Ep. 179 - Evaluating Your Customer Experience : 3 Systems to Keep Customer Feedback Flowing & Create Real Change

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Show Notes:

In today’s Learning to Thrive episode we’re sharing the practical, repeatable ways we evaluate customer experience inside a busy youth program so feedback turns into action instead of anxiety. If the phrase “What if they don’t like us?” has ever stopped you from asking for input, we unpack how to reframe feedback as a tool that makes your business and your community easier to run.

We walk through three systems that keep a steady pulse on what customers are actually feeling: customer surveys, a front desk daily review, and written drop forms. We explain how to run gym-wide and program-specific surveys, what questions surface the most useful insights, and how responses can shape everything from newsletters to onboarding emails. Then we share why a simple daily front-of-house report captures real-time issues before they get forgotten, and how a checklist can prevent avoidable complaints like missed voicemails.

Finally, we get candid about drop forms and why putting cancellations in writing protects both sides, prevents long-term billing confusion, and creates a low-pressure space for honest feedback that families might never say at the desk. If you want stronger retention, better reviews, clearer communication, and fewer surprise problems, listen through and steal these systems. Subscribe, share with a fellow owner, and leave a review, then tell us what you use to measure customer experience.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome back to Learning to Thrive. I'm Courtney and I'm Michaela. And today we are coming to you with our theme for the month of May, which is customer experience. Yes. And it is one of our favorite things, I think.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

I think it's something we put a lot of attention and intentionality into. And therefore we, I think, do a pretty good job with our customer experience. And so we're excited to share our thoughts and feelings on it.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Yes. Yes. And I think I think the I think some people get scared by the whole customer experience thing because it's like, well, there's either two camps of thought of like, just send the kids in and we don't have to deal with the parents, right? Or it's like that's intimidating. Like, what if they don't like me? Right. So like either the fear of rejection or the or the lack of like wanting to deal with it. But I think in making your customers' eye priority, you make everything else in your business and in your community so much easier, right? Because if I am looking to take care of the family as a whole, right? The kid, the parents, the dad, you know, the mom, the dad, the nanny, the grandparents, like whatever. If my mission is to take care of them, then everything else that we do is going to be easier because the relationship has been built there and the investment has already been made. Because my intention is I want to add value to you. So that could be through a newsletter, that could be through giving them a tour, that could be introducing them to their instructor, that could be, you know, asking them how the class went or just saying goodbye to them as they go out the door. Like there's so many big and small ways to make a customer experience great that when you kind of get good at like leveling it up and like looking for ways to do it, then it becomes kind of a fun game of like, how amazing can I make this Saturday morning? Like I work dust sometimes on Saturday mornings, we rotate through the leadership team does, and it's like, I want, I want this to be the best Saturday morning that they've had, like ever. Right. And so then you get to you get to play a game with yourself about, you know, how great can you make the experience. So we know that this can be an intimidating topic, but we also know that it's probably one of the most important topics if you want to run a successful business piece of it, and you don't just want to run a basic like experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Right. Yeah. So this week specifically, we're talking about a couple of different ways that you can evaluate what your customer experience is now, what your customers are saying, um, how they're feeling, and then three systems to keep that feedback kind of flowing and being able to take that feedback and turn it into real change within your organization.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yes. And I think evaluating it is your way of knowing if you're doing a good job or not. So if you never ask your customers how you're doing, then you can only assume. Well, then you're yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's all in your head. And I would say this is not a staff month, but that would also go for your staff too. So be sure that having having feedback and having evaluations is a really valuable part of a successful program. So don't be afraid of them.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah. That's one of the ways that you can check your blind spots.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Whether it's like you said, for your customers, for your coaches, for your athletes, for your employees, like, yeah, you're always gonna have blind spots. They're always gonna be there, but being aware of them kind of helps you to uh redirect if needed. So the first system

Customer Surveys

SPEAKER_00 3:31

or tool that we have for you to help evaluate your customer experience is the use of surveys. So customer surveys, right? So we use constant contact to send out all of our surveys, and sometimes we send them out program specific, or sometimes we send them out to just like all enrolled students. So if it's just kind of a general like how is Thrive doing, what are you liking? What are you not liking? That might be something we send out to just our whole enrolled student database. That would include team kids, that would include pre-K, grade school, it would run the gamut. Now, if we wanted feedback specifically on, you know, let's say open play times that work well for our preschool age community, we might send that out to all the students enrolled within our pre-K program.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

