Shaping the Future of GladstoneGo with Customer Feedback

It might sound cheesy, but we wouldn’t be where we are today without the valuable feedback we get from our fantastic customers. It’s all well and good for us to develop what we think is a great piece of software, but at the end of the day, we’re not the ones who are going to be using it day in day out. Customer and end-user feedback and research is crucial for us to develop our solutions to suit our operators’ and their customers’ needs. But how do we go about it?

 1. SIG

Our SIG (Special Interest Group) is a small group of four of our biggest and most influential customers who we’ve been working very closely with. They’ve been invaluable over the past few months, giving us feedback and suggestions for the present and future of GladstoneGo and helping us build a product to meet both operators’ and customers’ needs. Active in various industry forums, this group is particularly forward-thinking and embrace new challenges all whilst pushing the boundaries of the industry. Basically, they're pretty great. From day one they’ve been on this journey with us and helped us understand the needs of their users. We’re extremely grateful to them – who knows what direction we might have gone in if we hadn’t had their input! Thanks guys!

And now that we’ve drilled down into the needs of their end-users, our SIG will be helping us understand the needs of the employer for Go Operator. And it’s mutually beneficial – the more they help us succeed with all this great feedback, we’ll repay the favour with a fantastic product that does what they need it to do and more!

2. Broader Customer Research

But our SIG group aren’t our only influence. We value every single piece of customer feedback we get, and we do really love a chin-wag so our product team are regularly chatting to our customers. Whether in our dedicated single-site forum or a one-to-one conversation, we’re always keeping an ear to the ground and listening out for what our operators like, what they think is slightly outdated and what they’d like to see more of in the future, and adapting our approach accordingly.

Speaking of adapting, Covid massively altered the way we do things and we’re extremely proud to see how we’ve adjusted our plans over the past 18 months or so. With an initial 5-10 year plan in place for GladstoneGo, we were planning to release the operator side of Go first. But when Covid struck, we pivoted our model and released the consumer side first knowing that this would be most useful to our operators in these, dare we say it, unprecedented times.

On top of direct conversations and monitoring industry trends we also strongly encourage our operators to start discussion threads on our Customer Portal with their suggestions and comments. Or anyone can simply upvote any suggestions already on there that they would like to see. We take this into account when deciding which features and functionalities to work on next, so make sure you have your say!

3. End-user Testing

And finally, what good would a product be if the end-user found it tricky to use or unintuitive? Time for testing! To have a true end-user test, we obviously couldn’t use anyone from Gladstone – after all, we’re already in this world and have prior knowledge of the product so we’re very biased!

This summer, two members of our product team attended FitFest in Oxford to perform GladstoneGo end-user testing on some willing members of the public. From gym bunnies to complete fitness newbies, they certainly covered a wide demographic in the fitness landscape. This was a perfect environment to see first-hand how someone who had no prior knowledge of the product interacted with it.

Members of our product team putting GladstoneGo to the test with the public at Fitfest

Language

Even discovering which language resonates with end-users was super helpful – yes, we might think that the difference between a ‘class’ and an ‘activity’ makes sense to us, but does it resonate with someone using the product for the very first time and isn't used to these terms being thrown around?

Devices

The event also gave users an opportunity to test the product on different devices. We’ve developed GladstoneGo with a mobile-first approach, with the understanding that the modern consumer expects to be able to book on the go (no pun intended). So, ensuring that it works smoothly and is intuitive on all devices is crucial.

End-user testing in action at Fitfest!

Not only are these events fun for us - we’re so proud of the product, so we love getting it out there and seeing it being used by the people it’s designed for - they’re also extremely educational. No one’s going to have that unique perspective of the end-user apart from the actual end-user!

We’ll also be doing end-user testing with staff as we move forwards with Go Operator so stay tuned.

A Big Thank You!

Without the valuable feedback we get from our operators and end-users, it would be impossible for us to deliver a tailored solution that does exactly what you need it to do. That’s why customer feedback is so important to us. It drives product development and helps us be a truly customer-centric organisation which in turn helps you to succeed by giving your customers the modern consumer experience they crave.

Although the past 18 months or so have been extremely tough on the leisure industry, it’s been inspiring to see the positivity and resourcefulness of our operators shine through. We’ve really missed seeing our customers face to face and we're loving getting back out there for some much-needed catch-ups.

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