There is an old Greek saying, we have one mouth for talking and two ears for listening – meaning we should listen twice as much as to what we speak. Very wise words but from my experience, this is more the exception than the norm.
Everyone wants to hear what a great job they are doing – people often don’t want to hear any negative feedback and let’s face it, it is in our human nature that we don’t want to hear bad news. Or people have selective hearing and only want to hear what they want to hear.
If you mange a fitness business (or any business), you need to listen to all member feedback – in fact you should be encouraging it. But I often see management receiving valuable feedback and do nothing about it. Or worse, management believes they know best and don’t care what members think. I can guarantee if you don’t listen to what your members or clients are saying, their friends, family and everyone they know on social media, review sites and forums will.
You have to take the bad with the good. This ensures you keep your loyal members happy (so they don’t walk out the door) plus it can provide you with a fantastic opportunity to improve your business and enhance your member’s experience. Also it has been proven that resolving a complaint to a member’s satisfaction, will actually increase their loyalty.
So what are some ways to find out what members are saying about you? Well I always recommend, at least twice a year, conducting a member satisfaction survey to get their thoughts on the general atmosphere, facilities, classes, staff etc (MailChimp is a great tool you can use to put together a survey and send out to your members). Not only will this highlight the areas you can improve on but also shows your members you care what they think.
Place lead boxes around the centre, encouraging and rewarding feedback. By doing this, you may uncover a great idea for your fitness business that you hadn’t already thought of.
Pick up the phone and talk to your members or better still, actually talk face to face with them (read my previous post on why face to face contact is the best). I have seen gyms where no would recognise the manager or owner if they came up to them and said hello. Get out to the gym, participate in a class or just observe what is happening. Talk to your staff as they are the ones who are in direct contact with members on a regular basis.
If a member does actually leave or cancels their membership, find out why. They may be leaving the area but it may be something more than that and perhaps there is an opportunity to change their mind.
Social media has made it so much easier for people to voice their opinion on any topic. There are several free tools you can use to track what people are saying about you and your fitness business:
- Set up Google Alerts to receive brand, industry and even product mentions to your inbox daily.
- Social media allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product or any topic across the 100+ social media properties including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and so forth.
- Hootsuite is great for tapping into relevant conversations and keeping track of hashtags across multiple social platforms.
Keep an eye on popular review sites such as Google Reviews, Yelp, Google+ and your own Facebook page. Where possible, respond to each one too (especially the bad reviews).
And don’t forget, you should also be listening to what people are saying about your competitors as this may provide an opportunity for your business.
Your members and clients are the reason you are in business – make sure you listen and learn from them.