Today I received a phone call from Mr. Bruce Rockowitz, Chairman of Pure Group in response to my letter of last week.
I was impressed by the fact he chose to call me rather than respond in writing. Moreover, his manner and responsiveness to my critique was extraordinary, he is a class act. It was clear the contents of my assessment had been taken seriously and were being actioned with a sense of purpose and urgency. He had already conducted several discussions with his senior management and has subsequently organised a meeting for me with the Group's CEO to discuss some of my comments and suggestions.
It is a rare quality for a business and its leader to take criticism, even the constructive type, on the chin and then turn it into an action plan for improvement so rapidly. Mr. Rockowitz is a great role model for the rest of us.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Not So Pure
I sent this letter to the owner and founder of my gym today. A small effort to rectify a daily frustration in life. We'll see what sort of response this provokes.
Bruce Rockowitz
Chairman
Pure Group
15F Asia Standard Tower
59-65 Queens Road Central
Hong Kong
20 May 2009
Dear Bruce,
It may seem slightly obtuse or at the very least atypical to be addressing a comment about the operations of a business to its Non-executive Chairman. However given your strong stewardship and public association with Pure, coupled with my exasperation with Pure’s operational staff, I thought it best to reach out directly to you.
In these difficult economic times we are reminded of core business values that underpin every organisation’s success. One of which is the old mantra: “No matter what business we are in, we are in the people business”. Given Pure is positioned as a “lifestyle” business; one could reasonably assume Pure to be more of a people business than an average business. In this context the growing consensus among members is all the more concerning. There is now an explicit, albeit perhaps unheard or unnoticed, momentum among members moving away from Pure. This movement is manifesting on the street, in offices, around dinner tables and is spreading fast.
The challenge is that members don’t tend to advocate their dissatisfaction or try to ‘fix’ whatever their problem is, instead, they apathetically wait until the end of their contract period and then just don’t extend. Others do make suggestions/comments through the mandated channel, then get frustrated when there is no follow-up, response or impact of their effort to improve things. This may not be considered an immediate problem to management as the membership structure provides the business with predictable long-term income streams. Any erosion of income should be foreseeable and therefore able to be rectified. However, the time is fast approaching for Pure to get back to its core values; the values that drew people from other facilities to Pure in the first instance.
For the purposes of this letter, I’ve tried to organize the myriad of critical commentary from members into a few key themes:
Pure staff (whether on reception, instructors, personal trainers, or cleaners) are generally perceived by members to be rude and arrogant. The terrific recruitment profiling from the business inception has been diluted with a less robust group of people that don’t have appropriate training in customer service/relations. These days the staff have a casual indifference to members - they never smile, never say hello, never offer to help with equipment, never replace weights etc. Instead, they tend to chat among themselves and create an environment where members almost feel they are intruding by being there. “Gangs” of sometimes six personal trainers working out together in the middle of the day is a potent image of this that is highly offensive. Members are the customers. Pure is a premium product. Pure members should be treated in the same way as a customer walking into a luxury retail boutique, or as a guest would be treated in a 5-star hotel.
The change room facilities at most Pure venues are under-designed for peak capacity. No business can afford to design to nth degree, but as usage conditions create greater demand tension, there needs to be a response in the facility capacity. There is also talk from men and women around the town about the lack of cleanliness in Pure’s shower area. One member I spoke with suggested the showers receive a comprehensive clean every quarter even if it meant shutting them down for a day. Ultimately management should decide how to deal with this issue, but it does need to be solved as sanitary dissatisfaction can be a powerful deterrent to extending membership.
The system of reserving a place in group classes has become highly disconcerting for members. Whilst I have no personal experience of this, it is something over a dozen friends have mentioned to me in the last month. The idea that Pure creates an advance booking process to deal with high levels of demand seems reasonable. However, when members are continuing to pay (on a monthly basis) a premium price for a product/service, they expect to be able to use it in the same way as when they bought it. Upon investigation of this issue, I learnt that there is an idiotic system whereby a member must call within a prescribed time period (11:15am or later) to reserve a place for a lunchtime class, not before, as would be a more customary first-come-first-served approach. Understandably for most people who work, it is difficult to always be available to make the vital call at the prescribed time. This is an example of Pure losing its ‘member-centric’ ethos and deteriorating to a disinterested corporate mindset that is self-serving.
The function of this correspondence is not to descend into operational critique of Pure, but rather to highlight a concerning erosion in the quality of the lifestyle experience Pure aspires to provide. Sitting silently in judgment or worse, whining to fellow members will only perpetuate the sense of ill-feeling rising within the member ranks. Instead, I want to help preserve a great business by drawing attention to these issues.
