Table of Contents
The Biggest Business Differentiator You’re Not Paying Attention To
How Your Client Experience Will Cost (or Save!) You
What You’ll Need for a World-Class Client Experience
–>Accountability and Support from Every Direction
–>Using Technology and Data to Your Advantage
–>What NOT To Do – Learning from Competitor Mistakes
Do you ever wish you could escape the stress of client follow-up? With our 3 Brilliant Text Message Strategies guide, you’ll eliminate stressful follow-up forever and learn exactly what to say to get your clients back in the gym and excited to work with you!
The Biggest Business Differentiator You’re Not Paying Attention To
What’s the item on your business to-do list that you can never seem to cross off?
If “Getting new customers!” just crossed your mind, you’re not alone. A majority of fitness business owners would answer that question the same way.
While marketing and acquiring more customers certainly has an invaluable place in every business, your gym’s BIGGEST differentiator (and source of success) isn’t in your ability to market yourself. It’s not in your ability to get more leads. And it’s not in your ability to write crazy-converting Facebook ads.
In fact, your gym’s greatest source of potential success is probably something you’re not paying much attention to.
I’ll let you in on a secret…well, it may not be a secret to you, but it often goes unacknowledged. And when this particular truth is overlooked or even gets forgotten, businesses suffer big-time.
Here it is: A stellar client experience–and ultimately, an insanely-high retention rate–is the best, most powerful asset you have.
We’ve worked with hundreds of fitness coaches, and we’ve seen the impact of client experience on a business’s success time and time again. Gyms that put time, effort, and attention toward creating an outstanding experience for their clients win. Every time.
In this guide, we’ll delve into why client experience is so critical, what you’ll need to do it well, and how to build out a complete system for client experience that wows your clients. Let’s dive in!
How Your Client Experience Will Cost (or Save!) You
Our stance on client experience (that it’s the best, most powerful asset you have) is a bold one. You might be skeptical about the real impact it can have on your business. But countless studies show client experience is worth taking seriously. Here’s what we know…
It effectively separates you from your competition.
It can be simple to deliver with the right strategies and tools (to be covered below!).
And, it has an incredible return-on-investment.
It’s true. It’s cheaper to save and keep your current customers than it is to gain new ones. A lot cheaper. In fact, acquiring a new customer can cost SEVEN TO NINE TIMES more than it costs to retain the ones you already have.
This truth about client experience is also supported by sales data: the success rate of selling to your existing customers has a success rate of 60-70%, whereas the success rate of engaging and selling to new ones drops to the 5-20% range. You are at a HUGE advantage when interacting with current clients. They know you. They trust you. They already want to buy from you!
Even a small increase in your customer retention can make MAJOR waves in your finances – a 5% bump in retention can spike your overall profits from 25% to 95%!
It’s tempting to spend all of your valuable time and efforts on sales and marketing because those have reputations for being big revenue-drivers in business…and while they are absolutely essential, the numbers don’t lie. Nothing beats the ROI of an amazing client care process.
In fact, NOT having a strategic, smart, systemized client experience process is no doubt costing your business. So now that we’ve established the profits to be gained and costs you’ll avoid when you implement a system like this, it’s time to get one in place. Let’s talk about what you need to get started.
What You’ll Need for a World-Class Client Experience
Very few fitness business owners would reject the idea that customer service is good for business. It’s common sense! Buzzwords like “customer service,” “customer engagement,” and “customer satisfaction” are thrown around a lot by gym owners, but often those concepts don’t hold much weight in the strategy of the business itself.
When we talk about client experience, we’re talking about something much bigger than just customer service. We’re talking about something that has the potential to sky-rocket your business light years ahead and leave your competitors in the dust.
So what does a fitness business need in order to craft a world-class client experience, versus just delivering customer satisfaction?
It’s simple – you need two things: to know your customer and to know your numbers.
These are two of the major pillars underpinning our philosophy and passion here at Naamly. You MUST know your customer in order to deliver an exceptional experience to him or her, and you MUST know your numbers in order to measure success.
