Delivering the Personal Touch to Your Fitness Clients in a Remote World

What sets you apart from other service providers is the unique personal relationship you can develop with clients. Running a successful fitness business in “normal” times requires a lot of personal interaction — even more than the 60 minutes at a time that your client is actually doing the workout with you or your staff in the gym. Communication and thoughtfulness is key to maintaining happy, successful clients who want to keep coming back to your gym. 

So how do we maintain these relationships during a worldwide quarantine? When there is a physical distance between you, how do you extend your personal touches to your clients to make sure they feel that connection? Here are a few things to consider during the quarantine to add the “personal touch” for your clients.

Act like a human, not a business

It’s easy to be a human (hopefully) when you are physically in front of other people. Now, we need to do this via technology, and it can seem more difficult. The key is to treat every interaction as if it is happening in person. When texting, for example, avoid “canned” content. Use their name. Talk/write in a conversational manner. Every communication shouldn’t be about selling a product or service, they should be all about your client and what you can do to help. Treat them like they were in your gym, where hopefully you wouldn’t only talk to them if you were trying to make an upsell. All of these things will help keep the human connection intact.  

Communicate face to face when possible

There is real power in actually seeing the person you are communicating with. To that end, be sure to mix in some video messages, online group chat sessions, or even just photos attached to an email or text. These small gestures will keep the face to face relationship alive and well during the temporary distancing measures. 

Customize your interactions 

It’s easy to send out a “templatized” message to all of your clients, but that doesn’t always lead to real engagement. You should take time to send personal, customized messages to each of your clients. In order to do that properly, you have to know them! Keep track of their interests, their history, their goals, and more. Naamly was built to do just that — take a look if you’re curious! 

Be predictive and proactive

Using technology like Naamly can help you keep track of your clients, but it can also help you forecast their needs and/or struggles. For example, you may have a note that a client is trying to lose weight for a wedding in May. It might be a nice, personal touch to reach out and mention that you are thinking about them, and hope that the wedding they would be attending won’t be cancelled. These types of proactive engagements can only happen if you’re plugged in to the lives of your clients.  

Use this time to learn

You are going to learn a lot about yourself, your processes, and your clients during the quarantine period. What we’re discovering during these unprecedented social distancing times can actually carry over into our long-term customer service plans in the future.

Take what you learn and keep going! Just because we will eventually go back to the way things used to be, doesn’t mean we have to do things the way we used to. Our personal touches can be better than ever…and so can our clients’ happiness and success.

Deliver the personal touch to your fitness clients, even in a remote world, and accelerate your success with Naamly’s FREE GUIDE: 9 Secrets to Increase Retention!