Improving satisfaction and establishing trust and loyalty with our customers is key to driving service performance and growth.

GLL's customer-centric approach is built around understanding our customers' experiences, needs and priorities and using those insights to continually develop and evolve our products and services. By working in this way, we are achieving some remarkable results.

In the past year we have:

• Achieved our highest ever participation and social value figures

• Developed the leisure industry's most comprehensive and largest customer survey, generating of 50,000 responses

• Developed an award-winning Customer Support Centre that now handles more than one million customer interactions per year

• Become the first public sector leisure operator to be awarded Which? accreditation

• Received multiple industry awards and commendations

A new methodology

The starting point to creating a customer-centric approach has been to develop a better understanding of our customers and this is where our Annual User Survey comes in.

We had surveyed our customers over many years, however in 2022 we overhauled our approach and systems, creating a bespoke Survey. This meant we could carefully tailor the survey content year-on-year and implement a multi-channel communications plan, designed to encourage participation. This spanned everything from incorporating QR codes on in-centre collateral, email communications, along with ‘in app' broadcast messages and push notifications. It also meant we were able to monitor participation during the lifespan of the survey and focus promotion in areas of lower engagement.

This revised approach has seen survey participation grow year-on-year. 2024 has been record breaking, yielding an incredible 51,000 responses – in real terms this is a 25% increase on 2023 and an incredible 538% increase on 2019.

Real customer insights

Our bespoke survey has provided us with real insights that help understand our customer-base better. In 2024 it threw light on the key motivators for users of leisure services, working in conjunction with ongoing ‘mystery shopper' visits to our centres and regular consultation with customers.

The survey explored which activities our users choose to participate in on a regular basis. Swimming came out on top, followed by visits to the gym and then fitness classes.

Interestingly, while 46,000 respondents told us that they visit their local leisure centre to keep physically active and healthy, an extremely high proportion of 64% said their primary motivator was to support their mental health and wellbeing.

When asked what innovations they would like to see introduced at their local facility, customers were most likely to cite being able to book health check-ups with qualified staff (17,000) followed by sessions to try new sports and activities and classes focused on women's health (13,0000).

In response we are working to improve self-booking technology, amending programmes, hosting nationwide open days to promote engagement and developing a wider range of preventative health and wellbeing services.

Digital support for our users is a real growth area and our survey results told us that where digital services are used, respondents most value the online fitness classes we offer, followed by online health and fitness articles and training resources. As a result of these findings, we have relaunched our digital library of personal wellbeing and health knowledge literature – a unique service within our sector.

Finally, we were delighted to learn that our consumer-facing brand ‘Better' came out top among respondents, when asked to name a trusted leisure brand.

Better customer service

As part of our ambition to enhance services for our customers, in 2021 we established a dedicated customer service centre, based in Belfast, that serves our 240 leisure facilities, 120 libraries and 15 children's centres, located across the UK.

The multi-award-winning contact centre now employs over 95 staff and has been created with a strongly inclusive culture, recognising that GLL customers come from a wide range of backgrounds.

To achieve this, we created a range of working patterns to suit colleagues of all ages, those with carer responsibilities, those in secondary and tertiary education, those managing physical and mental health conditions, across a range of ages (17-61 years), backgrounds and experience.

Our advisors have three goals – productivity, first touch resolution and customer satisfaction. We do not set targets for average handling time – if a customer needs five minutes they get five minutes, if a customer needs 30 minutes they get 30 minutes. As a result, we currently have customer satisfaction sitting at 87.2% with issues being resolved at ‘first touch' in 94.7% of cases.

Libraries making a difference

GLL's impact goes beyond leisure centres. In Lincolnshire, where we operate 15 libraries and support several community hubs, our services are transforming lives.

These libraries offer far more than books, providing:

• Free financial advice and IT sessions

• English as a second language classes

• Access to Citizen Advice Bureau staff

Thanks to these initiatives, our Lincolnshire libraries have achieved a Net Promoter Score of +92% and an outstanding 4.9/5 customer experience rating.

A recommended provider

Which? is a brand familiar to most. It is used by the Consumers' Association, a registered charity, to promote informed consumer choice, highlighting inferior products or services, raising awareness of consumer rights and offering independent advice.

In 2024 we became the first public leisure sector operator to be endorsed by Which? as a recommended provider of leisure centres and gyms.

The endorsement followed a survey of our customers, which cited the ‘good value membership' we offer, along with the vast range of membership options available and the opportunity to join either your local leisure centre, leisure centres in your region or across the UK. The survey also highlighted the wide range of health and fitness activities available spanning gyms and swimming pools to tennis courts and studio classes.

Another attribute cited was our charitable social enterprise status, meaning membership fees are partly reinvested back into the local communities in which we operate.

What does the future hold?

We are proud of our achievements to date, yet clear that there is the potential to do much more. As we build our insights we can continually develop and adapt our service offering, be that within our leisure facilities or libraries, through our service centres or digitally. This will put us at the heart of achieving community and council partner outcomes and demonstrate the value that public leisure services can deliver.

Whatever changes are adopted, they come from a foundation of responsiveness and link back to our core corporate values, which put our council partners, customers and communities at the heart of what we do.

Joseph Rham is GLL Customers and Communities Director