Member Experience

Imagine you’re in the market for a new gym membership. What are the factors to consider when choosing the best gym for you? Of course, some logistical factors will go into your decision-making, such as price or location, but often, our choices are guided by the way we feel when engaging with a business. We become loyal to brands or clubs because we have positive experiences from start to finish—and that’s what member experience is all about.

Member experience refers to all of the actions, thoughts, and behaviors that take place when you interact with an organization or service. While member experience and customer experience are similar, member experience refers more specifically to a business or organization that you opt to become a member of— and this further increases a sense of loyalty. For example, interacting with a cashier at a local grocery store would fit into customer service, whereas if you are paying for a membership card at Costco, the experiences you have there would be referred to as member experience. 

Member experience is about how people view, feel about, and engage with a brand. If a gym makes this a priority, where, for example, they take the time to meet with you, show you the facilities, or offer extra perks such as free towel service, you are likely to have a positive association with the club which increases your motivation to join and remain loyal. 

Achieving a desirable member experience is incredibly important for businesses to consider. There are various motivators and needs that drive someone's decision to join and stay engaged with a business—whether that be joining a gym or deciding where to purchase your groceries from. We live in an era where we are spoiled with a plethora of choices, so to stand out, businesses must ensure that from the moment a potential member learns about their business, to deciding to engage with it and then remain committed, member experience is optimized. 

Member experience isn’t limited to consumer choices—it also comes into play when you decide which company to work for, or which political party to vote for.

User Experience (UX): any aspects related to a user’s interaction with a company and its services and products, often used to discuss digital design and experiences.²

Customer Journey Mapping: creating a visual representation of a customer’s interactions with an organization to help understand their journey from start to finish to identify which parts a client is enjoying and if there are any pain points.

Pain Points: Any issues that a customer encounters during their experience. These are broken down into one of three categories: interaction level, journey level, and relationship level. 

Net Promoter Score: a measure of how satisfied people are with your business and how likely they are to recommend it to a friend.³

Churn: the rate at which customers stop engaging with a business. A positive member experience will reduce churn.

Early economic theories in the 17th and 18th centuries posited humans as rational agents, who would make decisions to maximize benefit and minimize cost. The rational actor theory didn’t take into account how things like emotions, past experience, or loyalty impact our decisions. But by the 20th century, there began to be a greater focus on how these other variables could affect decision-making. Researchers started adopting a more nuanced behavioral perspective to economic issues, realizing that cognitive biases, emotions, and social factors often cause people to make decisions that deviate from rationality. 

Lawrence Abbott, an economist who emphasized how quality impacted consumers’ decisions, wrote in his 1955 book Quality and Competition: An Essay in Economic Theory, “What people really desire are not products but satisfying experiences.” Abbott’s essay echoed a shift in focus away from price competition to consideration for other factors like service quality, customer relationships, and product and shopping experience.⁴

During this time, there was also a rise in consumerism, which provided corporations with bigger marketing budgets and new technology to reach their clientele. With the rise of more organizations also came the need to differentiate oneself to gain customer loyalty. In the 1990s, lifestyle marketing became popular, with brands learning to match their products with people’s attitudes and personas to create a better member experience.⁵

Lifestyle marketing was one form of personalization that brands adopted as they shifted their attention to member experience. Businesses also started to establish feedback loops and leverage customer journey mapping to identify any pain points and work towards continuous improvement. Another popular method to improve member experience was to launch loyalty programs, where customers were incentivized to return. 

Since then, the importance of member experience has only grown. Advances in technology have allowed companies to collect data and create more targeted, personalized experiences. Consider how far we’ve advanced when it comes to music consumption. Brands like Spotify create personalized experiences, like their year-in-review or “daylists,” which helps them retain customers. Also, many brands have moved towards subscription models to nudge loyalty, such as Amazon Prime.

Lawrence Abbott⁶

American economist who argued that quality was an important factor that should be integrated into economic models of competition, as it impacted the consumer experience. Abbott also demonstrated that product differentiation and not just price had a crucial role to play in the economy. 

Bernd Schmitt

German marketing professional, Schmitt is best known for his influence on experiential marketing which focuses on creating engaging experiences to build brand differentiation. Schmitt founded the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School in 1999, a center focused on creating, gathering, and sharing insights on how to build strong brands (hint—it’s through great member experiences!). 

Joseph Pine and James Gilmore⁸

Authors of The Experience Economy, written in 1999. This book named member experience as a crucial aspect of creating and maintaining a successful business. They suggested society had entered an experience economy, “where experiences have become the predominant economic offering that people prefer—experiences over things.”

If you are looking for evidence that we are in an experience economy, consider how many roles are dedicated to creating a great member experience: guest experience manager, UX designer, membership manager, product manager—the list goes on. More and more businesses understand that humans are complex beings, driven by factors outside of cost and account for the role emotions play in decision-making. 

Bernd Schmitt, Professor at the Business School of Columbia, outlines three methods to achieve a great member experience⁹:

• Pleasure—creating positive emotions when people interact with your brand. For example, offering exceptional customer service, or providing unexpected perks, such as complimentary gifts or personalized discounts, can all contribute to a pleasurable interaction that leaves customers feeling valued and appreciated.
• Meaning—marketing your product and business to align with people’s values. For example, brands like Patagonia emphasize their commitment to environmental sustainability, which resonates with eco-conscious consumers. Brands may also get involved with charities to demonstrate their core values, such as Tim Horton’s Smile Cookie initiative, where proceeds of each cookie purchased support charities across Canada.
• Engagement—innovation and creativity to keep people involved. This could include newsletters or apps created by organizations to make people feel like they are part of a community, not just a customer. Gymshark, for example, has an exclusive online community called Gymshark Insiders, where subscribers can see upcoming events, learn tips to improve their workouts, and interact with other Gymshark customers.