There are no shortcuts around these…knowing your customer and knowing your numbers are crucial to your business’s flourishing.
–>Know Your Customer
We get questions like this a lot…
What is the perfect combination of workouts, nutrition advice, accountability, and community connection if I want a 99%+ retention rate? How can I earn raving reviews and loyal long-term customers every time?
As always, the answer is, “It depends.” It depends on the psyche of the customer you are serving, but, most importantly, it is how you set and manage their expectations and hold their hands throughout their time with you.
When we say “Know your customer,” this is distinctly different from thinking you know your customer. It’s distinctly different from guessing what your customer likes and wants. It’s also distinctly different believing your customers have the same preferences and needs that you would, if you were in their shoes.
Knowing your customer means having qualitative and quantitative data on your customers’ wnts, needs, desires, and more. You should be able to name things like their…
- Likes and dislikes
- Goals
- Limitations and constraints
- Important milestones they’re working towards
- Their social circles (where they hang out, who they hang out with)
- How they define success
- What is most important for them to get from you as a service provider and from their trainer(s)
If you’re someone who has an idea of what the likes, dislikes, goals, milestones etc of your customer base are, but you don’t have data to support those beliefs, you’re not alone. Most business owners are guessing about what’s important to their customers. But those business owners don’t deliver the best client experience because they simply haven’t done the research.
If that rings true for you, here are some simple ways to start doing research NOW on who you’re serving and what matters to them. All of these methods should be done on an ongoing basis – meaning you are continually collecting data that informs your client experience strategy.
- Collect the info above with every mode available to you from current customers. Whether you are emailing a client, texting a small group of customers, interacting on Facebook, or having a chat post-workout, these are awesome opportunities for listening and better understanding their needs. Be tuned in so you can recognize and capture it in those interactions.
- Build in data collection into your operations process. This means conducting assessment points throughout their journey with you; doing goal-setting and strategy discussions annually; doing monthly check-ins with clients who might be participating less than usual.
- For businesses with teams, we recommend using some technology to keep this info housed in a single organized place…consider free options like Survey Monkey or Google Notes/Reminders. This enables all of your team members to not only be data collectors, but they’ll also have access to it. When everyone has the same information, it’s much easier to deliver a seamless member experience.
- Conduct exit interviews so you learn from lost customers and hear about what you can do better to serve the same type of person in the future.
Once you’ve got the information you need, you can build out an avatar (a representation of your ideal customer), so you’ve got an official reference for exactly who you are serving and their key pains and needs. This information is the entire foundation of your client experience strategy.
If you only take away a SINGLE thing from this guide, I hope it would be this: You must get to know YOUR customer on a deep level and consistently deliver what they need and want.
–>Know Your Numbers
The topic of numbers and data-tracking can be an intimidating one. We’re going to keep this as straightforward as possible and show you the numbers that are essential for you to track and measure for an incredible client experience. Nothing complicated. Nothing excessive.
Fitness business success really comes down to ONE single thing – it’s USAGE.
Think about it…if you have a recurring subscription to Hulu, but you never use it, you cancel.
If you don’t use the unlimited monthly car wash pass you bought, you’re unlikely to renew it.
For micro-gyms and fitness businesses that don’t follow the big-box model, usage is incredibly important because it’s directly tied to revenue and retention.
Usage is made up of two things:
- Frequency of visits – how often do they come?
- Length of stay – how long do they stay?
Tracking usage in some capacity is a necessity when we’re talking about customer experience. If you’re a tracking junkie, you may already be tracking frequency of visits, length of stay, revenue per member per month, and countless other metrics.
If that’s you, awesome! You’re set!
If not, no worries. There are just two numbers you’ll need if you want to deliver an unforgettable client experience.
- Number of clients per month.
- Number of sessions per month.
Both of these are great markers of a business’s service delivery quality and are directly impacted by the amount of effort and strategy paid to customer experience. These should be your primary metrics for success.
