
In this interview, Tom, the Head Project Manager at the WAC, takes us through WAC’s digital transformation journey as they adopted SHC software. From the initial challenges of introducing new technology to staff and overcoming member resistance to change, to the ultimate payoff of increased efficiency and member satisfaction, Tom shares it all.
Join Tom along with Ruchika, Chief Customer Success and Marketing Officer at SHC, as they talk in detail about:
- The day-to-day struggles of running a health club without the right tools
- How the WAC found its perfect partnership with SHC
- Overcoming implementation challenges and finding workarounds
- The impact of the new system on staff efficiency and member experience
- Measurable results and the return on investment
- Change management lessons and advice from Tom for other health club owners looking to level up
Challenges Faced Before Implementing SHC
Ruchika
What were your challenges in managing and running programs before SHC?
Tom
Getting started with Smart Health was a long journey. We started with the hardest and most intricate piece for our business: Youth Swim Lessons. This involved many nuances, especially with our club’s unique setup. With Swim Lessons specifically, the big thing was Family Management, which included adult-child pairings, payments, etc. Our progressive Swim Lesson format, unlike Packages, required full enrollment. We said, “If you can handle this, we’d love to work with you.” We formed a strong partnership with SHC.
Ruchika
Okay, wonderful. And you were also saying something about the Front Desk. What was that?
Tom
So, the same thing with the Front Desk as well, and this kind of goes across the board. We primarily use SHC for Swim Lessons and paid programming. Those were two huge projects that the Front Desk was managing almost entirely on their own across all our eight locations. Training them on consistent procedures was demanding. We were able free up the Front Desk and say to our members, “Hey, instead of calling or stopping at the Front Desk, you will be able to do this on your phone.”
Again, we had some resistance early on just because change is change. With Family Management specifically, our data was pretty difficult. But we were able to work through it with the team. The number of hours saved in Payroll and Member Experience have clearly improved a lot.
Ruchika
And when you were saying that the Front Desk was handling these departments almost entirely, what were they doing? If you can just give me a bit of background to that.
Tom
We relied heavily on manual processes and had no formal systems in place. Our outdated methods meant that the Front Desk had to manage the GRIM binder and the Small Group Progressive Training binder. While each club had a manager responsible for overseeing it, they couldn’t always be present, leaving the Front Desk to handle sign-ups, process charges in a separate system, and track receipts manually.
All these manual processes made it difficult to ensure our members paid and track if our lessons were profitable—and it was virtually impossible to know which classes were doing well and which ones should be discontinued.
We struggled with that until SHC. Now we know that we’re getting paid and we’re making money.
Impact of SHC on Revenue and Program Management
Ruchika
That sounds wonderful. Now, can you tell us about WAC and what role programs play in your club? From a member’s perspective and revenue perspective?
Tom
From a revenue perspective, we’re probably collecting 10% to 12% of our non-revenue dues through SHC. It’s not the biggest portion, but there is more to add and grow.
WAC has eight locations across the Milwaukee area. We’re a full-service regional gym essentially. So, we provide everything: weights, cardio equipment, childcare (during your workout), personal training, classes that are included in your membership, premium (paid) classes, swimming, massage, and more. It’s kind of a one-stop shop for your fitness needs.
What we’ve been able to do with SHC is make the process of the Small Group Progressive Training easier to get to. Make it more cost-effective than doing a one-on-one training session with a personal trainer, because that can get expensive.
Ruchika
Great. Out of your total revenue, how much is your non-dues? What percentage?
Tom
About 20%.
Ruchika
And of this 20%, 10% is running through SHC at the moment, of this 20%.
Tom
Correct. Yes.
Ruchika
So, we have to do a lot of work together.
Tom
Yep, that’s right.
Choosing SHC: Partnership and Problem-Solving
Ruchika
Why did you choose SHC?
Tom
SHC has done so much in the last three to four years. I would just say that’s a relatively short amount of time functionality-wise to be able to handle your customers’ needs.
