Sports & recreation facility saves over $15,000 and achieves a 65% adoption rate during first year of using hosted recreation software

Background

Cardel Place is a 195,000 square foot sport and recreation facility located in north central Calgary, AB that includes a fitness center, aquatics center, three gyms, a climbing wall and two NHL-sized ice arenas. Since it opened in 2004, Cardel Place has welcomed over five million guests through its doors and is Canada’s first Gold LEED certified facility. Its vision is to be an inspiring destination enriching individual, family and community lifestyles with a focus on environmental stewardship. With over 15,700 people participating in programs in 2010, the Cardel Place staff came to a decision to upgrade their processes in order to improve customer service and reduce costs. In August of 2010, the facility implemented recreation registration software and has experienced tremendous success since its adoption.

Challenge

Cardel Place decided to improve its recreation technology for four main reasons. The first reason was based on an effort to enhance its customers’ experiences— registration days in particular. “Registration day was a huge pain point for us,” notes Alison Stutz chrp, business operations and services manager at Cardel Place. “Frustrations ran high for both our customers and our staff.” Hundreds of people would begin to line up at 5am for an 8am start time. The facility served coffee and muffins, played movies and distributed games for kids to try to entertain customers as they waited. The average in-person wait time was 90 minutes and the wait time on the phones—which were tied up all day and essentially shut down any outbound calls—was approximately 30 minutes. About 70% of customers registered via the phone and 30% in person; the Cardel Place staff knew this was inconvenient and an inefficient use of time for customers.

The second reason for switching to recreation registration software was to reduce the production costs of program guides. Reducing or eliminating printed program guides would significantly lessen overhead costs, as well as Cardel Place’s environmental footprint. Being a LEED certified facility makes the incorporation of environmentally friendly practices a priority.

The third reason also relates to eco-friendly practices. Cardel Place wanted to eliminate printing and mailing receipts. Not only was postage expensive, but with thousands of customers signing up for programs, it was quite a bit of paper too.

Finally, Cardel Place was looking to reduce the staffing resources that were required for the first day of registration. It took eight part-time and ten full-time staff members to manage the demand on registration day, which was a huge impact on productivity.

“We wanted to offer our customers better options, reduce costs, be greener and allow our staff to focus on other priorities,” says Stutz. “When we looked at those goals, moving to recreation registration software was really an obvious choice.”

Solution

After researching several vendors, Cardel Place chose the recreation software solution from Active Network. Active’s system offered hosted internet registration, as well as additional modules for membership, facility reservation, and marketing. While the robust registration functionality was the primary focus, Cardel Place wanted a solution that was scalable and would grow with the facility’s needs, making the additional modules an essential part of the offering. Active was also a company that Cardel Place could trust, with over thirty years in the recreation business and thousands of customers from other community-based organizations.

Implementation

Cardel Place finalized the contract in late July 2010 and wanted to launch the recreation registration software at the end of August—that meant the staff had one very short month to implement the new technology. “Active Network provided some great material for us to use as a guide,” comments Stutz. “We assembled an implementation team of people from several departments to review and assess the guide and offer their feedback. This gave us a broad view of the project and helped us establish goals.” The team mapped out what needed to be done and met regularly for progress reports. Some of their main priorities were:

• Clean up the data. To ensure the integrity of the new database, the staff spent nearly 60 laborious hours combing their database to eliminate duplicates, organize family accounts and collect email addresses.
• Standardize fee titles and types. Due to staff turnover and a lack of guidelines, Cardel Place had over 900 fee types in its old system. The staff wanted to establish consistent fee titles and types because these would be visible to customers as they registered and would cause confusion, both internally and externally.
• Brand the registration process. Cardel Place was focused on creating a seamless experience for its customers, so the new recreation software was customized to reflect the colors and branding of Cardel Place. The entire registration form matches perfectly and even uses direct, playful language that embodies the facility’s personality.
• Educate the customers. To ensure customers would be aware and ready for the new system, Cardel Place put the information in as many places as possible. “How to” guides were posted on the website, in the brochure and on bookmarks handed out at Guest Services. Most effective was an educational email sent to Cardel Place’s entire database of contacts just prior to open registration day. The email explained what online registration was, why the facility was making the upgrade and how customers could register for programs.

Cardel Place decided not to launch any other modules of the recreation software initially—such as online pass sales or facility rentals—because it wanted to perfect the registration process first. With such a short implementation time, the staff wanted to work out any kinks before opening access to different lines of business.

“Overall, it was a team approach between us here at Cardel Place and Active Network,” mentions Stutz. “We worked together to frame the project and pull it together in one month. When we launched online registration, we felt confident that we had done everything right and were prepared.”

Results

Cardel Place had incredible success with the recreation registration software:

• The most significant result was the online adoption rate of 65%. This was quite a dramatic change when considering that 70% had been phone and 30% in-person registrations the previous year.
• The facility processed $130,000 worth of online transactions on their first day of open registration.
• The customer experience dramatically improved—in-person wait time was reduced to 15 minutes and phone registration was eliminated altogether.
• The staff was able to provide focused service to the customers that did need personal assistance and the response from the public was overwhelmingly positive.
• In less than a year Cardel Place’s customer contact list expanded from 8,000 to 18,000 email addresses—the public made it clear that they wanted online access to the facility.

Plus, Cardel Place reduced the cost of printing the program guide by 50%, the cost of printing and mailing receipts by 75% and reduced staff levels on registration day by 75-99%. In total, the facility saved $15,516 due to online registration, which recoups its initial investment in the recreation software and covers its first year of service fees.

“We are thrilled to have accomplished a 65% conversion rate,” says Stutz. “This is double what we were predicting. With the money we’ve saved and the stress we’ve removed from our customers and staff, we couldn’t be happier with Active’s recreation registration software.”

"With the money we’ve saved and the stress we’ve removed from our customers and staff, we couldn’t be happier with Active’s recreation registration software."

Alison Stutz
Business Operations and Services Manager,
Cardel Place