Dukes Gym

Taking the heavy lifting out of getting paid

Dukes Gym is a full-service gym offering one-on-one personal training, semi-private personal training and round the clock access for members. For owner Jonathan Quieros it is both a business and a passion.

“I love working out, so I thought it'd be something cool to do,” he said. “Seven years later, here I am.”

But working in such a competitive industry means Jonathan must look beyond the fun stuff to ensure every aspect of the customer journey lives up to their expectations.

“When you first start a business, there are things that you are really passionate about,” he said. “For me, it’s what equipment can I get? What colour is the wallpaper going to be? But we’re selling an experience and if I'm difficult to deal with financially, no one will want to do business with me.”

Seamless subscriptions

To make payments as seamless and as easy as possible, Dukes Gym collects its members’ subscription payments using GoCardless.

“We only offer one payment option and that's fortnightly Direct Debit by GoCardless,” said Jonathan. “The reason for that is GoCardless has full integration with our GymMaster member management platform so it makes payments a lot easier to manage.”

Two-way communication between GymMaster and GoCardless means payment requests are automatically generated in the CRM and sent to GoCardless for collection.

“We don't need to log into GoCardless to actually see who's paid us and who's not,” said Jonathan. “They really make it so we can focus on the bigger things and not let these little things trip us up. It's really great to see both companies working together and they’ve allowed us to take our sign-up process completely online.”

Savings go straight to the bottom line

This automation means Jonathan and the team have less admin on their hands and more time to work with clients. That means more revenue.

“GoCardless and GymMaster have saved us roughly 20 hours a week, filing, scanning, entering data, going back and rechecking stuff,” he said.

Refunds are also now easier to process, which has created more opportunities for Dukes Gym to create a slick customer experience.

“Previously for refunds, we had to chase up the customer, get a BSBN account number, and then do a manual transaction through internet banking, which was an absolute nightmare for us and the customer,” said Jonathan.

“Now, we can hit refund on any transaction directly in the GoCardless platform, and we can either choose to do a partial refund or a full refund. This makes reconciliation so much easier, has greatly improved the overall customer experience, and stopped a little problem becoming something bigger.”

Fair prices, and processes

As well as being fairly priced compared to the competition, Jonathan believes the GoCardless approach to transaction fees also marks it out.

“GoCardless came in about 30% cheaper than the incumbents,” said Jonathan. “And while other providers tacked their transaction fee on top of our rate, we have the option to pass on transaction costs through our own pricing model. It gives us a lot more confidence in what we're communicating to customers.”

The same goes for dishonour charges. GoCardless doesn’t charge these to customers when payments fail, which removes some of the awkwardness of dealing with failed payments.

“Previously customers that had transactions failed were hit with dishonour fees of up to $20,” said Jonathan. “Not only that, but we also didn’t have visibility into this and that made the whole experience terrible for customers. It also made us look unprofessional. GoCardless don't charge any dishonour fees, which customers love.”

The importance of service

Now that he gets paid with GoCardless, Jonathan feels he’s finally getting the kind of service he and other small business owners deserve, but other providers fail to deliver.

“The company that I used to use for payment processing was Australia-based and yet the level of customer service was nonexistent,” said Jonathan.