Booking and membership platform

Background

The client is a Pilates and yoga studio franchise with about 6,000 members across 14 branches. Booking worked differently at every branch: chat at some, phone at others, and at most a front desk employee writing names into a spreadsheet timetable. Nothing could be booked or cancelled outside opening hours, and when someone cancelled the desk contacted waitlisted members one by one. On average 1.4 members per class booked and did not turn up.

Membership formats also differed by branch, so members had to ask how many sessions they had left and until when, and using another branch required a phone call between branches, which meant it effectively never happened. Branch managers built instructor timetables by chat and spreadsheet, and cover requests were scrambled together on the morning. After month end, head office spent 12 days reconciling the spreadsheets sent by 14 branches to confirm settlement.

What we built

The goal was for members to do it themselves, branches to handle only exceptions, and head office only to confirm. We built three screens.

1. Member mobile web app

Reached through a KakaoTalk link with no app to install. Members see open spots by branch and date, book and cancel, join waitlists, and see remaining sessions and expiry. Reminders 3 hours before class, automatic promotion of the first waitlisted member on a cancellation, and renewal notices 7 days before expiry go out on their own. A shared membership books at any of the 14 branches.

2. Branch admin web app

The front desk handles same-day check-in, exception bookings (phone requests, trial classes), and membership sales, transfers, and freezes. Instructors register their availability on their own screen, and timetables are built only within it. When cover is needed, instructors available at that time are notified automatically and the first to accept is confirmed.

3. Head office admin web app and settlement

Settlement per branch (sales, instructor hours, membership sales, cross-branch usage splits) is generated from booking, attendance, and payment records. Head office checks and confirms. Booking rates, attendance, upcoming expiries, and sales per branch are on a real-time dashboard.

4. Payments and notifications

Card and recurring payments, KakaoTalk notification messages, and per-branch POS sales integration. Members pay for memberships themselves in the mobile web app.

5. Data migration

Member lists and remaining membership balances from 14 branch spreadsheets were normalized and migrated. For two weeks after migration, branches checked against their old spreadsheets and corrected differences.

How it was rolled out

Weeks	Work
1–3	Site visits to 4 branches. Booking, membership, and settlement rules defined. 23 membership types across branches consolidated into 8
4–10	Member mobile web app and branch admin app built. Pilot at 2 branches
11–15	Head office admin app, settlement, payment, notification, and POS integration. Pilot extended to 6 branches
16–19	Data migration and rollout to all 14 branches. Training for front desk, instructors, and branch managers
20	Handover. Guide for editing membership types and settlement rules, monitoring screen

At the two pilot branches, self-service bookings rose from 34% in the first week to 63% by week four, and reached 71% three months after full rollout. The decision to cut membership types from 23 to 8 was made after two rounds of discussion in branch manager workshops.

How the front desk and branch managers’ day changed

Instead of copying chat and phone bookings into a spreadsheet each morning, front desk staff focus on same-day check-in and trial class visitors. When someone cancels they contact nobody; the system has already told the next person. Branch managers no longer coordinate timetables by chat, and cover requests settle within the hour.

Head office operations went from 12 days of reconciling spreadsheets to one, and spends the time on low-booking time slots and members about to expire. Members book tomorrow morning’s class at 11 at night.

The table below compares each task before and after.