Handling Negative Feedback Toward your Fitness Business
What’s worse than a dissatisfied customer? A customer who leaves a negative review. And what’s worse than a customer who leaves a negative review? A customer who leaves a negative review and tells all their friends about their bad experience. (Unfortunately, this is the rule rather than the exception.)
With all the negativity in the world, knowing how to handle it is an essential tool of survival. Especially as a business owner.
Here’s a quick guide to dispelling negativity and dealing with criticism.
Step #1 — promote constructive criticism
Did you know that 91% of dissatisfied customers will never voice their complaints? While this might sound like a good thing, it’s just the opposite. For the most part, these customers aren’t voicing their complaints, not because they don’t matter to them, but because they’d rather just pick up and leave.
Quick quiz: is client retention essential to running a gym?
Yes.
In an age where people avoid conflict, you’ve got to be aggressively vulnerable. The catch is that you do not want to encourage whiny negativity or nitpicky babysitting over everything you do. You’ve got to maintain a strong and confident attitude, but being confident doesn’t mean you’re not looking for ways to improve. The more people voice their honest, sincere complaints, the more likely they are to stick around.
Step #2 — general principles
When a complaint does arise, you have a tremendous responsibility. You can either return the negativity or wow the customer with your understanding and supportive spirit. Here are several steps for taking control of the conversation and leaving the customer impressed.
First off, be completely attentive. Look the customer in the eye, listen carefully, don’t interrupt, etc. Let your demeanor and tone of voice show that you’re sincere.
Rephrase the customer’s complaint back to them. This gives the customer proof that you’re following everything they’re saying. It’s also flattering for them to have their ideas repeated. Finally, it ensures that you really do understand what they’re saying.
If the customer has a valid complaint, admit they are right. If the customer’s complaint cannot be fixed, admit that their problem sounds frustrating. Again, don’t be needy. You’ll have loads of trouble if you give the idea you’ll do anything to make them happy. You just need to show you care.
Optional depending on the complaint and how the conversation goes: Once the customer seems to be listening, begin asking questions to make sure you fully understand the situation. They might be making a surface complaint when it’s really something deeper that’s bothering them. They might also make a complaint without giving you any idea how it could be fixed.
To end the conversation, share exactly what you plan to do. Example: “As I’m thinking about this Mrs. Smith, I can see how that would be really frustrating. At the moment, I’m not sure how we could fix that issue and still maintain policy X. While I cannot guarantee we will be able to solve this problem, I’m going to get some outside advice and see if there’s any way to do this to make it work for everybody. I’ll be sure to let you know if we come up with anything. Thank you for your input.”
When appropriate, announce your mistakes publicly. This is not to make you look stupid, it’s to make you look smart — smart people are constantly improving. Share what changes you’re making in the positive light of moving forward. Only do this, however, when the changes are really worth mentioning and never tell your gym members that you made the changes because so-and-so came to you with a complaint. That might make the person look bad.
Step #3 — handling criticism on different platforms.
In person: this is your best opportunity to make a good impression. You get to show your sincerity through your body language and you can judge the customer by their body language as well.
Social media: First off, you may want to have someone on hand to run your responses by before clicking send. Without the face to face context of a real conversation, written messages are more prone to misinterpretation. Also, if a customer complains in a social media post, it is best to move the discussion over to a private chat. If the client is reasonable, it may help them realize how silly it was to turn their personal complaint into a social justice issue. The private chat could potentially make them feel like you aren’t just trying to protect your public reputation but are actually listening to them. Finally, if the client explodes on you, hopefully it will stay in the private chat.
Reviews: Ah, this is where it hurts. What can you do to solve this problem? Unfortunately, not much. It’s probably best just to leave negative reviews alone or you might seem defensive — as if you had something to be defensive about! Your best bet is just to go on a campaign to get all your happy customers to leave positive reviews and overwhelm the negative ones. In the rare case though where you get a negative review that can be proven in court to be an absolute lie that defames your character, you might be able to press charges. You’ll just have to ask yourself if it’s really worth all the trouble.
To conclude, let’s remember that there will always be some people you can’t make happy. No big deal. There are plenty more whose lives will change through your efforts. Keep up the good work.