CrossFit North 579: From five systems to one, and from 300 to over 1,000 members

CrossFit North 579 and CrossFit Aalborg are two CrossFit affiliates in Aalborg, Denmark, founded in 2017 and run by Torben Keller with a team of employed coaches. Torben has used Booking Board almost from the beginning. When the gyms switched, they had around 300 members. Today they have more than 1,000.

The challenge: too many clicks, too much admin time

Before the switch, operations were spread across three, four, five different systems, and even small tasks meant a lot of clicking and navigating.

We spent a lot of time navigating just to get tasks done, so our administration time became far, far too long. And the uncertainty about how things had been done lowered the quality, because the risk of errors was so much higher.

Torben needed a system that could handle several training spaces, pay his staff, and at the same time give him an overview of revenue, occupancy and all the data the gyms produced.

What mattered most: the member experience first

When Torben chose a new system, he had three requirements in a fixed order.

1. Members need an interface that makes it easy, intuitive and clear to use their membership.
2. Coaches need to swap shifts, pick up shifts and see what they have coming up without effort.
3. The owner needs an overview of finances, class coverage and how the team performs.

For our members, it is everything that they actually use their membership and have a good experience with it. Behind that there has to be a back end that gives us as owner and staff a really good tool to work in, so we can give our members the very best.

Day to day: the schedule, coach hours and chat

Class booking is the core of daily operations. When a class is added to the schedule, members can see and book it, and the coach's hours are recorded at the same time. That gives Torben an exact basis for both the payroll budget and the payroll run.

Chat is the other feature the gyms use most. Members write to the gym directly in the app instead of by email, and Torben uses the system to follow class occupancy and see how the gyms perform against what they offer and want to offer.

The biggest difference: everything in one place

The biggest difference in our daily work is that everything we used to have in three, four, five systems is now in one. When I run payroll, I can easily pull all the hours and move them into Danløn without a pile of manual errors from switching between systems.

The overview of every class across both gyms is what he calls a decisive difference.

Members: “The app is one of the things they point to”

Members find the system user-friendly and intuitive, and they notice the ongoing improvements to the interface. The clearest feedback, though, comes from an unexpected place: members who cancelled and later came back.

We hear from members who cancel with us and, fortunately, come back again, that our app is one of the things they point to as a difference from other places.

For Torben, the app is not just a tool but the gym's face to its members.

Booking Board is our members' way into our system. Their point of contact with us becomes Booking Board. In that way Booking Board becomes part of us, because it is what represents us.

The partnership: heading the same way

Torben has been on board almost since Booking Board started and describes the collaboration with owner Casper Sloth Paulsen and the support team as very good. He feels heard, quick questions get quick answers, and there is still a person to talk to when it matters.

I can see the direction Booking Board is working in, and I think it is fantastic. It supports where I want to take my business. As a partner it is decisive that you share the same direction, so I actually get to offer the product I want to offer.

The recommendation

I would recommend Booking Board to other gyms because it gives members a completely different user experience compared to a lot of other systems out there. It is intuitive, easy and clear. And on our side we can run events and great class times and keep track of our coaches' hours. We have gathered so many things in one place that we can actually run a complete business with a single program.