I work with Ajay and Praveen. And we have fairly long discussions that often go like, “Hey, this is what we need that doesn’t exist in the system. Does this make sense for SHC to do for your clients and us, or is this something only the WAC would use?”
There have been many times where you helped us. Swim Lessons were one, Small Group Training was another. We also wanted to add tipping for Massages and manual item entry. These are big projects. Your willingness to take on these challenges is why we continue to partner with SHC.
Ruchika
How are you using SHC for Aquatics today? Which functions of this department have you automated using SHC software?
Tom
Group Swim Lessons are not only the primary use for SHC but also our most profitable area by far. That’s why we prioritized moving this program first, ensuring strong traction from the start. Once a member is in the system, it becomes very easy to register for future lessons or even other programs. SHC provides an effective pipeline of interest, making it a great tool for managing our Swim programs.
Ruchika
Perfect. And what about Tennis? How is it going for Tennis?
Tom
We’re just starting to explore Tennis. Tennis at the WAC can get very complicated, so we’re building up to that by starting with another net sport: pickleball. We’ve already added pickleball programming, and in the next few weeks, we will launch pickleball court reservations.
It’s taken us a while to get here, but we’ve knocked down some pretty big barriers along the way. We’ve done it by doing the most difficult thing first, and then by segmenting by the most impactful things.
We started with Swim Lessons first because and now, we’re going to keep going. Pickleball and Tennis are next up. Pickleball is one of the more complicated things. It checks a lot of boxes for Tennis, but it’s a much, much smaller group of people. If we’re able to run Pickleball successfully, then we feel more confident moving into Tennis.
Ruchika
Before SHC, were you offering Small Group Training? Can you speak more on that?
Tom
Small Group Training has always been offered. But like all other programming, it was in a binder run by the Front Desk. So, not the best management.
Ruchika
And so is it much easier? Because Small Group Training, I would suspect, again, has the same complexity of booking, timing, calendar, and everything else.
Tom
The biggest reason we went with this change was to free up our Front Desk team. The other piece is Payroll savings time. A manager for one of our largest clubs has talked about the hours that it saves in payroll every two weeks. Even if it’s just an hour throughout eight clubs, over a year, that adds up very quickly.
Ruchika
This is the time that your staff would have needed to spend calculating Payroll manually, right?
Tom
Yeah.
Ruchika
Our Payroll Reports are very sophisticated. And I know that you did work with SHC to fine-tune them further for your needs, right?
Tom
Yes.
Ruchika
What was your experience with our Onboarding process? You must have gone with Ajay and Armaan over our onboarding process, which is a five-phase process. Any comments on that experience?
Tom
It’s not a simple demo walkthrough of box software. There’s this comfortability around asking questions right off the bat. We have very unique situations that we’re trying to complete.
If the system wasn’t able to be as unique as us, we weren’t going to go with it. The SHC team was very flexible and we were able to make a lot of these things work.
Ruchika
Of course, yeah. And what about the experience with SHC after the launch?
Tom
I’ve said it a couple of times, but I’ll say it again because it’s worth it. We continue to provide the SHC team with difficult things to do because it makes sense for our business. Trying to build something unique just for us doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but a lot of gyms want many of the same things. The team has been very open to accepting our ideas.
Tackling Change Management and Member Adoption
Ruchika
And, you know, from a technology adoption perspective, any best practices that you can share with your peers in the industry? One that you spoke about was that you, how, you know, you phased out your different departments and your different applications. You didn’t try to do it all at once. You handled the biggest pieces. So that’s, I think, a wonderful best practice that will benefit others. Any other best practices you’d like to mention?
Tom
The one I spoke about before is a big one. Then, buy-in across the clubs. Our clubs are member-focused. So, if we provide something that a member doesn’t like, we’re going to be in trouble.
On our website, we’ve included information and walkthroughs for members. We built our own branded documents for everything. And we did it step-by-step and we broke it down as much as possible. You’re always going to have people who will struggle with it, which is fine. If you can limit that number, you’re going to put yourself in the best possible place.
