“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
There are a lot of spas out there, and most offer similar treatments, services, and products. What sets one above the other is the quality of their guests experience.
How far can you go to make guests happy? How far can you go to make the experience not just good, but maybe even life affirming and life changing?
You want a guest feel special, you want them to feel appreciated. During their time in your spa, you want the customer to feel like the most important person on Earth – because that is what distinguishes a good experience from a fantastic one!
Here are four ways to take your customer experience from good to amazing.
Be Prepared
Know everything you possibly can about your spa guest before they arrive for their visit. Gather as much information as possible through a questionnaire in your online booking process (i.e. contact information and health concerns). Anything that can’t be gathered with an online form should be noted on-site during the first visit (and during subsequent visits), including personal service preferences and any details that might be pertinent to a better customer experience. Book4Time’s note function allows staff to add comments about spa customers and share them with the team, even across multiple locations. So no matter where the guest is among your properties, the team is prepared for when the individual arrivals.
Personalize
Use the information you have to create a unique guest experience tailored to each person. Do they enjoy a particular type of music, or a glass of champagne or sparkling water? A guest should not have to tell you more than once that they hate the smell of lavender or don’t drink alcohol (if you offer wine with your services). Personalization matters. In an interview about how to get a Forbes five-star rating for your spa, Forbes’ Senior Vice President of ratings Amanda Frasier said, “We look to see what each spa is doing to not only set itself apart from the competition, but how they create unique, personalized service moments for each guest based on their specific needs or guest profile.”
Ask for Feedback
You won’t know what people are thinking unless you ask them. If a guest has a bad experience, there’s a good chance they won’t complain and just won’t return. But you don’t want them to just have an experience that is “not bad,” or even that is “good;” you want it to be amazing. You want their experience to be so good that they can’t wait to come back, and that they tell all their friends about it. This is why you have to ask about it through a customer feedback survey as soon as they leave your spa, while the experience is still fresh.
Take that Feedback Seriously
If during your follow-up you discover that the guest experience was disappointing – or even less than great– this is your opportunity to amend the situation by offering an apology and some form of compensation. This could be a product gift, a gift card, or a free treatment or service add on. Be sure to also track your online reviews with something like Spa Monitor, so that if someone has a bad experience, and decides to go online and tell the world about it, you can respond to that too. Don’t dismiss negative feedback. Use it to improve.
Your goal should be to create an unforgettable and astonishing experience. This means attention to detail, personalization, and listening to what your guest has to say. It also means working hard to fix an issue when something is less than satisfying. If someone complains, offering an apology is the least you can do. But what is the most you can do? Is a reimbursement enough? Or can you do more? Remember that in the end, an unhappy customer can cost you a lot more than the price of one treatment, not only in lost potential revenue from that guest but also from their network.
Go that extra mile for all your clients.