Fitness Clubs Speed Up Membership Access With Omnidirectional Scanning

In the health and fitness industry, successful facility operators are always looking for ways to improve membership service. One problem all clubs face is how to confirm membership status with minimal impact to customer satisfaction. Jerry Tseng knows this all too well. Tseng is the director of information systems of The Sports Club Company (SCC) (Los Angeles), a $77 million company that includes seven full-service health and fitness facilities.

Over the years, SCC's membership service has evolved from using film-based laminated ID cards to digitized photo image direct-to-card printing. In either case, the ID card includes a bar code that is printed via dot matrix technology. To gain access, members swipe their card in the bar code wedge reader located at the front desk of each facility. The readers are connected to each facility's computer database. The customer's membership information appears on the screen for the front desk attendant to review before allowing the customer access to the facilities.

No One Likes To Wait To Check In
Unfortunately, this method of check-in often failed, with thousands of unsuccessful and unsatisfied customer check-in transactions occurring. "Either the front desk attendant would have to intercede to re-swipe the card or the member would continue to re-swipe until a successful scan was completed," Tseng said. SCC promoted itself as having a full service, high quality member experience. So, if the member's initial interaction with the facility was a semifunctional bar code swipe reader, then the tone was set for low expectations. Furthermore, this problem was cutting into employees' productivity.

In the past, SCC had used Card Integrators (Los Alamitos, CA) to provide member ID cards and account verification software. After discussing the front desk check-in problem, Tseng and Mark Cole, president of Card Integrators, decided to replace the bar code readers with Metrologic (Blackwood, NJ) model 6720 omnidirectional laser scanners. "The multiple scan pattern, combined with the repetitive read laser technology, was what led us to this product," Cole said. The 6720's keyboard emulation feature allowed each site to truly plug-n-play each unit for an immediate in-field upgrade with no technical install costs.

Look For Upgrade Opportunities For Omnidirectional Scanning
The new scanners were an immediate hit with members and staff at SCC facilities. Now, each and every card scan results in an accurate and instantaneous membership record look up. However, the improved read rates are only part of the value SCC received from this installation. Increased card life is another advantage offered by the omnidirectional laser technology. No longer is the wear associated with card swiping an issue when using the omnidirectional scanner. Cole acknowledged that this fact will probably decrease the number of cards SCC orders from his company. However, he also knows SCC would probably have implemented these scanners eventually anyhow.

"There is a tremendous upgrade market for this type of scanning technology," Cole said. "Most initial end users either invested in a bar code wand scanner or a bar code swipe reader. These products are aging in the marketplace and are ripe for replacement to another technology such as omnidirectional scanning."