Top 3 Tips to Immediately Improve Client Experience at Your Gym

[00:00:00] Hey friends, Ben here with Business for Unicorns, and I’m taking over the podcast today from Michael. And it’s my pleasure to chat with Brittaney Cook, the owner of athletic outcomes in Austin, Texas. She’s one of our coaches on the BFU team. And at our most recent retreat in Boston in mid September, she did a presentation and a workshop on client experience.

This is the second time I’ve seen her present on client experience. And I took a ton of notes. Cheers. Truly world class when it comes to making a world class experience for her clients. And I’m excited to bring you her top three tips, try to improve the client experience for a more robust business.

Welcome to the business for unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what [00:01:00] it really takes to level up your gym. Get ready to unlock your potential.

And become a real unicorn in the fitness industry. Let’s begin.

Hi friends, Ben here with Business for Unicorns, and I’ve decided to hijack the podcast from Michael today. And it’s my honor to bring you Coach Britt to talk all things client experience. But before we dive in and talk client experience, I want to remind you, if you haven’t already, Get Mark’s new book.

It’s the little book of gym marketing secrets. And honestly, it’s wish I, what I wish I had when I had started my gym. It’s everything you need, nothing you don’t. It’s a quick read and it’s got extremely actual takeaways. So if you haven’t already picked that up below by clicking below in the show notes, welcome Brit.

How are you? I’m great. How are you? I’m doing awesome. Have you recovered from our amazing retreat in Boston? Man, I still haven’t taken all the information and dumped it somewhere yet. It’s still living up here. So I would say I have [00:02:00] not quite recovered. My team members have, they’re very excited about it.

Good. So Boston was the second time I’ve had, have had the privilege of having, hearing you talk about client experience. And each time you’ve knocked it out of the park with such simple things and complex things that really. Shine a light on how good athletic outcomes is doing from a client experience standpoint for the listeners who couldn’t attend the retreat or other people like you or I who haven’t got all the things out of our head and need to put a few things into practice.

I figured today we could do The quick and dirty on like, how do you make, how do the listeners make the same quality client experience that you do at AO? That’s the problem. That’s the problem. So obviously you talked about a lot of different stuff. We’re in Boston. We won’t be able to get through all of it, but maybe we can start with what are your top three tips from your experience with athletic outcomes on making a remarkable client experience.

Okay, cool. Top three, if I have to, it’s tricky to summarize [00:03:00] it down to just three, but I would say if I could categorize them, number one is to always make sure that we are asking for feedback from our clients. We are all about feedback surveys. We want our clients to know that their opinions are very valued and that we will act on what people are suggesting.

That’s number one, for sure. Okay. Can I, can I expand? Yeah, please. So, you’re always asking, can you give some, what does that look like? Is it every week you ask for feedback, every 90 days, what are the layers of feedback that you have built in? Good question. We set up after everybody’s first visit, we ask for feedback.

So that’s pretty given. We have a regularly occurring 60 visit automatic. survey that goes out. So every 60 visits to every member, every client, personal training, drop in people, everybody, they’ll get one survey and we just want them to share anything about their experience. If they’re willing to, we incentivize them to actually fill out the survey by entering them [00:04:00] into a raffle to win a free custom AO Yeti, which.

If you were at the retreat, it was very entertaining that people actually do fill out surveys for mugs. That’s worth it. One of my, one of my takeaways was actually that we should just bribe people to do a survey. It’s so simple, but you mentioned 75 percent of your members will typically fill out that survey.

We shoot for 75. That is our goal. So we will always be emailing people, reminding them of it. So that’s our, that’s where we want to be. And if we’re not there, then we take action, reach out to them again. We’ll increase the incentives if people aren’t filling it out. So that’s just motivation for us to make sure that what we’re asking for, that they’re getting something in return, that’s equal value to them.

That’s a really good point. Cause If you listen to the BFU podcast, we’re big on feedback and like they joined our gym for a reason that the reason wasn’t so that they can give us feedback to help us improve. Now, obviously any customer who goes to any establishment and like likes going there are going to want to see [00:05:00] that improve, but our clients don’t always feedback and it’s just a simple solve to be like, we’ll give you this.

Kick ass Yeti. We’ll put you in a raffle to win this kick ass Yeti mug and do this thing. Like that alone is going to get people to be like, I already care, but now I can get a free mug. And now the more feedback you get, the better changes you can make. Yep. They get very excited about it. It’s a brag. It’s a bragging thing at the gym where I got the Yeti.

So it works for us. So just figure out what your avatar really likes, what they’re incentivized by and offer that to them. Beauty. Yeah. And you said 60 visits. So depending how people, how frequently people come, that could be anywhere from a few months to a year, depending on their frequency. Absolutely. I think there’s a benefit to that, right?

