Case study · Varsity House
Attrition cut in half.
Varsity House brought monthly attrition from 7.1% to 3.5% by catching members before they drifted.
The story
Before and after, in the owner's words.
Before
- Cancellations arrived without warning
- No shared view of who had gone quiet
- Follow-up lived in individual coaches' heads
After
- Every member's last contact visible to the whole team
- Escalation when a message goes unanswered
- Weekly numbers the owners actually review
How it was done
Three habits behind the number.
The team sees who has not been in and has not been contacted, ranked by how long it has been, so the morning starts with the right three names rather than a hunch.
A check-in that gets no reply is escalated to the owners instead of fading out, so a member who is already half out of the door gets a human conversation.
Attrition, attendance and open follow-ups on one screen, reviewed every week, so a bad month is caught in its second week rather than at the end of the quarter.
The numbers
What the numbers mean.
Monthly attrition is the share of members who cancel in a month. At 7.1%, a gym with 200 members loses about 14 a month and has to sign 14 just to stand still. At 3.5% it loses about 7. Over a year that is roughly 85 fewer cancellations to replace: the difference between marketing to grow and marketing to tread water.
The habits above are about timing. Nothing in them is a new offer; they make sure the quiet members are seen early enough to talk to.
“We cut our attrition rate in half, from 7.1% to 3.5%.”
Questions
What owners ask about this story.
What counts as an untouched member?
A member with no visit and no two-way contact inside a window the gym sets, usually seven to ten days for a training gym.
Who gets the escalation?
The owners or a named manager, when a check-in goes unanswered for a set number of days. The rule and the days are the gym's to set.
Can we see this on our own numbers?
Yes. Bring your current retention figures to a demo and we walk through what the same habits would look like at your gym.
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