It may be worth considering the creation of an advisory committee whose composition includes selected Pure management and a few ordinary members. This would be seen as a real commitment to customer service. Another way forward might be overhaul the member feedback process and professionalize the manner in which member comments are dealt with (coupled with an open acknowledgment that Pure wants to “better understand what is important to members …”). It’s not too late for Pure to turn this into a positive example of corporate agility in reacting to customer needs.
Please accept my apologies for the presumptive nature of this letter. I hope you will appreciate my only intent is to help your business maintain its premier position as Asia’s leading lifestyle group.
Yours sincerely,
Morgan Parker
Bruce Rockowitz
Chairman
Pure Group
15F Asia Standard Tower
59-65 Queens Road Central
Hong Kong
20 May 2009
Dear Bruce,
It may seem slightly obtuse or at the very least atypical to be addressing a comment about the operations of a business to its Non-executive Chairman. However given your strong stewardship and public association with Pure, coupled with my exasperation with Pure’s operational staff, I thought it best to reach out directly to you.
In these difficult economic times we are reminded of core business values that underpin every organisation’s success. One of which is the old mantra: “No matter what business we are in, we are in the people business”. Given Pure is positioned as a “lifestyle” business; one could reasonably assume Pure to be more of a people business than an average business. In this context the growing consensus among members is all the more concerning. There is now an explicit, albeit perhaps unheard or unnoticed, momentum among members moving away from Pure. This movement is manifesting on the street, in offices, around dinner tables and is spreading fast.
The challenge is that members don’t tend to advocate their dissatisfaction or try to ‘fix’ whatever their problem is, instead, they apathetically wait until the end of their contract period and then just don’t extend. Others do make suggestions/comments through the mandated channel, then get frustrated when there is no follow-up, response or impact of their effort to improve things. This may not be considered an immediate problem to management as the membership structure provides the business with predictable long-term income streams. Any erosion of income should be foreseeable and therefore able to be rectified. However, the time is fast approaching for Pure to get back to its core values; the values that drew people from other facilities to Pure in the first instance.
For the purposes of this letter, I’ve tried to organize the myriad of critical commentary from members into a few key themes:
Pure staff (whether on reception, instructors, personal trainers, or cleaners) are generally perceived by members to be rude and arrogant. The terrific recruitment profiling from the business inception has been diluted with a less robust group of people that don’t have appropriate training in customer service/relations. These days the staff have a casual indifference to members - they never smile, never say hello, never offer to help with equipment, never replace weights etc. Instead, they tend to chat among themselves and create an environment where members almost feel they are intruding by being there. “Gangs” of sometimes six personal trainers working out together in the middle of the day is a potent image of this that is highly offensive. Members are the customers. Pure is a premium product. Pure members should be treated in the same way as a customer walking into a luxury retail boutique, or as a guest would be treated in a 5-star hotel.
The change room facilities at most Pure venues are under-designed for peak capacity. No business can afford to design to nth degree, but as usage conditions create greater demand tension, there needs to be a response in the facility capacity. There is also talk from men and women around the town about the lack of cleanliness in Pure’s shower area. One member I spoke with suggested the showers receive a comprehensive clean every quarter even if it meant shutting them down for a day. Ultimately management should decide how to deal with this issue, but it does need to be solved as sanitary dissatisfaction can be a powerful deterrent to extending membership.
The system of reserving a place in group classes has become highly disconcerting for members. Whilst I have no personal experience of this, it is something over a dozen friends have mentioned to me in the last month. The idea that Pure creates an advance booking process to deal with high levels of demand seems reasonable. However, when members are continuing to pay (on a monthly basis) a premium price for a product/service, they expect to be able to use it in the same way as when they bought it. Upon investigation of this issue, I learnt that there is an idiotic system whereby a member must call within a prescribed time period (11:15am or later) to reserve a place for a lunchtime class, not before, as would be a more customary first-come-first-served approach. Understandably for most people who work, it is difficult to always be available to make the vital call at the prescribed time. This is an example of Pure losing its ‘member-centric’ ethos and deteriorating to a disinterested corporate mindset that is self-serving.
The function of this correspondence is not to descend into operational critique of Pure, but rather to highlight a concerning erosion in the quality of the lifestyle experience Pure aspires to provide. Sitting silently in judgment or worse, whining to fellow members will only perpetuate the sense of ill-feeling rising within the member ranks. Instead, I want to help preserve a great business by drawing attention to these issues.
It may be worth considering the creation of an advisory committee whose composition includes selected Pure management and a few ordinary members. This would be seen as a real commitment to customer service. Another way forward might be overhaul the member feedback process and professionalize the manner in which member comments are dealt with (coupled with an open acknowledgment that Pure wants to “better understand what is important to members …”). It’s not too late for Pure to turn this into a positive example of corporate agility in reacting to customer needs.
Please accept my apologies for the presumptive nature of this letter. I hope you will appreciate my only intent is to help your business maintain its premier position as Asia’s leading lifestyle group.
Yours sincerely,
Morgan Parker
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