The people who come regularly, we want them to be able to provide us feedback more. They’re the ones who are more invested, the ones who are more loyal. They’ll tend to see all of the different sessions. They’ll come to all the different class times, class coaches. So they’re the ones who. Are so invested in it [00:06:00] that they are wanting to and willing to give us feedback more frequently.

That’s a good way of looking at it. Cause usually I’ve heard of gyms doing like a quarterly feedback survey or every X amount of time, but by doing it on every visit. You’re stacking the feedback in a way that the more often you come, the more often you’re going to get an opportunity to get feedback, the more essentially your feedback is going to be weighted.

That’s extremely clever. It works right now. Bribe people as needed, especially with a Yeti, or as you said, in better words, something that your avatar really wants. It’s not always going to want to be a free session. Like something outside of the gym can sometimes go really well. Plus they get to rep your brand and to consider doing free back based on visit frequency, not arbitrary length of time.

Yep. Not duration of length of membership, for example. Clever. It’s the reason you presented. So we think of that as tip number one of your, what’s kind of your second piece of advice for those of us who are looking to improve [00:07:00] our gym, Okay. So tip number one would be asking for feedback. Tip number two is to make sure that our clients are always feeling recognized, praised, and valued that they have shown up for that day.

So for us, what that looks like is our coaches always remember the names of the people coming in, whether it’s their client, somebody else’s client, whether you have 24 people in your session. Our client or our coaches goals is to make sure that they are remembering clients names. We celebrate wins like small little tiny wins.

Like we always do milestones, which are large wins, but small wins, such as just somebody who can jump rope 20 times straight in a row. It’s a big deal for them. So we make it a big deal for everybody else. So just making sure that they. Understand and feel that they are wanted there every single time and that there’s never a silence interaction.

There’s always communication between coach and client. [00:08:00] Got it. Now you’ve got a relatively big team and a quite large client roster. How do you make sure that happens consistently across coaches and across sessions? Yeah, that’s a really good question. Something we’re always trying to get better at for sure.

We do have a system where we can communicate from one coach across the staff. For example, when one coach hears feedback from a client or celebrates a win with a client when I’m not at the gym. We have our end of shift feedback form is what we call it. And basically any moment throughout the day, it does say end of shift, but they can do whatever they want.

We just go scan this little QR code and all they do is enter their name as a coach and what feedback or information that the staff members should be aware of. So if somebody, for example, is pregnant, then now I know that we should be celebrating that person, sending them a onesie in the mail, whatever it is.

So we do have a system where there’s communication between the Coaches and the entire staff. And it’s [00:09:00] just a simple QR code. So that’s so simple that I was expecting a more complicated answer. And I’m really glad that it’s not because it needs to be a lot of the people we talk to and you see it with the, a few members is the system sounds great, but like, how do I get everyone on my staff to do it?

And you’re, you have a perfect example of like setting up a game that’s easy for them to win. Yeah. We do the Slack thing, it’s hit or miss. It’s hard to enforce sending up those regular reminders, like, Hey, what’s the latest on the client from the client’s field, and you might get some hits, you might not get it.

So we just make it pretty much in their face. It’s right there. That’s when they go dump the towels into the washer before they leave for the day. It’s a QR code. It can’t be more obvious and more easy. So that’s, what’s working for us at this moment. That’s perfect. You put it somewhere that they’re going to see no matter what, at the end of their shift, and that prompt alone is going to get probably.

Pretty significant compliance, it sounds like at least. Yes. Yeah, and we bring it up every team meeting. Hey, we [00:10:00] didn’t get any information or we got all this information or is there anything else to add? So weekly team meetings, it’s also a big part of our agenda. Got it. So that makes it like a cultural norm that you’re expected to fill this thing out and we’re going to talk about it so everyone knows.

If you happen to not fill it out, you might not get publicly shamed, but it comes up enough that it’ll normalize that behavior. Yes. Are you listening is really the question that we’re trying to get answered all the time. Yeah, of course. All right. So tip number one is constantly collect feedback and bribe people as necessary to get better response rates.

Tip number two is make it easy for your staff to share those wins and feedback across the whole staff as a whole. So as soon as. A member shares that something’s going on by the end of that shift The whole team’s going to know that sally’s pregnant or joe got a new dog or whatever. Yeah Yes, exactly.

Those are very typical actual Notifications that we receive somebody got a dog or somebody’s having a baby Both very important a growing family. You gotta support [00:11:00] that somebody’s becoming a parent. This is great For babies or real babies too. Yeah All right. Do you have a tip number three? Yeah, I would say tip number three would be a compilation of many things.

