3 Easy Tips to Put Member Retention on Auto-Pilot

In a world where 50 is the new 30, wellness is a year-round goal. Fitness club memberships, spas, nutrition counseling, and other health and wellness businesses must have a plan in place to continually bring in new customers, support current customers, and keep everybody happy and, well, healthy. 

In a digital world full of many options, creating customer loyalty can be a challenge. Today's small business owners are turning to a new breed of fast, easy, automated feedback solutions to help them learn from, listen to and retain clients. 

Customer feedback in real-time is quickly becoming the standard for fitness, wellness, and beauty businesses, and the sooner you bolster your efforts in that area, the better.

Here are three tips to get you off the ground:

1. Make it easy for customers to give you feedback after visiting your business

The demands of day-to-day operations within just about any business can make it difficult to stay close to the experience each customer is having. Automating a request for feedback at strategic points throughout the customer journey will help you stay in sync with your customers without creating a burden on yourself or your team. Even if you can gather feedback on-site, the results are likely to be skewed.

With an automated system, you can take the pressure off of your customers to respond immediately and give them the opportunity to express their true praises or concerns on their own time. Not only will you get better data with an automated system, but you will be able to avoid the extra burden of your staff, and free up resources and people to focus on operations and actually following up with the member’s feedback. 

2. Establish an efficient process for listening to your customers

As you gather all your feedback in an easy automated way you want to analyze the feedback and find patterns or instances where processes with customers can be improved and acted on. You'll want to follow up with at-risk customers immediately to retain their business before it's too late.

With an automated system, you can be instantly notified with a customer posts negative feedback about your service, or amplify praise from your happiest customers. Showing your customers that you are listening and following up to concerns in a timely manner and with appropriate action, can avoid the loss of an unhappy customer. This often turns dissatisfied customers into raving fans who endorse your brand and ultimately improve retention. 

3. Track and measure your customer loyalty

Compiling all the data from your feedback efforts will allow you to see how your customers as a whole feel about your brand.

This is the premise of the Net Promoter System. NPS is a thoroughly-researched approach to gathering feedback that has become the standard methodology for assessing customer loyalty.

It is measured by two questions. Customers are asked how likely they are to recommend your business on a 1-10 scale, and then are given the opportunity to fill out an open-ended question letting them express praises or concerns. This provides an overall assessment of loyalty which is the best predictor for future business growth.

These numbers give insight as to how likely you are to retain customers, get referrals and increase revenue. Automated feedback systems let you spot themes and trends in the feedback by identifying customer likes and dislikes with true text analytics. This, in turn, lets you make improvements in your overall business by coaching your team to recognize excellence and identify needed improvements. 

The good news is that if you are already using an electronic system like Mindbody for scheduling and/or billing, you already have the infrastructure to implement a cost-effective automated feedback solution with all the benefits discussed here.