Today, not only do businesses create products, but they are building brands. To succeed, organizations need to get clients to believe in who they are, and how their product will enhance their overall lifestyle. 

When organizations invest in creating meaningful and engaging experiences, they create a sense of community and belonging. Think about the way we often proudly wear clothes with visible logos—we are happy to be walking advertisements when we have that connection to a brand. Think about the entire divide between iPhone users and Android users. We feel that these products symbolize something about who we are, not just what we buy.

But it doesn’t stop at consumable products, a positive member experience can drive better outcomes for employees, patients utilizing health care services, or students in education. For example, mobile health apps have transformed healthcare. While previously, seeing a doctor required a great deal of effort, you’re now able to access the care you need at your fingertips. This improvement in member experience benefits not only the individual but also society as a whole by making it easier for people to take care of themselves, leading to better health outcomes and reducing the burden of disease on society. 

The growing importance of member experience also forces organizations to be held accountable. While in the past, you may have taken a job based solely on the highest salary, we are now more likely to look for companies that treat their employees well, offer benefits, and have values that match our own.

While many argue that the member experience motivates people to stay loyal to a brand, others claim that in today’s day and age brand loyalty is dying. Studies reveal that post-pandemic, people do not feel as committed to a brand and are more likely to shop around. That may in part be due to a difficult economy with growing cost of living, which causes people to be more motivated by the price than member experience.¹⁰

However, this growing distrust that society has towards corporations could actually indicate that the member experience is more important than ever. Loyalty is harder to gain, so organizations need to go the extra mile to gain repeat business. A customer loyalty survey by TechSee revealed that 43% of customers switched products or canceled a contract due to poor customer service in 2022.¹¹ People want to feel that their business is valued and are showing a growing intolerance for poor member experience.

There are also some ethical implications when it comes to member experience. In order to maximize personalization, organizations often rely on collecting and analyzing data about their consumers. This can include browsing history, purchasing history, age, gender, location, and so on. It’s a fine line between being able to offer members personalized experiences and violating their privacy. Organizations must ensure they gain informed consent and employ strong security measures so that people’s information is kept private. In the wrong hands, all of that personal data can have devastating effects.¹²

Data breaches can lead to identity theft and financial loss. You might remember the 2024 Facebook breach, where 200,000 user records were leaked, including personal information of Facebook marketplace users such as emails and phone numbers.¹³ That’s why regulatory boards have been established to ensure that organizations adhere to strict guidelines on data collection, usage, and security, to protect their members. 

Data-driven Approaches to Member Experience¹⁴

To really understand their consumers, organizations should leverage data to analyze their consumer behaviors and understand user preferences. Focus groups and surveys can inform businesses how to design their products and market their brand, and the close monitoring of churn can alert them that it’s time to make a change.

Gibson Biddle, who joined Netflix in 2005 as the Vice President of Product, got to see how data-driven approaches to member experience contribute to a successful business. Netflix did it all—they collected and analyzed quantitative data to see how consumers were using their product, conducted qualitative research through focus groups and interviews, and executed surveys to understand user demographics. 

When Biddle was at Netflix; it was very different from how we know the service today. Back then, the company delivered DVDs to consumers. Executives monitored customer retention, revenue, cost, and behavior changes. While analyzing regional data, they noticed that cancellation rates in Hawaii were declining. They realized that previously, it had taken three days for DVDs to arrive to customers in Hawaii, but when they reduced delivery time, getting DVDs to customers overnight, fewer people canceled their subscriptions. From this analysis, they realized that fast delivery was an important factor of member experience. If we consider the Netflix we know today, it seems they have continued to deliver on this positive aspect of member experience—hundreds of movies and TV shows are available with the click of our remote.

Customer Experience in Higher Education¹⁵

We don’t always think of universities as businesses, but they are! Just like other organizations, they want to be profitable and attract the best students. Attending university comes at a high cost, so losing just a few students significantly impacts the organization. In the UK, there is an average dropout rate of 6.3% and an average annual tuition of £9,000, meaning that universities are losing £1.62 billion per year from student dropouts. Now you can see why it is so important for universities to create a positive member experience!

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged universities: now, they had to ensure students felt satisfied and supported in an online environment. A study exploring member experience in UK universities in 2020 showed that only 29% of students felt supported by their university during the pandemic. One outlier was Aberdeen: students were 75% more likely to rate their university’s communication throughout the pandemic as excellent, and report that they felt supported. While the classes they took and the professors students had did not change as a result of the shift online, their member experience did. Aberdeen’s high rate showed that when it comes to online learning, effective and reliable communication has a strong impact on member experience. 

Beyond Alexa and Towards Her: Psychological Principles for Designing Voice AI Interactions

AI has taken the world by storm and can significantly improve an organization’s member experience. In this article, our co-founder and managing director Dan Pilat explores the importance for voice interface designers to keep in mind the psychological principles that contribute to positive member experience. Simply designing cutting-edge technology will not do it—people are looking for their interactions with voice interfaces to mimic human interaction.

7 Behavioral Tips for Designing the Ideal Customer Experience 

To create a positive member experience, organizations need to really understand humans – and what better way to do that but through behavioral science? In this article, Dr. Melina Moleskis emphasizes the importance of the journey, not just the destination, and offers 7 tips for how to create the ideal customer experience. 

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