We explore some emerging trends for swim school businesses in 2025 based on what we are seeing in the industry and within our customer base.
A shout-out to some of our clients who are pushing the envelope when it comes to innovation:
1. Simplification
We are seeing a push towards simplification.
Many swim schools are realizing that the more options you offer, the more work you create for your team.
For example, we recently had a swim school go from accepting four payment methods to just two. These two payment methods were fully automated (direct debit and online credit card), which meant they could eliminate manual reconciliation of payments—a task that was extremely time-consuming.
They were concerned about some customers getting upset and dropping off; however, the results were impressive. They collected over $500,000 in 30 days completely automatically.
If you can identify what takes you a lot of time and effort, you can then identify ways to simplify your systems.
2. Apps and Push Notifications
If you don’t have an app for managing your customers’ experience, you are falling behind the competition.
Customers want easy solutions! They want to be able to book a make-up lesson in 30 seconds from their smartphone.
If you are doing these processes manually or without a proper smartphone app, then you are falling behind the expectations of your increasingly savvy customers.
If you are interested in a custom app for your swim school, you can learn more here.
3. Greater Focus on and Measurement of Customer Retention
The real secret to growing a profitable swim school is customer retention!
If you have strong customer retention, your growth potential increases significantly.
Less than half of swim schools currently measure customer retention; however, this number is on the rise. We are seeing more customers start to measure and focus on their retention performance because they understand the impact it can have on their business.
4. Using AI to Automate Time-Consuming Jobs
AI is exploding, and there are many applications for running a swim school business.
When used in the right way, AI can assist in reducing the time spent on many back-office tasks.
You may already be doing this in your business, but here are some ways you can use AI:
– Refining articles
– Polishing text on your website
– Analyzing data from spreadsheets
– Creating images
These are all examples of tasks that can be aided with the help of AI tools like ChatGPT. More and more specific AI tools will emerge to help you automate all types of tasks in your business.
5. Customer/Student Health Ratings
Imagine if you could know which customers were about to cancel their lessons.
Predictive risk rating can help identify high drop-out risk students based on their behaviors and actions. Using data, the right technology can analyze and recognize patterns of behavior that reflect a high chance of cancellation.
Swim schools will increasingly use risk ratings to be more proactive in retaining customers and making their businesses more profitable.
If you want to modernize and set your swim school up for success in 2025, First Class software can help you get there with powerful tools to automate your business, custom mobile apps, and retention tools.
Modernize your swim school with First Class!