Les Mills NZ
Elevating the
member experience
Background
Les Mills New Zealand, a leader in global fitness, set out to elevate the member experience by identifying the moments that truly matter. With rising expectations and increased competition, the goal was to move from intuition to insight, creating a clear, strategic view of the member journey.
As the inaugural adopter of Experience.eQ™, Les Mills partnered with D&Co to explore how strategic intelligence, emotional connection, and smart execution could work together to deliver breakthrough CX and drive long-term member engagement.
The challenge
Les Mills New Zealand wanted to take a more strategic, insight-led approach to the member experience, one that could pinpoint the key moments with the greatest potential to lift satisfaction, engagement, and retention.
The challenge was to deeply understand what mattered most to members, align internal focus around those moments, and build a CX strategy that could be confidently actioned across the business.
“Experience.eQ™ helped us get to the heart of what really matters to our members. We now have the clarity and confidence to design the kind of experiences that truly make our members fit for life.”
— Brett Sutton, CEO, Les Mills New Zealand
“Experience.eQ™ was built for ambitious businesses ready to turn customer insight into real competitive advantage. With Les Mills, we proved how the powerful blend of strategic intelligence (IQ), emotional empathy (EQ), and AI-driven acceleration brings unmatched clarity and precision, without losing the human touch. It’s not just CX strategy, it’s the most robust way to focus on the right moments, solve the right pain points, and move at speed into design sprints, prototyping, pilot, and scale.”
— Russ Douglas, Founder & Principal Strategist, D&Co
Elevating the member experience
Our solution
Using D&Co’s proprietary Experience.eQ™, we partnered with Les Mills New Zealand to reimagine the member experience through a category-defining ‘Moments that Matter’ CX strategy, one designed to transform everyday interactions into inspiring, loyalty-building moments.
We began with Experience.eQ’s integrated lens of Strategic Intelligence (IQ), Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and AI-powered Acceleration (AI) to uncover what really drives performance and connection.
First, we engaged the business through a Voice of the Business programme benchmarking CX maturity and unpacking key insights from across the business. We then conducted a Voice of the Club Manager programme, interviewing leaders across multiple clubs to understand their gain points, pain points, and the realities of delivering an exceptional experience at ground level.
To add an external lens, we carried out mystery shopping across a variety of clubs, observing first-hand what the journey feels like for prospective and existing members. We followed this with qualitative interviews with over 20 members, capturing candid insights on what they value most, where friction occurs, and what could elevate their experience. To help embed capability within the Les Mills team, we also coached one of their team members to conduct member interviews - providing hands-on experience in how to extract powerful customer insights
These insights were synthesised into key needs statements and validated through quantitative research with hundreds of Les Mills members to define and prioritise the Moments that Matter.
The result? A future-fit CX strategy grounded in what Les Mills members truly care about, and ready to activate across the business.
And this is just the beginning.
We’ve now launched a series of design sprints to reimagine priority moments in the journey, with Experience.eQ™ guiding ideation, prototyping, testing and iteration. The next stage will see us translate these concepts into MVP pilots and go-to-market experiences that set a new standard for fitness.
It’s an exciting partnership and we’re looking forward to seeing what we can achieve together.
Deliverables
Mystery shopping. Desktop research. Ethnographic interviews. Interview coaching. Voice of the Business, Voice of the Club Manager, and Voice of the Member reports. Member stories. Quantitative validation. CX needs synthesis. CX strategy. Design sprint programme.
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