In-app support

All roads lead to Christophe, that’s what it came down to until now. You guys and girls use all possible channels to ask questions: mail, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, both through Trenara’s and my private accounts… that can cause trouble from time to time.You can roughly divide this support into 2 categories:

• technical support: the app this or the app that

• personal support: I feel x or y, what should I do now? What is the best goal for me?

Our spin-off, the trainer platform, which I explain below, involved a chat box. I’d also like to see that function in the app, in order to streamline our support a bit more. From now on you can simply ask questions in the app, and I’ll get an overview of them in our backend.

This is a start, but also a test. Realistically, an open chat box is not sustainable in the long term, but it is a first step towards more automation. This autumn, for example, we will also add the FAQ in the app, which could eventually lead to a chatbot with regard to technical support. The more personal support is clearly a great added value for Trenara, which you greatly appreciate. This part is however also time consuming. The new system allows us to reserve this premium service for premium members in due course. We can probably even go a bit further in the future, and adjust individual training sessions based on a chat conversation, although in that case we will have to invent a level higher than Peak Pro.

The long-awaited trainer platform

In addition to being the coach who designs the training plans in the app, I am also a coach for several individual athletes. I always thought it was a bit stupid that I couldn’t guide them through the app. I also didn’t really like the current online trainer platforms out there, because they (often) do not allow uploads and/or do not offer the best functionalities to the athlete.

In addition, coaches, physiotherapists/physiotherapists, doctors, etc. have repeatedly asked us what the possibilities were for 1 on 1 coaching. With that question in mind, we went to our app firm and that led to a spin-off (a new company, with its own budgets).In recent months, extensive testing has been carried out in a staging environment (with great thanks to Mieke Gorissen, she was my test ‘victim’), in the coming period we will do this again in a production environment.

We’ve used a best of both worlds approach, where (professional) users can upload their training plans to their athletes (and/or patients) via a backend and also monitor the results. As a trainer you can also chat with your athletes (or choose not to).On the other hand, those athletes are given the opportunity to apply the features that we offer within Trenara to that plan via the app. For example, change training days. Because as a coach you do not always have control over the course where your pupils run, but in Trenara you have the option to set training conditions. Or your coach, unless you pay him well, doesn’t create the plan in Garmin either. Trenara does.

Not even completely live yet, but we can already say that this platform is tested and used by an athlete who was active at both the World Championships and the European Championships, while using the platform.

Small, visual adjustments

In order to offer these new functionalities, some visual adjustments were also made. We now distinguish between training feedback and support feedback in the text bubble. My picture got an update. In addition, the account page was also redesigned to make room for the trainers.The tempo chart also looks a bit different now: at your request we turned it around.

So, that’s about it! Our first update of this fall is all set to be discovered. You will read about what will follow in a next blog.