Next, for us, Family Booking was a real challenge. And it’s partially because of the system that we used, which is MotionSoft. It took a little bit longer to get that smoothed out. Now, I will say SHC spent a ton of time making sure that our Family Booking worked correctly. I think now we have a lot of this figured out.
But I would say, find a difficult thing that is with a smaller group that you can kind of manage to attack first. And then, get a group of members to test it and be on board and make sure that they’re well-trained. Start there.
Ruchika
You created all this collateral for your members, which is available on the app, right? Did you also do any workshops for your members or any sessions? Did you do that stuff for them or your staff?
Tom
We did it for the staff. We did not do it for members. Essentially, we sent a member-wide email saying, “Hey, we’re moving Swim Lessons.” We emailed anyone who participated in Swim Lessons in the last three sessions.
I physically went into clubs during Swim Lessons and was handing out instructions on how to download the app, get registered, and add your family. We didn’t do walkthroughs or anything like that, but we got directions into people’s hands early and we made it very clear that this was a change that was happening. And that was very helpful.
Ruchika
So, you took printouts, like, hard copies?
Tom
Yes. We printed posters with QR codes and we put them in the pool that said, “Hey, Swim Lessons are moving. Download the app here.”
So, if you’re looking to register for classes, workshops, and events, there is a two-page document for that. It gives basic instructions on what members need to do. We printed a bunch of these out when we kicked off swim lessons and we had these at the Front Desk. And then we made large posters with a QR code to this site.
Now, for non-members, since there are different instructions, we created different documents for it as we wanted to separate them as much as possible.
We made sure that this information was all correct and done. And we ran through this multiple times to make sure all the boxes were checked. We do have frequently asked questions (FAQs) too.
Ruchika
This is really good.
Tom
I mean, for me, if we didn’t do this, we would have never been able to roll this out. We have 24,000 members. We have roughly 200 Swim Registrations every two months. We’re talking about maybe 1,000 people in a year who are going use it. And that’s why we started with the Swim Lessons because it’s a smaller group that we could train specifically on how to do it.
People who have kids who are young enough to be in Swim Lessons are probably a little more tech-savvy than other pieces of the club, right? I mean, you’re talking about someone who’s 20 to 40. We were going after a group that was more aware.
Ruchika
In terms of Change Management, Tom, this is really big. When software became easy to distribute via the cloud, people thought that adoption would also follow suit, but it didn’t. Yet many are still struggling with adoption. So, while it’s easy to distribute the software today and much cheaper, the effort that has to go into Change Management remains the same, which was 10 years ago when the software was not distributed on the cloud.
Tom
If not the same, it might be more. Because you’re going to have groups that don’t use smartphones or who don’t want to put credit cards on their phones because of all the security issues. We need to find solutions for those people as well.
So, yeah, I think yes, Change Management is huge. When you were talking about 10 years ago and you’re doing it on paper, that’s easy. Or you’re switching to a computer. That’s easy. When you’re not going into a club and you’re trying to do it on your own, you need to make sure that the flow is as simple as possible. I spent a lot of time on the SHC app, but every time I talk to someone, I have to start over; I have to think this person’s never been here before. They’ve never used an app before. Every time I email someone, even on my team, when they ask for where a report is, I give them all seven steps. I keep giving them those instructions because they’re not quite there yet.
Ruchika
So, the first two years are going to be tough. Then what’s going to happen is everybody’s going to get the hang of it. I’m really glad to speak with you today and to see how you’ve managed, you know, educating your members.
Tom
We were getting 50 to 75 emails related to issues on Swim Registration (Family Booking issues) during the first two rounds. In the third round, we had 10. So, it took us five, six months to get it done, but now we don’t have any. And we have more signups than we did the first two times.
Ruchika
What kind of issues were arising?
Tom
It was all Family Booking related stuff. Make sure your data is aligned before you start moving your departments to the app.
Ruchika
So, this is another best practice, what you just offered.
Tom
Yeah.
Ruchika
Any feedback for us? Anything we can do better?
Tom: No. We wouldn’t be here without you guys. So, I know this has been a great partnership on both sides.Ruchika: Absolutely, I agree. Thank you for chatting with me today.
