In the Deep embraces Udio for growth

In the space of 11 years, In the Deep has grown from a small 50 student swim school to one that delivers 500 classes each week to anywhere between 1,300 and 1,500 students. In the Deep operates from The Juniors Club in Kingsford, Sydney seven days a week, offering babies classes, learn to swim, stroke development, and squad classes.

The swim school recently began using Udio to manage its students, instructors, sessions, bookings, waitlists, billings and payments.

In the Deep Founder Sasha Hanic says it’s early days, but some of the key benefits they’re seeing already include more, and easier access to, information for parents, and a reduction in administration time for billings and payments.

“Parents are able to log on whenever they want and book or change classes, schedule their own make-up sessions and see what their children are learning, without having to wait for our administration staff to get back to them. We can even add video footage of their child. It’s a lot more information than they’ve had access to before.

“Payment wise, we’ve gone from invoicing and bank transfers to direct debit. That’s a big win for us. What we were doing was just costing us too much time in administration.”

She is also a fan of the waitlist functionality, something they didn’t have with their previous system.

“Our old system was okay, but it just wasn’t able to grow fast enough, to keep up with the customer experience we want to deliver.

“I like the fact that Udio has developers working on the system all the time. It’s not static, which is important because my business isn’t static and the industry we’re operating in isn’t static.

“Already, we’ve seen them put into action things we’ve asked for.”

Udio’s user-friendly, modern and professional interface was another stand-out feature for Sasha.

“I’m a very visual person. Most of the swim school software programs out there are pretty dated. Our previous system was very text heavy, and visually, it was all the same. It was difficult to find what you were looking for and it took ten steps too many to do anything.

“Udio is intuitive, with a really modern interface. I can see a lot more of what’s going on, day-to-day. If I’m working from home, I can log-in to the Dashboard and get a clear view of what’s going on. It’s invaluable.”

Sasha says she wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Udio to other swim schools and is particularly positive about the level of support and customer service they’ve received so far.

“Everyone we’ve dealt with has been amazing. You can see they really care about their customers, and really want them to be happy.”

As for plans for the future, other than getting their heads around the system and everything it’s capable of, In the Deep plans to introduce Udio’s self-check-in functionality in the coming weeks.

“We’d love to continue to expand as a business and seeing how well Udio works for multi-venue operations is, for us, really important.

“As we continue to grow, we wanted something that was going to grow with us. That’s Udio.”