Written by Ana Marin
Every day, hundreds, maybe thousands, of members walk through your doors.
When they joined, each of those members had their own unique perception of what it was going to be like to be part of your club.
When they leave after their workout, each of those members will have their own unique perceived experience of their visit.
This is happening day in, day out and if you aren’t capturing it, the invaluable data walking out of your facility each and every day is enough to bring a tear to my eye. Because I know what difference that data would have made to your business, to your bottom line. In many cases knowing about a bad experience could be the difference between receiving a cancellation request in your inbox or not. I also know how easy it is for you to capture, analyse, and act upon using our Insight software.
The core benefits of asking for member feedback are threefold.
- Find out what you are doing well and do more of it.
We all like to be told we are doing well, and from our experience here at Fitronics, working with over 600 facilities across the UK and North America, we know that most of the feedback you get will be positive.
As well as the well-deserved pat on the back, it’s important for you to know what your members like about your club so you can do more of it, but also, if existing members like something then your target market of prospective new members will probably like it too, so it writes your marketing for you.
I think there is also something to be said about getting someone who has had a positive experience to really think about it and write it down. It helps cement that positive experience in their mind and reminds them “Yeah, this is a great gym and I love it here because of X, Y, and Z.”
- Find out where you aren’t hitting the mark and sort it out.
The single biggest reason people don’t ask for feedback is because they don’t want to have to deal with negative viewpoints or ‘complaints’. It’s the old adage of ‘ignorance is bliss’ – but it really isn’t! If you ignore your problems like this, they won’t be your problems much longer as your members will just leave and go down the road!
If this is the reason stopping you from opening up your business to customer feedback, I urge you to take the plunge. I guarantee you won’t get anywhere near as much negative feedback as you think you will.
I know you pour your heart and soul into your business and negative comments, no matter how few, can cut deep but you have to take a step away and go into this with an objective mindset. The sooner you hear about problems the sooner you can fix them and, ultimately, you will develop a business that is more successful, and you are even more proud of.
- Make your members feel valued.
Even just by asking your members what they think, regardless of whether their feedback is positive or negative, you are earning brownie points. You’re showing them you are a customer-centric business that really does care about its members.
What’s more important though, and I can’t emphasise this enough, is that you acknowledge receipt of that feedback and where a suggestion to improve has been made, address it. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to fix it right away, maybe it is something you can’t fix at all (like parking). It means you must thank the customer for their feedback and respond to it, telling them what you are going to do to make their next visit better. There is nothing worse, and I mean nothing, than asking someone for their feedback and ignoring it! “If you aren’t listening to me, why did you bother asking!”
If you’d like to talk more about implementing a member feedback strategy in your business, or anything member experience related, I’d love to chat.
Please reach out to me at ana.marin@fitronics.com.
