NPS® Survey Best Practices for Fitness Franchises

Your members hold your reputation in their hands, and member retention impacts your bottom line. That is why it is so important to send net promoter score surveys to survey members. Regardless of how you crunch the numbers, recruiting new members for a fitness franchise is more expensive than retaining existing ones. And a 5% increase in existing retention can yield a 25% increase in profits.

Using strategies like NPS® surveys is the best way to get positive member feedback and gain valuable insights into the performance of company. These tips will boost your net promoter score survey response rate and help you reach your NPS® benchmarks in your survey responses. Having an intentional NPS® survey design is a great way to maximize its capabilities.

The Critical Role of NPS® in Your Fitness Franchise Business

Evaluating member loyalty across several franchise locations requires many variables: member experience, online sign-ups and services, member support team, brand trust, membership options, staff interactions, and available equipment and classes. One effective way to measure and improve member loyalty in the fitness franchise industry is through Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) surveys.

NPS® surveys are simple member loyalty surveys that provide insights about your members’ willingness to recommend your franchise to others. Knowing where you stand with existing members is crucial to your fitness franchise growth strategy. Your member base is the best way to get to your target market, which is why it is so key to collect member feedback. This can also gauge member loyalty and maintain member NPS® data.

NPS® Surveys and Why Every Fitness Franchise Needs One

Developed in 2003 to evaluate the member experience, an NPS® survey asks, “How likely are you to recommend (business name) to a friend or colleague?” It asks loyal members to respond with a numeric rating between zero and ten. Zero is not likely to recommend, and ten is extremely likely to recommend. From there, follow-up questions and email surveys will ask the member why they decided on the rating they provided. This is how you can measure NPS® and determine how many members will give qualitative feedback and explain their member’s experience at your business. This is how to use the NPS® best practices to your advantage.

It is an easy and cost-effective way to compare franchise performance across multiple locations and different subject lines. In addition, the open-ended follow-up NPS® survey questions give you an opportunity to look at common areas where each franchise is performing well and where it needs improvement from respondents. 

How NPS® is Calculated

It sounds simple enough, but NPS® scoring is more than a numerical score from zero to ten, it’s more involved than just positive or negative member sentiment. Here is a brief overview of how to calculate NPS®.

The NPS® survey responses are split into three numeric categories:

• Promoters (score 9-10) indicating high loyalty and a strong likelihood to recommend your fitness franchise
• Passives (score 7-8) indicating they are somewhat loyal but not enthusiastic about your brand or service
• Detractors (score 0-6) indicating low loyalty and the potential to spread negative word-of-mouth

Let’s learn more about the impact of each of these categories in different member segments and the overall NPS® survey best practices to avoid survey fatigue.

Promoters vs. Passives vs. Detractors

Promoters are loyal members who will continue to use the franchise’s services and actively advocate for them. They are more likely to refer new members, measure member loyalty, positively review the franchise online, and can contribute to the long-term success and growth of a franchise. This will encourage more member engagement and raises your average nps score.

Passives fall somewhere in the middle, are relatively indifferent, and may be easily swayed by competing offerings. They may or may not return to your fitness franchise but are unlikely to promote the experience to others. This group possesses the greatest opportunity to convert more promoters. Switching their member journey to a more positive relationship and overall member success, which is why passives are key to send surveys to.

Detractors pose the highest risk to the franchise’s reputation and may deter potential members through negative feedback. They are more likely to tell their social circle about their experience and may even go out of their way to leave a negative review online. This can overall lower your member sentiment and lower positive response rates. They will be much more difficult to bump up to promoters but could be swayed into becoming passives.

Remember that 95% of members will search online reviews before purchasing, and 40% have avoided a company based on negative reviews. A single negative or 1-star review can weigh more on members’ opinions than your average rating. Therefore, your NPS® feedback and NPS® scores have real consequences when it comes to member experience.

NPS® Scoring System

The absolute NPS® is calculated with the total percentage of promoters subtracted from the total percentage of detractors response rates. The total NPS®, or absolute score, ranges from -100 to +100, with higher scores indicating a higher proportion of promoters relative to detractors.

The absolute score itself is less important than the trend it represents over time. Fitness franchising companies should strive to improve their NPS® by increasing member services, offering additional employee training, and using members’ NPS® responses to make measured changes across the business.

Absolute vs. Relative

While the absolute NPS® number is helpful for internal tracking and benchmarking against previous results, the relative NPS® provides industry context. It is essential to compare each franchise NPS® with all your locations, competitors, and the overall industry standard to understand its significance and identify areas for improvement. NPS® results will vary depending on how the survey is conducted. Scores are higher when it is accessed with ease, from an NPS® survey in-app that can measure NPS® regularly.

How to Run Your NPS® Survey

These are essentially pre-built, so all you need is an NPS® survey tool to send NPS® surveys and having the right NPS® question in your surveys. You can create a manual delivery system using email lists, in-app surveys, SMS, web plugins, or even phone calls. We recommend an automated system like Listen360 that sends an NPS® survey on a regular cadence of your choosing, and can even offer a list of follow-up questions.   

In addition, Listen360 member engagement software collects member data and analyzes it to automatically calculate your NPS® and provide detailed reports about your franchises in real-time, and can even have your NPS® surveys in app.

What Transactional NPS® Survey Scores Mean for Fitness Franchises

Generally, an NPS® score of 0-30 is considered decent in any industry. A “good” NPS® score in the fitness franchise industry depends on factors such as local competition, business size, and trends in member experience. Your NPS® survey response rate is a key indicator of how others perceive your business, and how the calculate net promoter score has a major effect on your popularity.

According to our most recent Fitness NPS® Benchmark Report, the median score for a gym was 57. Gyms with a score of 71 or higher put them in the top 25% of all gyms. For studio and boutique fitness franchises, an NPS® of 88 or higher will place them in the top 25%.

It’s important to note that achieving a score of 100 is rare due to the inherent variability of human preferences, naturally, there will be a member churn for a variety of personal reasons. Contact us today for the full report from our 600,000 member responses from the NPS® survey results. 

Click here for Listen360’s full ebook, The Franchisor’s Guide to NPS®.

Get Started With Listen360’s NPS® Platform Today

Member experience is important to the growth and sustainability of your fitness franchise, and early identification and intervention are crucial in preventing reputation-damaging experiences. However, lengthy satisfaction surveys can detract from members’ willingness to help build your brand and reputation and will lower the response rate and valuable feedback or lower the NPS® survey response rates.

If you’re ready to learn about your fitness franchise’s NPS® and how to assess the pulse of your member base, consider starting with Listen360’s member engagement platform. Together we can build stronger member relationships, gather meaningful engagement feedback, and ultimately retain your loyal members.

Contact us today for the complete reports mentioned here or to learn how we can take your fitness franchise to the next level.