Swim to Safety is a water safety school that helps children 3+ learn how to swim on their own. They focus on the gap between parent & child classes and the ability to swim independently. For over 7 years now, they’ve served hundreds of families with the mission to reduce drowning rates through education.
Selena, the owner of Swim to Safety, was looking for a way to simplify bookings for parents. She also wanted to find a complete solution that would help reduce the administrative burden on the team.
She chose Activity Messenger for its straightforward booking, digital signatures and automated communications that looped everything together.
Swim-to-safety has seen substantial growth over the last few years and was looking for a way to upgrade their class management. “When we started, we had no real way to take registrations”, Selena told us.
“People would email us their interest. We would then look at the schedule, give them their options & email them back. This was an enormous amount of work.”
A few years ago, they decided to move to an online booking platform to simplify the process for parents. It worked well for bookings but everything else was still manual and complicated:
“We had to manually do all the invoices & had no ability to collect digital signatures for waivers or forms. At the time, we were operating on such a small level that it wasn’t that big of a deal. But it wasn’t sustainable”
Administrative processes that seemed trivial in the past, quickly became real obstacles to growth. One of the biggest pain points solved by Activity Messenger was the ability to capture a digital signature at any point of the client journey.
In the past, when a waiver needed to be signed, it was all done on paper. Parents would read and sign them the day of the first class.
“It was a lot of chasing, a lot of extra work to get all of that done. I was manually tracking payments, manually tracking attendance, manually tracking every single part of the process. Activity Messenger changed all of that”
Now, they can streamline and automate communications before, between and after sessions.This helped alleviate time spent communicating with parents and made sure everyone got the right information at the right time.
“There’s a lot of information that I need to tell parents between classes. After the first email of the session, this information was all given verbally. But obviously, stuff would fall through the cracks”
For example, they would sometimes forget to remind parents that there was no session the following week which led to families showing up to an empty pool. The most important change she’s seen since moving to Activity Messenger is the ability to put everything in the system and let it run.
“Being able to put every part of the client journey and automate it all has been incredible. All the information is set up at the start of the session and goes out when it needs to go out. I don’t need to think about it anymore.”
Now, when a participant is done on a Friday, there is no need to think about what the parents need to know for the next session. The focus can be 100% with that child that is in the water at that moment and that family’s needs rather than anything else.
Selena estimates that Activity Messenger has cut her workload at least in half if not more. All the while being able to be even more present for the children. This helped Swim to Safety offer a better overall experience for families.
“I’m not chasing parents anymore. There is not a lot of back and forth email saying: Don’t forget I need this form, don’t forget I need that payment. I used to have to chase deposits too. And now I don’t have to chase anything anymore”
At the same time they integrated Activity Messenger, they bumped their prices by quite a bit. Some of Selena’s clients expressed to her that prices had gone up. When they signed up for the summer, a few clients came back and said: “Wow everything is so simple and automated now”.
As Selena puts it; “Parents are running around and have very little time. If they haven’t completed the registration process because it has too many steps or is not easy to do on a phone, then they forget. And, you just lost a client”
And what are the most common comments from parents since switching to Activity Messenger:
“I got comments that it was easier this year, that it was better, it was less complicated, less confusing. There was less scrolling around. People don’t miss things anymore because everything is mobile responsive and easy to navigate.”
As Swim to Safety starts its eight summer, they’re excited to have finally found an all-in-one system that is customizable to their unique needs. With administrative tasks and automated communications taken care of, Selena and her team can focus on doing what they love best; helping young children learn to swim.
Selena also has plans to launch an online program to help teach and guide parents with water safety. And now they have the perfect partner to launch this with.
