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6 Secrets Of Award Winning Customer Service
Aaron Potts
Would you believe that your ability to provide quality customer
service to your clients is at least as important as your ability
to get them results from their training program? Did you even
know that customer service was going to be part of your
business model? After all, what does personal training have to
with customer service?
The answer: everything. Remember that your clients are people
first, and their status as one of your clients comes second.
Knowing how to tend to the needs of your customers will
literally make the difference between a long and prosperous
career in the fitness industry, or a short-lived stint that
leaves you wondering what career path you should try next!
In order to assist you in walking down the success path, here
are six methods that you can use to "WOW" your clients on a
regular basis, keeping them happy, loyal to you, and engaging
in long-term prosperous business relationships. In no
particular order they are: contact, date and event recognition,
listening, flexibility, forward thinking, and over-delivering.
Contact
When you get a new personal training client, many people will
still second-guess their decision to hire you. After all, a
personal trainer can be an expensive asset, and your clients
need to believe that they made the right decision. One of the
easiest ways for you to ease their mind in the beginning as
well as during the course of their training program is by
simply staying in contact with them.
Most clients will see you at most 3 times each week, and some
clients even less than that. With at least 4 days in each week
when your clients don't see you, you are influencing them less
than 50% of the time! Many clients hire a personal trainer
because they need constant guidance and support, and less than
50% could hardly be considered constant.
An easy solution to this is to send your clients a few emails a
week, or mail them an actual snail mail letter once in awhile.
Clip an appropriate article from a magazine and make copies of
it to mail to your clients, or email them the URL of a great
motivational story about weight loss that you found on the
Internet. Forward them funny anecdotes about health and
fitness, or drop them a postcard congratulating them on their
latest progress.
For that matter, pick up the phone! Call Suzie Client on
Saturday to let her know that you just got done updating her
client record and had reason to again marvel at how great she
is doing with her program. You just can't pay for the type of
customer feedback you will get from something like that!
Stay in contact with your clients in between training sessions,
and the increased attention will remind them on a regular basis
that in the beginning you committed to a one on one training
program for them, not just to stand there 3 times a week while
they exercise.
Date and Event Recognition
Recognizing special dates in your client's lives is another
great way to show them that you are thinking about them in
between training sessions.
-Send your clients a birthday card, or even a small but
thoughtful gift.
-Congratulate them on their wedding anniversary, or even send
flowers or a card to their house.
-Ask them how excited they are about the upcoming graduation of
their child from high school or college.
-Have a special token of your appreciation sent to their home
or office after a set amount of time that they have been
training with you - maybe annually or semi-annually.
-Give them a special award every time they lose 5 pounds, or
drop a percentage of body fat.
-Attend the race or other fitness event that you have been
training them for.
As you can see, the possibilities are limitless. The lesson
that you want to take away from this section is that you went
above and beyond the call of duty to recognize a date or an
event that was important to your client. They won't forget that
when it comes time to decide whether or not to keep working with
you!
Listening
The fact that you should listen to your clients should go
without saying. If your title is "Personal Trainer", please
take a moment at this time to re-read the first word! Too many
trainers fall into the familiar trap of just taking their
clients through workouts. Your clients aren't paying you to
workout with them. They are paying you to give them dedicated
one on one service, and the actual workout is only one part of
that.
In addition to the exercise programming, you must again think
about the fact that your clients are humans before they are
clients. As humans, they have as many outside considerations as
you do. If you are only seeing them 3 hours per week, that
leaves 165 hours each week when you are not around, and the
lifestyle events that happen during that time will spill over
into the training sessions.
Your clients will talk about their jobs, their spouses, their
relatives and in-laws, their children and their neighbors,
their gardener and their mailman, etc. Any good personal
trainer realizes that although we have no business actually
dispensing professional advice on personal or spiritual
matters, we are a 3 time per week sounding board for our
clients, and that is just part of the job. Listen to what your
clients have to say, help out without leaving your professional
boundaries, and let your clients know that you care about what
happens to them, not just about what happens during the
training session.
Flexibility
Although a trainer's day is usually dictated by a preset
schedule, if you paint yourself into a corner with your
calendar, you will quickly find that some of your clients can't
stick with their program because their schedule is just not that
black and white. In today's world of the ever-changing landscape
of professional as well as personal lifestyle factors, many
people have trouble doing the same thing day after day, and
week after week. In order to keep your clients happy and on
track with their programs, you must "roll with the punches" and
exhibit some flexibility when it comes to scheduling and
training issues.
It is a very good idea to have a running cancellation policy
for your business, and it is an equally good idea to educate
your clients on the need for regularity in their training
program. However, being so inflexible that you charge a client
$50 every time they get a flat tire, have to work late, or have
a family emergency will quickly eliminate any professional
bonding that your clients may have previously felt was a part
of your working relationship. Enforce your policies, but be
realistic about the fact that life is just not as black and
white as it may have been 20 years ago.
Forward Thinking
This is as much of a sales technique as it is a great customer
service tool. In a nutshell, it means that you should always be
planning for the future when it comes to your clients. Talk to
them about how you are going to start running with them once
they get their weight down enough for their knees to handle the
stress. Explain to them how much fun it will be when you can
start taking them through the new training protocol that you
put together. Get them excited about how good they are going to
look on the beach this summer after several more months of
working out with you, or about how their cousin Sally is going
to be so envious at Christmas time this year when she sees how
much weight your client has lost.
All of these things plant the seed for your clients that you
are thinking about their future, and not just taking them
through a workout. Let them know that you have great plans for
them in the future, and that you can't wait to see their
results when they get to a certain point in the program that
you have them on. Again, your clients are people, and they want
to be made to feel important, needed, and respected.
Over-delivering
Over-delivering value to your clients is probably the most
important technique out of any that have been listed so far. It
is last in our list of customer service secrets so that it is
the one that you remember the most!
Over-delivering is just what it sounds like - giving your
clients more value for their money than they originally
expected to get. In fact, all of the items listed above are
great examples of over-delivery. Do you think that when your
clients hired you they expected to be getting gifts on their
birthday, expected you to be excited about the graduation of
their children, or that they could vent to you about their
mother-in-law during training sessions? These are all examples
of the infinite number of ways that you can over-deliver value
to your clients.
In addition to what has already been listed, you can get much
more specific with your over-delivery efforts. Each of your
clients has a very well defined fitness goal that they are
diligently working towards. As a fitness professional, you
should be regularly keeping up with the latest news stories
about health and fitness, as well as getting Continuing
Education Credits.
Put that information directly to use for your clients! How
impressed do you think your client would be if their fitness
goal is to be a competitive swimmer, and you take a course on
training competitive swimmers? What about if you have picked up
some clients who are over the age of 55 and you start reading
books and clipping articles on Senior Fitness? How about a
bonus training session that you give your client when they
reach a goal? What about if you have a client who is on the
high school wrestling team, and after working with him for 2
months, you offer to do a free class for his entire team? The
teenager becomes a hero because his personal trainer gave up
some winning tips before the big meet, and you get a boat load
of free publicity!
Conclusion
The pattern developing here is clear, and the above examples
are only sketches of things that you might consider. Remember
that every successful personal trainer runs a business, he or
she doesn't just workout with their clients. Get under the hood
of your business, tinker around with the wiring, and find ways
to "WOW" your clients everyday!
About The Author: Aaron Potts is the author and creator of The
Ultimate Complete Personal Training Business Kit, a quick-start
kit and business guide for new as well as seasoned fitness
professionals. Find out more about Aaron's programs at
http://www.completepersonaltrainingbusiness.com or his personal
training site at http://www.aaronspersonaltraining.com
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