So I’ll try to summarize it as much as I can, but tip number three would be all about making sure that you’re delivering a consistent, high quality, valuable experience, which will translate into an engaged community. And when you have an engaged community, there’s that connection that they have to your brand, to your staff, to all their friends that they go work out with.

So it’s basically, how can you provide a consistent experience that gives your clients value, which therefore keeps them motivated and engaged in the community is the ultimate end result for that. Hey there, business unicorns podcast listeners. I’m just making absolutely sure you have already gotten your free instantly downloadable copy of my new book, The little [00:12:00] book of Jim marking secrets.

You can find a link to download it in the show notes, or you can go to Jim marking secrets, book. com. I worked super hard to make sure this 30 minute read and as a comprehensive overview of all the things you need to do to grow your gym, get more leads, more clients, and importantly, change more lives.

Again, find the link in the show notes where you can download your free copy at Jim marking secrets, book. com. And now back to the podcast, let’s keep, let’s get a little more specific. Cause I don’t think anyone listening to this is going to disagree with a consistent high quality experience that delivers value for an engaged community.

Like how do you, what does that look like in practice at AO? Yeah. So for us, the hard part was. Figuring out what our clients value across the board, right? So we have small group, personal training. We have large group classes. The majority of our services, majority of our clients go to large group classes.

So trying to figure out what they valued that kept them coming back. And for us, what we found out was [00:13:00] having friends. So trying to create those relationships, those connections amongst groups, amongst hours, like the 6amers and the 7amers, making sure that they’re becoming friends. I feel like that was like a really big aha moment.

Of course, our people love having friends. Why are we not focusing on creating a lot more community? And then they also valued, like they told us, that they valued tracking something. And in a large group class, it’s really hard to track individual weights, reps. So we started tracking their goals and it’s just a simple system where we ask them what their goals are and then we help them plan what classes to attend and we hold them accountable to it on a quarterly basis.

So for us, tracking goals for the large groups and then really creating friendships amongst the community was helpful for us in providing that high quality, valuable experience that kept them wanting to return. Got it. And how do you track goals? You mentioned just quarterly. Is this like a. There’s a head coach who’s in charge [00:14:00] of doing this.

Do you split it across the staff? What does that look like for people who have wanted to do more of the outside of the exercise stuff with their clients, but aren’t sure what execution looks like? Yeah. Good question. We do an automation where. on the 25th visit. First client or their first 25th visit. So it’s not repetitive.

Just one time they can enter in their goals and we just let them know, Hey, we’re gonna hold you accountable on a quarterly basis. When we implemented it, we just sent out a mass email to every single client. Hey, we want to start tracking your goals. Submit here on a Google form. And so everything is just in a Google form.

We love Google. It goes right to a sheet, every single quarter, we just go in and make sure that we’ve reached out to that person. So we do have a person who does that, our admin manager, Blake, she’s amazing, but we could divide and conquer within the team. You could take 10 people this quarter. I take 10 people this quarter.

We can systemize it through a Google sheet and that’s really helpful [00:15:00] for us and we know that it’s due once a quarter. Got it. Yeah. So if I’ve filled out that, Hey, my goal is I want to. Go for walks every day and I work out on average three times a week. I fill out the form at the end of the quarter.

Blake touches base with me and then asks me what are my goals for the coming quarter. Or just check in with that. Hey, we’ll do it spontaneously also, like halfway through the quarter. We’re just going to reach out to people who have goals that are outside of the gym. So inside the gym, it’s easy for us to see that they’re showing up.

They come to those sessions. They’re averaging like three sessions a week. We can look at that. But for example, the example that you just gave me of I want to walk every day, we’ll touch base on that because that’s not something that we can see in the gym. And we’ll touch base like, hey, how is that goal going?

Have you made any progress? If not, would you like to continue working on this? What are some changes that we could make? How can we support you? That’s beautiful. Again, so simple, but so personalized and scalable to like the large group class model, where [00:16:00] usually you’re Yeah, it’d be understandable if you didn’t know everybody’s name yet.

You’re already tracking people’s goals who are coming to that thing. That’s just an elevated experience. So we’ll put it different than all the other group class slash bootcamp type experiences. It’s been very helpful. Small group, easy to track weights, right? Easy, not large groups. So that’s been something that we’ve been trying to.

Solve for a long time and we’re always trying to perfect that system for sure. That’s beauty. I like it. I really like how and I just want to acknowledge you for creating systems that are Like they’re super simple, but they’re really effective Which means that they’re easy to execute on a recurring basis because it’s too often You’ve probably had this happen to you and seen other people where it’s like we’re going to do this thing and you build this Theoretical, incredible model of what can happen and then the execution, but you do it once because there’s just such a huge lift that you can’t do it repetitively and that’s like, yeah, we use a Google form.

