It could have been simpler. Just set one registration date for everyone, open the flood gates and let everyone duke it out for spots.

But that isn’t our way. Since the creation of our club, certain values have endured above all: hard work, perseverance, and fairness.

With registration imminent prior to a new season, thousands upon thousands of eager clients are waiting to get at the new schedule. But we don’t deal with your regular run-of-mill athletic classes. We offer private swim classes, with a focus on developing personal, long-term relationships between instructors and their clients. Starting fresh every session with a new teacher, while sometimes inevitable, is not the goal. The goal is for clients to be able to keep their same instructor session after session, so bonds can be built and the learning process accelerated thanks to familiarity and friendship.

Now to complicate matters more, the majority of our instructors are students whose schedules change regularly. That means a process must be in place for clients to be able to follow their instructors, while not losing their spot. At the same time, many clients – while they might love their instructor – prioritize keeping their same schedule, because as we know it can be tough playing supermom/dad with kids and activities and such.

It is truly a tough balance to strike.

Amazingly, we mostly nailed it from the start, with a few tweaks needed along the way. Allow me to introduce the first-ever insight into the inner workings of our unique and fair registration process:

  1. Renewals Part 1: any client who has their exact same schedule and instructor available for the next session are notified of such and are given up to 48 hours to renew.
  2. Renewals Part 2: any client who has their same schedule, but a different instructor available, are notified of such and are given up to 48 hours to renew.
  3. Open registration for current clients (Open the Floodgates part A): all clients from the current session (renewed or not) now have first shot at the new schedule.
  4. Open registration for returning clients (Open the Floodgates part B): any clients who have swam with our club in the past (just not the most recent session), get access to the new schedule.
  5. Open registration for new clients (Open the Floodgates part C): registration open to all.

It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close. The whole process is automated, with our beefed up customer service team taking calls, emails, direct chats through our website, and monitoring social media for messages and questions. We love to hear from our clients, and we love to help our clients, so if anyone ever has any troubles we are right there to help.

Our customer service team are all internal hires, past instructors who have been with the club since the beginning. They know the ins and outs, what would constitute a good fit, the importance of consistency. They incessantly bend over backwards to re-arrange the massive registration puzzle so clients can follow their favorite instructor or do everything in their power to ensure a client gets just the right time they want, so that Mommy can get Sammy to his swimming lesson right before zipping off to pick up Sally at gymnastics.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much I enjoyed writing it. And I hope this little peek into our inner workings provides some perspective on how we try to meet the challenge of allowing thousands of clients to register fairly.

Keep being awesome, and enjoy the day.