Many fitness businesses benefit from tracking a few additional numbers – metrics that may not be as important as number of clients and number of sessions monthly, but still give valuable information about how their client experience strategy is working.
Here are a few that can be helpful to track:
- Increased visits
- Increased referrals
- Increased reviews
- Increased friends accompanying
The great thing about knowing your numbers is that its benefits are full-circle. Knowing your numbers enables you to determine metrics for success and will guide how you build out a world-class customer experience…
AND, with a strong, strategy-driven client experience, you’ll be able to increase BOTH the frequency of visits and length of stay per member (ie. usage), which means greater profits and growth!
Now that you’ve determined your metrics for success, it’s time to integrate some client experience separators (or differentiators) into your process to set your business apart and keep clients for life!
Client Experience Separators
Now that you’re armed with in-depth knowledge of your customer and you know where your numbers stand (and how you’re measuring success!), you’re ready to jump into specific client experience strategies that we’ve seen separate the high-performing gyms from the average- and low-performers.
–>Accountability and Support from Every Direction
The most profitable, fastest-growing gyms are those that take accountability and support very seriously. In fact, they don’t just provide it (because every micro gym and fitness business claims to do that), they give their customers a double-dose of it from every direction.
No matter where their customers turn, they are met with people and processes that communicate, “We want you to succeed, and we genuinely care about you.” Here’s how they do it:
Accountability to goals…
- Gyms provide the strongest goal accountability when they are tracking client progress diligently. Having an online platform that houses this info (like Naamly software!) works best.
- As clients get closer to their goals, try upping the sessions they complete per week to get them to get to their goals faster. Use their data and progress made as motivation to up the ante!
- Take inspiration from the martial arts world and consider adding a tier system to your gym so that clients can graduate from one level to the next. This creates the internal motivation to want to jump to the next level and increase their level of achievement and status. You can even do graduation ceremonies!
- Celebrate milestones that your clients reach. Has Suzy just completed her 100th workout? Has James just hit a PR? Bring light to those things and celebrate them. This reminds them of the massive strides they’ve made with you and will encourage them to keep going.
- Consider adding nutrition coaching to supplement the training and/or classes clients are doing to accelerate their progress and keep them focused.
Accountability to show up…
- Getting your clients to build the habit of consistent attendance is a big win. Make it the first and foremost goal that you (and your team) focus on with clients.
- Most fitness gurus claim that if a person comes in twice per week, they are more likely to become a long-term client. Think of that as the minimum threshold for attendance that you want all of your clients to hit.
- For those who struggle to attend regularly or become MIA, make it a top priority to reach out to them. Help them to realize they are missed when they don’t show up.
- Work on getting clients to see past the workout in front of them and look toward how workouts and being healthy makes them feel. This will help with consistent attendance, even when their motivation may be low.
Support from the gym community…
- Being intentional about creating relationships between members is so impactful for accountability and support. It’s just just about feeling like their trainer cares, but their peers care, too.
- While asking for referrals may seem like a marketing strategy, it also brings outside-of-the-gym connections inside the gym. This strengthens the community aspect and the support members feel when they’re with you.
- Consider pairing members up for certain workouts. Maybe you put friends together if you’re running a small group training session. Maybe you pair strangers up in a group class so they can get to know each other. Members always feel more connected, and therefore are more likely to stay longer, the more relationships they have within your facility.
Support from the team…
- Building in opportunities for your team (or the business itself) to support members and incentivize usage is important when you’re trying to provide accountability from every direction.
- Gyms do this well by offering free chances for members to try out another service offering, ideally one that’s more individualized and profitable for you. For example, you may offer committed large group clients a free small group training session.
