Sports Facility Customer Service Development

Easiest Ways to Improve Your Sports Facility’s Customer Service

If you want to keep customers coming back to your sports facility, you need three things in regards to customer service:

• Deliver what they paid for: excellent physical training in a professional environment.
• You need to invest time in marketing that will help you communicate and engage with your customers and keep them from seeking out your competitors.
• You need excellent customer service, which means quick responses and a positive attitude whenever customers interact with you. Without this third element, your business cannot thrive — and your customers simply will not stay.

However, providing sports facility customer service the wrong way presents a more subtle threat. It can be a huge time sink, pulling you and your staff away from important tasks that make you a better business.

To protect your time as the owner, the best way to approach customer service is to figure out how you can make it as efficient as possible. In fact, here are a few easy ways to do that.

Automated Reminders

When we first launched eSoft Planner, it was one of the first completely web-based schedulers available for sports facilities. Automated email reminders have gone from being a cool new feature to a customer expectation.

Parents are used to receiving text and email reminders about all kinds of appointments — from haircuts to dental visits. These reminders can eliminate confusion or miscommunication over times or dates. They also encourage parents to reschedule appointments if necessary — ahead of time and according to your policies.

With the right software, these reminders happen completely on their own, with no additional work from your staff.

Web Inquiries

A great customer service experience starts before a client has spent a dime at your sports academy. As soon as a prospective client tries to contact you, they’re learning what kind of service they can expect. Your initial response can go a long way to landing them as a long-term client.

The most important things you can do at this early stage are:

• Make your business easy to contact
• Respond to inquiries right away

You probably already know that your business phone number should go through to a real person or a professional voicemail. Certainly, respond promptly to these messages.

However, these days many people prefer to reach out through email, a contact form on your web site, or even a message through Facebook or other social media. Make sure you’ve figured out who is responsible for handling web inquiries that come in at any time of day. If you’re using an email marketing program, you can even set up an auto-response. This can include a thank you message and other relevant information.

Adding a web form and creating an autoresponder requires little work. It is great for customer service and can result in many more new leads for your business.

Online Account Access

Improve the customer experience. In particular, give them the ability to self-schedule lessons online in a professional, secure portal. Online services are available 24/7, which is a level of responsiveness that customers now expect.

Your customers can go online to contact you or manage their account. As a result, you or your staff can spend the time you would have spent on the phone on more meaningful tasks, like client check-ins or big picture planning for your facility.

If you’d like more info about eSoft Planner, the web-based software that can help you automate much of your customer service, click here and request a free demo. Our clients receive custom, consultative training to learn best practices for customer management.