For zero to fives in Jackrabbit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Yep, yep. In Jackrabbit, you can go through and you can sort it out either by program or by age or, you know, by however, and then we'll make the survey and then we'll send it out through constant contact. So that is one we do surveys a couple times a year.

unknown 4:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

So our survey schedule throughout the year is we do a spring um team survey. So in the so our team parents, like so, because that's kind of like as state states are wrapping up, you know, how did how did they view that the year was going? We do a customer survey as well for our class kids twice a year, I believe, once in November and once in March. And that just checks in on it, asks questions related to how is your like administrative experience, like so the front desk and like that kind of thing, or your customer service experience, maybe. Do you like our newsletters? How is your teacher doing? Do you see your child progressing? Things like that. How likely are you to re recommend us to a friend? And it also always includes a part where we say, if there was something that we could add or take away from the program, like give us one way to continue making ourselves better. And we get a lot of good feedback from those. We also do a camp survey. So at the end of each camp week, we take our emails from the campers that were enrolled and we send them a camp survey just to see what did they like, what did they not like. We got valuable information one year that they wanted more communication about what's happening in camp. So we started a camp newsletter based on that feedback. We got information last year on our class one that they want they didn't quite understand like how our move up system went, like our grade school program specifically. So we did a video on that and like answered those questions and started a sequence of emails when they first joined, so like an onboarding sequence to explain our grade school program a little bit better. So the surveys that go, and then birthday party surveys are another one. How did you like your birthday party? And most of the time, those are pretty fluffy in the sense of like it's people's birthdays, so like they usually think it's a great experience, like they're just kind of happy. It's a one-time deal. But occasionally we get feedback in those that we are able to use and to make um make the parties better too. So camps, classes, team, birthday parties is where we try to survey the customer experience and make sure that we are hitting the marks on those.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Right. Yeah, we just got some feedback in our March uh parent like rec survey about parents wanting to learn more or know more things that they can do at home with their kids to kind of help them with their gymnastics or to have them practice their gymnastics safely at home. So for me, as like social media, and then I also help film the video content for our newsletters, that then gives me information that I can then direct the next like month or two's worth of video content. I know what to focus on instead of just kind of like, oh, it might be nice to talk about cartwheels. Well, now I know we can talk about cartwheels and three ways you can practice them safely at home or something like that. So it gives a little bit more direction in like what you're doing within your programs as well, which is great.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

And I think it also points out where your customers are hearing you and where they're not, because sometimes the things that we're doing, we're like, oh, we already have that. But if I get three or four customers that don't know that we have a newsletter, right? Like some some of them were like, There's a newsletter. Okay, then I need to do a little bit more marketing on my part in the building to say, hey, look out for our newsletter, right? And so it just what is landing, what is not landing is always very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

And it's it I like them. They're I used to I used to be scared of them for the first 10 years of business. I used to be scared of them, but then I found out how helpful, like I just started looking at it as a tool of being helpful, not being critical and that. You really just have to be in the right mood though, too. So don't look at them on a bad day. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Have a it's like a Friday morning, a cup of coffee, like, you know, go for a walk first and then and then read your survey answers. Or ha have a Haley that goes through them for you and just highlights.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

The great ones and the not so great ones, the ones you have to know about.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, the ones that'll balance out the knowing.

unknown 8:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

So our second tool

Front Desk Daily Review

SPEAKER_00 8:29

for a way to kind of monitor and gauge your customer experience um is a front desk daily review. So now this is not something that your customers are directly filling out. This is something that your front desk or front of house staff are filling out. That kind of flight attendant. It's what I flight attendant. That's funny. Um, that gives you kind of a snapshot of the day on what happened in the gym from a customer experience standpoint, right? So from that kind of lobby, front desk, any major class issues, that sort of thing. So we have typically have someone who does like the morning half of the day and then the evening half of the day. So we get two of those filled out, ideally. And then those get sent to Courtney and Cherie, our uh facility director, and it just kind of gives them a quick run-through of what it has highs and lows on it, right? So if anything great happens, any like kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

