I want to tell you about a Monday morning that turned into four LinkedIn posts, a workshop brief, and a letter to my local council. It started when I tried to go to the gym.

The morning everything unravelled at 6.15am

I had talked myself into it. Anyone who exercises before sunrise knows that the hardest part is not the workout; it’s the moment your alarm goes off and every reasonable part of your brain suggests you stay in bed.

I got up. I drove there. I scanned my pass.

Expired.

The person at the front desk was lovely about it. My 12-month contract had ended and, instead of rolling me into a monthly membership the way most gyms do, the system had simply cancelled it. I had missed an email. There was no follow-up, no call, no renewal offer. Just a pass that stopped working on a morning I had finally decided to show up.

I stood there for a moment, turned around, and drove home.

Here is the part that matters: I was not an unhappy member. I was not shopping around. The gym was fine; not life-changing, but fine. The thought of going gym hunting was, frankly, enough of a deterrent to make me stay indefinitely. I would have renewed without a second thought if the experience had made it easy.

It didn’t. So I didn’t.

The principle underneath the frustration

I’ve spent a decade working with purpose-led organisations on customer and employee experience, and I can tell you that what happened to me at the gym happens in some form in almost every organisation I walk into.

Not because people don’t care; almost everyone I work with cares deeply. But caring about your mission and designing the experience of your mission are two different things, and most organisations are very good at one and have never quite gotten to the other.

The principle I kept coming back to is this: make the right decision easier than the wrong one.

In my case, the right decision for me, for the council’s community health mission, and for their revenue, was to keep going to the gym. The experience made stopping the path of least resistance. No action required. Membership cancelled. Decision made without me.

I see this pattern constantly in purpose-led organisations:

None of these are dramatic churn stories. They’re quiet ones. And quiet churn is the most expensive kind, because you rarely see it coming and you almost never know it’s happened.

Three things I’d re-design if I was their partner

I don’t believe in identifying problems without thinking through solutions. So here is what I’d actually do, if I was working with a health and wellness centre on this.

1. Make the transition invisible.

When a 12-month contract ends, roll the member into a monthly membership automatically. Send a message that says: your annual contract has ended, you’ve been moved to monthly, here’s what that costs, and here’s how to switch back or pause if you need to. In the month prior, when someone scans their card, a team member says: hey, just so you know, your annual contract ends on this date; here’s what happens next. Don’t make them do anything to stay. Make leaving the active choice.

2. Turn renewal into a milestone.

You’ve committed to one year. You came this many times. How are you feeling? That message, from a person or thoughtfully designed automation, costs almost nothing and changes everything about how someone feels walking back in. People don’t want to be processed. They want to be noticed.

3. Make it an opportunity to reset and grow.

Spend 30 minutes with members at a milestone like one year. Go through their goals, their blockers, what’s changed. Set new goals and make a plan together. That is not customer service overhead; that is the community health mission in action.

None of this requires expensive new software. It requires someone to ask: what does it feel like to be a member at the moment their contract ends? And then design that moment deliberately.

The ending I didn’t plan

I ended up joining a different gym. I’m paying more than I would have paid at the old one.

Was I unhappy enough to leave? No. But the experience made staying just hard enough that when the option was removed, I didn’t fight for it.

“People are making it too hard to do business with. And the gap between ‘fine, I’ll stay’ and ‘fine, I’ll go’ is almost always smaller than we think.” — Fiona Johnston

I am sharing this story with the Council. Not as a complaint, but as a conversation starter. Because I genuinely believe they care about getting this right, and sometimes the most useful thing you can do is show someone exactly where the gap is.

Your homework (yes, really)

Here are three things I want you to go and do in the next 15 minutes.

  1. Review your customer experience with honesty.
    • How easy is it for someone to find you and start working with you? Are there steps in that process that add friction without adding value?
    • What happens after someone joins, buys, or signs up? Is there a designed experience that keeps building the relationship, or does the experience effectively end at the point of conversion?
    • At your key transition points, is it easier to stay or to leave?
  2. Take the Experience Architecture Index to get a full picture of where you could strengthen your attraction and retention. It takes 7 minutes and gives you a precise answer on which layer to work on first.
  3. Book a call with me to discuss your findings, get my honest view, and plan a way forward.

Purpose is a promise. CX is how you keep it.

Cata

Catalina Bonavia is the founder of SHiFT with Purpose, a human-centred experience design consultancy working with purpose-led organisations across Australia. She helps organisations close the gap between the experience they intend to create and the one that’s actually being lived.