When it comes to building trust in your spa or massage practice brand, consistency is the name of the game. Consider the following. A client can’t say enough good things about a therapeutic massage session because you delivered what you promised and they feel great. Right after expressing thanks, the client goes to reception to pay and has to wait 20 minutes for someone to put charges on the credit card and book their next appointment. Or a client is interested in a retail offering and would like to learn more about it, but there’s no one around to answer questions.
Even before walking through your door, dealing with your spa or massage practice may prove frustrating or disappointing. A client or prospect can’t find what they are looking for about a skin treatment on your website. Your appointment software doesn’t send a confirmation email. And your phone number is difficult to find on your site.
Build trust through consistency
Your brand represents a promise about doing business with your spa or massage practice. Every client interaction – on the phone, in email exchanges and even online via your website or mobile app – has to fulfill that expectation. You can’t be a premier provider of massage therapy if your treatment room is cluttered. You can’t profess to know a lot about skin treatment issues and have little knowledge of the retail products you sell. Inconsistent experiences can send someone out the door and to a competitor.
Without consistency, however, you can’t build trust and trust is at the core of every long-standing client relationship. Every interaction with a client, therefore, should be an opportunity to deliver on the expectations your brand conveys and in turn build that invaluable trust.
Since you aren’t the only person interacting with clients, your need to be sure that your team understands how to deliver consistency at every client touch point. Whether greeting clients, answering questions, booking appointments or discussing treatment options, the interaction should be satisfying and build confidence in your brand.
Walkthrough the customer journey
In order to make sure you are providing consistency to support your brand, first consider all the client touch points
- In your spa or massage practice at reception, changing rooms, treatment sessions, retail purchasing
- On the phone
- Email or text exchanges
- Website or mobile app
- Social media
- Community involvement
- Marketing and PR
- Advertising
Next put yourself in your client’s shoes and interact with each of these touch points to evaluate the experience. As you do, ask yourself if the touch point is providing the experience you expected. If it isn’t, evaluate where there are problems. Once you’ve identified where there are weak links, work with your team to make changes to ensure consistency.
You’ll also want to establish feedback loops with clients –as well as read online reviews to see what clients are saying – to identify areas of your service and operations that need improving.
When you put yourself in your client’s shoes, you can understand what it means to work with your spa or massage practice in order to make necessary changes.