It starts with the great two highlights that they saw that night. And then it is staff issues, customer complaints and injuries. Yeah. So it's I mean, those are the things you need to know though. Like right. Yeah, so you get two two highlights and then yeah, staff, staff issues, customer complaints or feedback, and right injuries. So when you get one that's sent to you at the end of the night and it's only got the positives, it feels real good feeling.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Yeah. It also on there has the daily responsibilities checklist. So if you're, you know, front desk, one of the things that you're supposed to do as a daily responsibility is kind of in between on the downtimes between classes, you're supposed to check the voicemail, right? So if we go four days in a row and the front desk has not checked the voicemail, and then we get a complaint that's like, I've been calling, and no one's been here, like, oh, well, maybe that's why. And then you can look at, okay, why are we not checking the voicemail? How can we get better about that? Is it a one-person issue? Is it a group issue? Is it a time, you know, like it just kind of gives you so a little bit of insight.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yes, but I would say to that, the whole point of the checklist is that it could be a it's usually a situation where the person's like, okay, what else do I have left to do? Right. And then they're like, oh, the voicemails, I forgot about them. And so then you don't end up with that four-day. There were times where our voicemail was questionable. However, I think the checklist has been has at least brought it to the attention. And if and if let's say it's 8:30 at night and they're like, Oh, I didn't do that, at least the morning person who's reading that when they come in knows, like, oh, they forgot about it.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, because you'll write a little note like crazy night. Yeah. Um, didn't get a chance to check voicemail. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Or like stocking the pro shop, like, you know, turning off the TVs, like it's stuff like that. That sometimes no matter how long you've done it before, it's there's just a lot of different things that are going on. So it helps you to keep those in mind and make sure that everything gets done the same way or as close to the same way every night as you possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Right. Yeah. But it's nice. This whole like checklist um or daily review for the front desk, it it gives Courtney and it gives Cherie, like I said, a daily snapshot of what went well, what went poor.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

And what the customer, and so going back to the customer piece, the customer experience is here's the here's the difference. Before we started this, somebody might have complained to somebody at the desk who I may not see for two days, right? And then by the time that we talk on that third day, they've forgotten about it because it was a small complaint. It wasn't anything huge, right? Having the having the sheet there every day, then when they get a complaint, they write it down. When they write it down at the end of the night, they send that to me and they send that to our director of operations. So both of us, and then some of some of the sheets get sent, you know, like if there's something relevant or somebody else, they might send send and tag them in to it or whatever. But like then I know immediately, oh, this is we've had three customers who've said the trash is overflowing, you know, or you know, that the five o'clock milky ways is crazy, or the parking lot, we get something about the parking lot. The parking lot is crazy. Like, so it just lets me know and lets our director of operations know really, really quickly what the feedback from the customers is. So different from a survey because they're not really thinking it through, they're just talking to the person who's there, and then we can actually do something about it so it doesn't become

Drop Form

SPEAKER_01 13:00

a big issue.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Right. All right. Our final system for you to try and implement to get a little bit more customer feedback is if you don't currently use a drop form, we have learned in the last year. Yeah, we resisted it for a long time. How getting a class, you know, like cancellation class drop in writing, one, how important it is. Two, it's a great opportunity to gain feedback as well. So basically the reason we implemented our drop forms, because we didn't do it for the longest time. It was just, you know, call and let us know, or talk to the front desk and let us know, and we'll put your drop in for, you know, the next month, whatever. Which we thought would make it less drops.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Like we thought that would, if we gave it to them, or I thought if it we gave it to them too easily, they'd drop more often.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah. That has proven not to be the case. Which is not the case, yeah. But so that was it was all just verbal, you know, over the phone or at the front desk for the longest time. Then we ran into a couple situations where someone called us after 15 months. I was gonna say six months, but we had longer.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

No, it was 15. There was one that was 15 months.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