We ask people what matters to [00:17:00] them. We then do the thing that matters to them. It’s fantastic. We’ve done it the opposite way for sure. So we learned from mistakes, right? We always want these big elaborate systems and plans. And I think simple is key, especially when you have a large membership base. For sure.

There are times where Blake has to talk me off of the ledge with some of these amazing ideas that I have. So it’s helpful to have some feedback from the staff also. That’s awesome. That’s great. So kind of a quick recap here. One is always be asking for feedback and if needed incentivize that feedback so you get better feedback.

Two, is make it easy to share that feedback across the team, including wins. So something like a QR code is super simple. And three is figure out what matters to those people via the feedback that you’re asking that question and then do the thing they ask, such as making sure that you’re tracking something with a really simple system.

Yeah. Absolutely. And community. And yes. And sorry, I missed that piece. Oh, you’re good. And [00:18:00] that if they’re coming and they have friends in those sessions, they’re probably going to want to keep coming to those sessions with their friends, which is good for everybody. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love working out with friends.

So I know we’ve had to take what you covered in one kind of keynote presentation, plus an entire workshop into under 20 minutes today. So I want to open it to like anything to add for our listeners in the last few minutes. Oh, gosh. Okay. I think what, maybe not to add, but just to like reiterate is the fact that if you go into a business and you are immediately recognized, you feel like you’re part of something.

You’re part of the family. You feel important. You feel like you’re valued. And I think, uh, When we are making our retention plan, we’re always thinking about how can our clients feel like they are always wanted here? Like they matter so much to our clients or to our coaches, to other clients, and that they are ultimately part of our family and our project and our mission.

And so that’s [00:19:00] basically the root of our retention plan is just, what is it like to be a client? And how can they always feel valued every single time they come in? Yeah. Really put yourself in your client’s shoes because like for us, we could walk into probably any gym on the planet and feel relatively at home.

We’re gym people for the most part, but it’s hard to, it’s really hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s like, maybe last time they came to a gym was seven years ago and they had a bad experience, or maybe they had a trainer a couple of years ago and unfortunately got hurt or blame the trainer for an injury, or maybe there’s all sorts of things going on.

And. We know that people’s favorite word is their name and just making them feel valued when they come into a space that is often incredibly uncomfortable for a lot of people to walk through the doors. Yeah, and not even at gyms necessarily, right? If you walk into a hair salon and somebody doesn’t say hi to you, you feel that.

And it’s just, think about all of our experiences personally in the businesses that we’ve gone into and how do we apply that to our gym, which is an elective thing that people get to choose to come to. [00:20:00] How do we make sure that they always want to return? Yeah, your hair salon example is actually on point because I got my first haircut in 10 years this summer for my wedding.

I used to, I used, I don’t have a buzz cut anymore. No one’s, if you’re on audio, you won’t see my hair. Your hair’s so long. Wow. I’ve got a lot of hair now. And I used to have a buzz cut and I buzzed it myself every two weeks in the backyard. That’s just what I did. And I made a hair appointment to get my haircut for my wedding because not getting a haircut was not an option.

You needed to. Yeah. Um, yeah, I walked in and I stood there like uncomfortable for probably 30 seconds. I’ve never been to this place before, I didn’t know anyone there, I wasn’t a regular, and someone’s like, oh, can I help you? And I’m like, yeah, I have a haircut. I’m like, oh, what’s your name? It wouldn’t have been that much more difficult for someone to, at that front desk, be like, here’s the list of appointments.

Hey, are you Ben? Even if they were like, hey, are you Dave? I’d be like, oh, no, I’m Ben. They could be like, oh, you’ve got, you’re with Andrew at four o’clock. That would have immediately been like, I’m expected here, I’m in the right place. Yes. [00:21:00] Do you remember that experience? I do. We don’t want any of our clients to feel that way.

So no matter if it’s their first visit or their 500th visit, they will always be acknowledged and that’s important for sure. Perfect. I think that’s a wonderful point to leave us on because I don’t think, I think that’s something that gets, we all know, but doesn’t always get put into practice. And it’s a thing that if there’s something where you’re working on recognizing your clients or you think you do it consistently.

But is it really happening the same on the first visit as it is on the 500th? Because we all get a little bit complacent and friendly with some of the clients who are like basically best friends at this point. Exactly. We don’t want to neglect the ones who you know will return in your mind. But nothing is worse than receiving that cancellation request from the most loyal clients that you have.

So they are equally as important as the ones who are brand new, for sure. Thank you for being on the podcast, Brit. And I appreciate you condensing an hour and a half worth of extremely valuable, high quality information into 21 minutes. I know that’s no [00:22:00] easy task. It was great. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. You’ll be back soon. Alrighty. Bye bye. Bye bye.