5 Steps to Improve your Swimming School in 2023

Running a small business comes with its ups and downs. Certainly, it’s rewarding, but also challenging at times. Between tedious admin work, managing employees, keeping business operations running, and the multitude of other essential activities, there’s hardly any time left to focus on your business and most importantly - on your customers.

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix to all of your problems, however, there are some steps you can implement today to make your life so much easier and improve your swimming school in 2023.

1. Identify and eliminate your 'time wasters'

Every business has something they spend way too much time on. Whether it is checking in customers, scheduling lessons, answering emails or maybe managing your social media presence.

Start tracking each of your business activities and review how much of your time flows towards individual tasks each day. After a couple of days you should be able to determine your biggest ‘time wasters’ - either eliminate or delegate anything taking up too much time.

If you want to know more, we already have a great blog entry on how to ‘take control of your time for more efficient management’.

Tip: Have you heard of the 40-30-20-10 approach to time management?

Instead of trying to smash through all of your tasks, try this more strategic approach to time management:

After you have successfully prioritised your most important tasks (and gotten rid of the unnecessary ones), you allocate different percentages of your time towards the three most important ones:

• 40% of your time should be used to focus on your top priority

• 30% should go towards your second priority

• 20% on your third priority

• 10% on all other remaining tasks combined

By allocating 90% of your time to your top three priorities, you spend more time on what matters most and less on distractions from what matters most. The 40-30-20-10 rule is a great starting point to prioritise and effectively manage your time, however, it might need to be adjusted to fit your business needs and preferences.

2. Hire the right people

Besides providing excellent customer service, offering high teaching standards in your swimming school is the main component of successful customer retention. After all, your customers are the lifeblood of your business and need to feel like they are getting the value they came for.

Conduct frequent surveys asking for feedback so you can act accordingly and improve whatever needs to be improved. Tracking student progress is also a great way to assess teacher performance. If a student is progressing, it’s less likely for a parent to end their child’s lessons. Providing ongoing training for your teachers and asking for customer feedback is a great way to ensure high teaching standards and guarantee customer satisfaction and retention in the long run.

3. Join a nationally recognised association

Of course, this is not a must. But joining a recognised swimming association helps improve your credibility as a swim school and gives your customers confidence that you will provide their children with high quality swim lessons.

In Australia, you can join the Australian Swim Schools Association (ASSA) and get access to ongoing professional development and helpful resources.

4. Invest in your online presence

In this digital time and age, you can’t afford not having an online presence. If you don’t have a website yet or if it’s old and outdated, it’s probably time for a change. Your website is the first interaction you have with your customers, so make it user-friendly and tailor it to your customers’ needs. Websites also act as a gateway for your clients to book their lessons and check class availability.

With Udio, your customers can manage and cancel their lessons online, book make up sessions, set up automated payments and track their progress. If you want to learn more, you can book your free demo today.

You might also want to invest in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to reach a higher target audience and drive customers to your website.

After you have mastered your website, you can start thinking about a profile on social media. Facebook and instagram are easy channels to keep in touch with your customers and celebrate successes and wins of your business.

5. Automate whatever you can automate

Streamlining your processes and cutting out tedious manual work will save you a lot of time and in the long run a lot of money.

You might be asking yourself - what processes should I automate?

Good question! Start by identifying your main time wasters. If they can’t be eliminated and are still an essential part to keep your business up and running, it is probably useful to automate them.

One of the most time-consuming activities the average swim school is facing is admin work. Up to two days per week are flowing towards those tedious tasks and leave you with three days to focus on your remaining business activities. Which isn’t much, right?

And now think about how much time and money you are saving by automating your admin work. If you are wondering how to choose the right online booking system for your swim school, this blog post might be worth checking out.

Another good way of identifying processes that need automation is by asking your staff and customers. Ask what their frustrations are and what part of their experience is taking too much time and effort.

Ready to improve your swim school in 2023? Learn how Udio can help you automate your work.