15 months, yeah. Partly our fault. Partly our fault, also partly their fault, but saying, Hey, you've been charging us for class and we haven't been coming. And then it's like, okay, well, when did you stop coming? They're like, well, we stopped coming six months ago, eight months ago. Well, who did you talk to? I don't know. I talked to someone at the front desk or I called and it's like, okay, but when did you call? I don't remember. You don't remember who you talked to me there. No, I don't remember. And so it just became a very big, like, he said, she said, like, which always goes to the customer.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Which, you know, and again, partially our fault, right? Because if they haven't actually been attending class, then our teachers should have had that on their radar and should have asked questions sooner. But also you also went six plus months getting charged over and over and over again, and then you call us a year later upset, but you didn't catch it either, you know, like so either way, fault on both ends. Potato potato, yeah. Yeah. But the solution to that, if you want to drop the class, that is totally fine. You absolutely must fill out a drop form, no exceptions. Yeah, we're not allowed to do it at the front desk. No. We can pull it up on our computer and slide the computer to them so they can fill it out, but they have to fill out that drop request form. That way we have it in writing, we have the exact date it was submitted. It has a reminder of our policies, our drop policies that they initially signed off on when they first signed up for the class. It reminds them of those policies when they're now dropping the class and payment policies and all that. And then there's a section that says, you know, why are you dropping or do you have feedback for us? I think it isn't there a rating, like rate your teacher or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, we there's a survey on there because it we want the feedback, right? And so before we would have it, they would drop and it would just have the drop date. And then if the person at the front desk asked what the reason was, then they would have like put in a reason. But most of the time it really didn't have a reason or the the reliability of the reason given. Like, I don't know if they're telling the truth or not. This helps us because it asks them like why they're dropping, what they rate the class, rate the instructor, um, how likely how likely are you to refer us to a friend or something like that, and then leaves a space for comments in case they have any comments. And I would say that 95% of them come back very, very good and it's just a scheduling situation or I've started soccer or like something like that. But about 5% of them, there are issues, and those 5%, then our communications director um takes those and reaches out to them individually just to see if there's any follow-up or anything that can be done about them. Um, and that I think makes for a nice rounding out of your customer experience because even if you're not coming back, just in the sense of maybe you moved on to find something else, or maybe your kids just tired of it or you weren't pleased with the experience. I think having somebody like acknowledge that and just, you know, you matter to us is one of our is our what a very big core value for us. It goes a long way. And they may not come back, but they probably won't talk badly about you to their friends.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Right. I also think if they had not even like a terrible experience, but they just did it and then they're like, nah, it's just not for us, kind of thing. That's probably a situation where they wouldn't go to the front desk and like explain. They'd probably just be like, Hey, I think we're just gonna drop, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

And you're like, okay, sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Like, yeah, because it's awkward to ask why in person. It makes you feel like you're interrogating them.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

So those little bits of feedback I think went missed in the past. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

So now it's like hopefully they're 17 years later, people. Yeah. We have the drop form.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Listen, we're always evolving. We're always evolving.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

We get better every year.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Yes. So, drop form, great opportunity. Um, one to get your stuff in writing so that you don't have a back and forth with someone about whether they should get a full refund for a year's worth of tuition that they'd been getting charged for, or how we're gonna do that, you know. Uh, but also why are they dropping? Yeah. Um a little bit of feedback as well. Then we had uh the front desk daily reviews, wonderful real time data. Real time data. And then the surveys putting those out a couple times a year, um, gym-wide and program specific, to kind of the people, what we found, I feel like with those surveys is they're a little bit more in depth. And the people who take the time to fill them out give detail. Yeah. So while you might not get everyone to fill out the survey, no, the people who are filling out the survey, whether it's, you know, they're singing our praises or they are super angry with us, either way, we're getting a good amount of detail in those surveys that we get.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

We've had surveys before that have come back from people that have dropped like angry surveys that of people like last time, I think it was last year that we did it. There's somebody who hadn't been here for like three years and they just like nailed us on a survey. And I'm just like, you've been holding that in for this whole time. Like, but now we know, you know. But good feedback. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, and then multiply multiply the feedback by 10, right? Because for every one customer that says something, it probably represents at least 10 customers. So if you get a complaint, you can pretty much be sure that there's at least 10 people in your program that feel the same way. And then whether or not you want to do something about it, that's up to you.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, or you can do something about it. We still get parking a lot, parking a lot complaints, but there's only so much asphalt to be parked on. So Yep. Uh yeah. So anyway, getting a pulse on what your customers are saying, good and bad, getting real-time data and leaning into receiving the data and being open to the feedback and not being scared of it. Yeah. It's a tool that is not just criticism. Yeah, you can close the computer. The feedback will go back in its or like you said, have someone pre-sending through it for you. If you're really scared, time number one, be like, I need you to read everything and then just bring me the best and the worst. Yeah. And then just let me know what I need to know.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yep. Exactly. All right. I hope that helps. And uh we want to hear about how you are evaluating your customer experience. Have we missed something? Is there a system that would make our year 18 even better than our year 17? So message us with that or reach out via email. And if you'd like a download of our customer surveys, um, you can also find that, I believe, on our show notes.

unknown 21:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Everyone, keep on thriving.