The City of Fort St. John improves membership and activity registration processes at its leisure pool with recreation registration software

Background

Fort St. John is The Energetic City, which reflects not only its large resource base of oil, natural gas, forestry and agriculture, but also the vitality of its 19,000 residents. Fort St. John attracts travelers who are interested in wilderness and eco-adventures, as well as hunting and fishing. The City also features excellent sports facilities, one of which is the North Peace Leisure Pool. In late 2009, the City decided to upgrade the recreation registration software at its pools to advance citizen services and reduce manual workload for staff. Since going live with the software in July 2010, the City has experienced noticeable improvements in efficiency and has seen citizens quickly adopt the online registration option.

Keys to Success from Sonya Wiebe, North Peace Leisure Pool Clerk, City of Fort St. John

On Active's recreation software 

Why were you originally looking for a recreation software solution?

We decided to upgrade our technology because the system we were using previously didn’t meet the needs for the arena facility. For us on the leisure side, the system was ok but didn’t have any bells and whistles—it was very basic. Since the arena was going to begin looking for another solution, we decided it would be a good time for the leisure pool to upgrade as well. We knew we’d need a more robust solution down the road and we wanted to make sure that both the arena and leisure facilities were operating on the same system.

Why did you choose Active over another provider?

We chose Active because they offered more modules. Our previous vendor had a few modules and had promised to build more, but they never came. Active’s recreation software already had everything we needed built—modules like memberships, activity registration, point of sale—and ready to go.

How did you manage pool memberships prior to implementing the new recreation software?

With our old system, we just had a paper membership cards. They would get ripped and wet, so we were constantly replacing them. There were no identifying marks on the cards, so our citizens had to prove it was theirs, which was a challenge. Now we have the plastic scan cards with bar codes and picture IDs. It’s a lot less paper, much fewer replacements. With Active, it’s simple to track memberships and associate them to each person.

What is your favorite feature of the membership module?

I really like the membership module overall. Having cards that have each member’s picture and can be scanned is really helpful. We can quickly verify who’s a member, who’s not or who’s on suspension.

Was their one particular headache that Active’s recreation registration software helped you fix?

Activity registration is a huge part of my job and that process has become a lot better. We program lessons every five weeks in winter and every two weeks in the summer, so there is a lot to manage. With Active’s system, I can copy all classes and seasons, print off rosters for instructors, and pull reports that include information specific to each class. I went from spending a few days on programming lessons to only a half a day or less. The activity registration software is fast and easy, it has saved me quite a bit of time.

Do you use any of the reporting features in Active’s recreation software?

We use the activity registration reports a lot, specifically a report called Activity Totals. It gives us up-to-date information so we can determine how registration is going. If we’re at zero registrations or haven’t met our minimums, we can cancel the class and immediately add another. It really helps us manage our schedule. On the financial side, we rely on the reporting to summarize and reconcile our cash, credits and debits. It helps us balance everything so we can keep a good handle on our revenue.

Since you implemented the recreation registration software, what has the feedback been like from your customers?

Our customers have a choice about whether to come in person to pay for a lesson set or to go online. At first they were somewhat hesitant to try online, but it didn’t take them long to get used to it. They quickly came to appreciate the convenience and ease of registering online—the option has been available for less than a year and already the vast majority of our customers pay and register online. It’s proven successful almost immediately.

What has your experience been like with customer support?

Active’s customer support is awesome, bar none. I have nothing but good things to say about them. Whenever I’ve called, I’m never more than second in the queue and I’ve never had to wait long. They’ve always been able to help me—I’ve even seen someone get their manager on the line to help figure out a solution. The other great thing about Active is that if the software doesn’t have a feature we need, the support team submits an enhancement request to the development team. One our enhancement requests went through right away! It’s obvious that Active is always thinking of what’s best for its customers.

On using Active’s online marketing services

What process did you go through with Active’s online marketing services team?

In the fall of 2010, we had Active’s online marketing services team take a look at our websites to see how we could improve. Active looked at both the City’s internal site and the public site that our customers access through Active’s software. We analyzed how we were linking the two sites together and the marketing team gave us some excellent tips that we put into practice. It’s definitely made a difference.

For example, on our City’s website where we have our pool information, there are links to classes that take you directly to registration, instead of to the pool website where you’d have to navigate around some more. Customers get straight to what they want. Overall, we got some good tips on how to organize our sites to be more efficient and get people where they wanted to go in fewer clicks.

What were the results of the online marketing review?

Since the online marketing review, I do feel that there has been an increase in activity registrations. The buttons we use to send customers directly to registration has cut out steps for them and made it easier to register right away. And we’ve also been able to give more exposure to community programs and lifeguarding courses that people may not have known about otherwise.

On Active Network

What would you say is the best thing about working with Active?

We really like the fact that Active has so much experience. The company has been out in the field for many years and knows what customers are looking for—and actually listens to them. For our city, it’s better to have a big company behind us as we grow because they grow with us. Active doesn’t settle, they are always getting better and we want to be part of that.

"Active’s customer support is awesome, bar none. I have nothing but good things to say about them. It’s obvious that Active is always thinking of what’s best for its customers."

Sonya Wiebe
North Peace Leisure Pool Clerk,
City of Fort St. John