Pebble wins back time for the Proformance Coaching team

Alex Lumsden spent years embedded in academy-level youth football training — and got tired of the pressures that particular route can place on kids. Knowing there’s so much more to the self-development and life skills that football can offer, he wanted to move into community-centric football. 

Alex founded Proformance Coaching in May 2021, filling a gap in the market for community-based coaching in his local North Bristol/Gloucestershire area. They now welcome 400 kids to their football sessions each week, with 25 coaches running tailored programmes for ages 2-13. They’re also working with 8 local primary schools, running lunchtime and after-school clubs and PE lessons, and have launched half-term camps for football and other sports. 

Coaching in the community 

The local feel is important at Proformance Coaching: the coaches are from the same communities as the kids, and know what it’s like to grow up in the area. “Connections with schools and friendship groups mean we’ve kept a real community feel, even with hundreds of children joining us each week,” says Alex. 

It’s also allowed Proformance Coaching to bring in kids who have never kicked a ball before through to kids who use the sessions as extra training, mixing all those ability levels and personalities in sessions that work for them all. “If we can help kids with their development, whether that’s football skills or social skills, we see that as a job well done. Some kids have been with us since we started in October 2021 and it’s been amazing seeing them grow as people over the years,” he adds.

Proformance Coaching has also partnered with local grassroots football teams to help get more kids playing in them. “We realised there was a drop-off issue with kids being able to join, as they didn’t know where to go or the clubs were already over-subscribed,” Alex explains. “So there’s plenty of kids who aren’t playing any football at all, but want to be.”

These partnerships have helped over 100 kids start playing with their local grassroots football clubs, with plans for more. “It’s a branch of the business that we didn’t foresee, but it’s been really popular and helped us realise our role in the community and what we want to achieve,” Alex says. 

Ready to save parents and teammates time

Proformance Coaching team started using Pebble in spring 2024, across their after-school club and holiday camp bookings. 

“We were looking for a platform that’d make it quick and easy to list our activities, and was accessible and easy for parents — straightforward for them to make a 3-day or whole-week booking for our camps, for example,” Alex shares. 

Since then, the platform’s saved his team time and kept those bookings rolling in:

It’s user-friendly for parents & coaches

“With a lot of systems, the interface for end customers is nice and easy but then the back-end is still complicated,” Alex says. “With Pebble, though, both our internal team and the parents who book with us are getting that user-friendly experience. That saves a lot of time when we’re onboarding new team members, and it’s a testament to the way Pebble’s been designed with activity providers in mind.”

Quick bookings, happy parents

Since moving to Pebble, Alex’s team has had lots of positive feedback from parents — and no negative! “Parents used to have lots of questions about our old booking process, so that took up a lot of our team’s time. Now they just come through, all sorted,” Alex smiles. 

It’s easy to change bookings & process refunds

“Life happens and parents need to rearrange or cancel, so being able to manage that hassle-free through Pebble is such a help,” Alex says. Being able to process refunds directly through Pebble is a win, too. 

Flexible, trackable discount codes

Proformance Coaching often gives kids in their after-school clubs discounts on their holiday camps, so they find generating codes and tracking how many are redeemed through Pebble really handy. “It gives us useful insight into how those strategic moves are going and what parents respond best to,” he explains. 

No more paper registers

Plenty of coaches have been there… grabbing onto those all-important bits of paper during a windy day on the pitch. Alex and his team are using Pebble to make that a thing of the past, rolling out digital registers and admin access for their 20+ coaches.  

Ensuring parental consent & safeguarding

Pebble’s pre-loaded question list — plus the option to add additional, tailored questions — helps Alex’s team specify individual kid’s needs and get that information across to their coaches. They’ve seen Pebble minimise the risk of important information being missed, which is a big plus for them.

A responsive team

“The Pebble team’s there when we need them and they keep in touch, but it’s not pushy or sales-y,” Alex says. “They just let us know what’s coming up and what they’re working on.”

As for where Alex’s team will go with Pebble from here, Proformance Coaching is looking to use the platform for their subscription offering, too, and make the most of its integrations to keep saving themselves time. 

Find out more about Pebble’s award-winning management software for kids’ activity providers here.