It’s always easier to start with the bad stuff. Special guest and fellow team member, Nicole Madden, happened to have some crummy customer service experiences around the same time that Evan and Mago had their own respective service problems. So we brought her on to talk about what went wrong for each of us. Nicole is a dancer, studio director, and mother, so she sees all sides of the problem.
As Mago says, “Most of the time with customer service you don’t even need to knock it out of the park. You just need to be good, consistently.” Some simple organizational tools can save the day, like having a system for keeping track of prospects’ contact info. Online enrollments can be great for this, but they come with their own problems, as detailed by Nicole. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t get her daughter signed up for swim classes after more than a week of trying because the swim company handled all enrollments online. Once she spoke to a human being, it became apparent the advertised lessons didn’t in fact exist. Tough luck, Nicole.
Mago and Evan hop on the bandwagon with similar tales of woe. After riffing on the theme of “Why does no one want me to sign up for their classes?” it becomes apparent that all of their problems could be solved by the studio taking charge and putting in place some simple but profound customer service systems.
Nicole expands on this with a description of the choreography that can happen between a studio’s instructors and front desk. From the new student’s point of view, they are effortlessly shuttled from the front desk (for waivers and contact info) to the instructor (for class) and then right back to the front desk (for an enrollment conference). The studio does the work to make sure the student feels both guided and appreciated. There’s no “Hey, great job, see ya next time What’s-Your-Name.”
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