As smartphone usage continues to soar, Gladstone’s MobilePro is helping savvy operators stay connected to their customers

It’s news to no one that smartphones are ubiquitous. A quick glance around any supermarket, restaurant, office or train – or, indeed, any sports facility – will reveal people of all ages and backgrounds talking, texting, socialising, surfing, gaming and shopping on their phones.

Within the eight years since they became widely available, these devices have become absolutely integral to most people’s lives. According to Deloitte’s latest UK Mobile Consumer Survey, 76 per cent of adults now own a smartphone. Over half use it on public transport, at work and while shopping, and 53 per cent look at it within five minutes of waking up. Collectively, in the UK, we check our phones over a billion times a day.

In this context, investing in a market-leading product such as Gladstone’s MobilePro – a tiled app that opens a direct, two-way line of communication between facilities and their users – is simply common sense for any sport or leisure operator serious about attracting, engaging and retaining their customers.

Crucially, MobilePro enables customers to book and pay for both classes and activities wherever and whenever they choose; yet because it interacts with Gladstone’s membership management software in real time, all the usual pricing and booking benefits apply.

Compatible with iOS and Android devices, the app is also a powerful communications and marketing tool, allowing operators to add an unlimited number of information pages to market their sites to prospects while keeping existing members up to date with the latest news and promotions. Meanwhile, its seamless interface with social media sites enables customers to share news and bookings with friends, increasing exposure further.

“Many consumers see their smartphone as an extension of themselves,” says Gladstone’s managing director, Tom Withers. “Young people in particular want and expect to do everything on their phone.

"MobilePro has been specifically designed to help sport and leisure operators stay connected to these customers as well as reaching out to new ones.”

Flexible solution
This approach has certainly proved successful at the University of Portsmouth’s Department of Sport and Recreation, which launched the app across its three sites in September 2014. “We signed up for MobilePro because it aligned with some of our key strategic aims: to engage our customers interactively, allow them to access our information more quickly, and enable them to book more easily,” says Bryn Jones, sports duty supervisor.

“We've been a Gladstone customer for nine years, and in addition to Plus2 membership management software, we use Connect for online booking, Join@Home for online joining, eyeQ for business intelligence, Business Process Manager for streamlining back-of-house admin and Kiosk self-service units across all three of our extensive sports facilities.

“However, due to problems with our previous website provider, our customers often found it hard to access the information they needed. We felt that MobilePro could provide us with a flexible solution to this problem.

“Since its launch, 5,100 people have downloaded the app, and we’ve seen both a dramatic boost in online transactions and a drastic drop-off in phone-call volume for bookings. Roughly 80 per cent of class users now book via MobilePro. Given that we offer around 50 classes a week, this has greatly reduced the workload of our customer service advisors, allowing them to concentrate on other more important tasks.

“Class booking is the most popular module, accounting for 64 per cent of app hits, with sports hall activities the second most popular, at 11 per cent. These figures show how easy the booking process is, which is vital to instilling customer confidence in the product.

“But we don’t just use MobilePro as a booking app; it’s also an invaluable communication and marketing tool. According to Gladstone, we send more push notifications through the app than any of their other customers. We have used it to communicate time changes, class changes, emergency closures, charity events, competitions, competition winners and courses. Plus we always wish our members Merry Christmas on Christmas Day!

“The reports and analysis feature of the app has also been extremely useful. During promotional pushes, it’s great to be able to provide our staff with targets, and motivating for them to see the numbers increasing daily. It also highlights what people want to view, which allows us to tweak our content to make it more engaging. And using the Web Cockpit to update content is really very simple.

“Aside from reducing staff workload, the other major benefit of MobilePro has been customer satisfaction. The booking figures speak for themselves, and feedback shows that people are finding the information we share on the app useful, simple and easy to find. We can now reach our customers directly rather than having to rely on them opening an email: it makes us part of their lives.”