- In addition to free offers and risk-free trials for members, small gifts can also be a way for your team to better support clients. Small gifts can also be more personalized and meaningful, meaning they’re even more impactful. Here are some ideas to get you started…
- Cards on special occasions
- Small birthday gifts, like a surprise birthday dessert, gym swag, or something else that would make it a special day
- Random gifts that are meant to say, “I have you in my thoughts!” This is best when it comes from your staff and it marks something meaningful in the client’s life (wedding, birth of a child, grief/loss)
- Upscale gifts for high-spending clients or those that have been with you for a long time, like a bottle of wine or a book
Support from their trainer…
- The greatest impact trainers can have on their clients (in terms of client experience) is developing a sincere relationship. This goes beyond being friendly in the gym–trainers that do this well regularly check-in with their clients outside of the gym, oftentimes about non-gym related topics. They communicate (text, Facebook message, comment on Instagram etc) to show they care.
- Mix up session styles and ask for feedback on the workouts you do. If a particular client loves doing pull-ups, add those to more of your sessions together. Demonstrating their opinions matter and including them in program design helps them take ownership over their experience and they enjoy themselves more.
Sometimes, knowing what to say in a text message to a client is tough. Learn EXACTLY what to say to get clients reengaged with you and excited to return to the gym with our 3 Brilliant Text Message Strategies guide!
–>Onboarding – Turning New Clients into Raving Fans
- The first 30 days of a client’s experience with you are the most important. Making a good first impression and getting them excited about their membership is critical. That’s why you need a solid onboarding process.
- Onboarding is all about setting expectations and creating positive momentum. Think about how you can get each client off to a great start as they begin forming habits, and what needs to be communicated for them to get the most out of their time with you. How will you indoctrinate them and bring them into your ecosystem, and more importantly, make them a part of it?
- Assessments are a crucial part of onboarding because your business needs to know each client’s particular starting point. We also recommend doing an assessment or casual interview at the end of onboarding (around the one-month mark) to see what clients are enjoying thus far and what could be improved upon.
–>Using Technology to Your Advantage
- This is a brief, but important client experience strategy: use technology to make your life and your client experience strategy easier as a business owner. There are six must-haves when it comes to finding a software that will consolidate and organize all of the information you need to deliver a stellar client experience:
- Billing capabilities
- Scheduling and managing calendars
- Program design
- Progress and data tracking for individual clients
- Communication (that your team can all access and share)
- Administrative and team management tools
- Of course we’re biased and we think the Naamly software checks all of those boxes and more, but it’s worth investigating your options and finding what is going to work best for your business.
–>What NOT To Do – Learning from Competitor Mistakes
- So far, we’ve explored customer experience separators that the best gyms in the industry are using. But it’s JUST as valuable to learn from poor examples of client experience. Check out some of the common mistakes we see gym owners making…
- Having customers work out only with a single coach. Instead, the relationship needs to be built with the entire business, not with one coach. Avoiding this will protect you from not only losing a trainer, but also losing one-third of your client base with them.
- Creating the impression that clients have particular staff they can go to for questions and support. This is similar to the mistake above. There must be a team atmosphere among staff as well as a team atmosphere among members.
- Not personalizing much of the client experience. Many gyms create elaborate client experience processes without considering any of their “Know Your Customer” information, nor the specific clients they’re interacting with each day. When you do this, clients feel like “just a number.”
- Trying to be everything to everyone. One of the most difficult things to do, especially as a new business owner, is to consider someone a poor customer fit…especially if you know you can help them! Instead, the most successful fitness businesses have a “magnet-like” strategy – they attract their ideal customers, and they repel the wrong ones.
Key Takeaways
There is no one-size-fits-all customer experience strategy, and every business needs to tailor their offerings to meet the unique demands of their customers. However, a combination of any one of the above strategies will help provide that personalized experience for your clients and they’ll eventually become raving fans.
We want to encourage you here – we know that getting started on designing a member experience strategy may seem daunting, but you’re already doing it.
Your customers already know you care about them deeply. Now the goal is to create a system that reminds them of that truth every time they come in and every time they interact with your business!
Start small with just one of the strategies we outlined above, set some metric goals you’d like to hit, and implement it. We promise your time and attention investment will be WORTH IT when you’ve got a client base full of personal cheerleaders that can’t stop bragging about your business!
Don’t fall prey to overwhelm – improve your client experience IMMEDIATELY with our 3 Brilliant Text Message Strategies guide.