How to make your customer praise you – even after five years
I just quit my gym contract. Again. I just didn’t like it and didn’t go there any longer.
After quitting I received mail. A nice letter. They regret my going away. They will be missing me and are asking me what they could do to make me stay. My answer is short and maybe won’t help them a lot: Be like my old gym back in Munich.
I’ve to told this story to quite a few people. Just recently. This made me wonder. Why do I keep telling about this gym, which I left five years ago when moving to Switzerland?
The obvious reason is I liked it there. It’s a very nice gym. I can list a couple of things I liked especially. Great machines, plasma TVs, great courses – the only gym where I actually attended courses – good organization, nice atmosphere. This list continues. Every item on my list sums up to this overall feeling of “I liked it there”, but doesn’t really explain why I am still thinking about my time there with great affection.
The answer is actually pretty simple: They really cared about and for me. Everything I liked was part of their mission to make me reach my goals.
The staff is always around keeping an eye on you. But it is not just about doing your exercises right. They connect to you and build a relationship. And they do it in a sincere way. They reach out to you, when you don’t come as frequently as you used to. They frequently check with you on your goals and results. The nice infrastructure certainly is important. But that’s not enough to get the job done. It’s more like a prerequisite.
From my point of view there is a clear strategy to focus on customer experience and design everything else to make it happen. Also from my point of view this pays off greatly. First of all the gym still exists. They weren’t among the cheapest but I really didn’t care. After five years I still recommend them to friends. Now I even blog about them. Since recommendations have great impact on (potential) customers’ decisions they are very valuable to companies. Assuming that I am not the only one feeling this way and considering network effects my guess is, that they have many profitable years to come.
Finally there is only one thing left to say. Who are they? Of course I won’t hold back this information any longer. So if you live in the south of Munich and are looking for a quality gym that really helps you reaching your goals, you might take a look at Sports & Health.