Is your YMCA’s traditional marketing to build membership not as successful as it used to be? Why? Your new members are savvy online researchers. In fact they are Google search experts now. Google search has given them the ability to research instantly where they are going to be spending their money on workout memberships. It’s time to follow their eyes to the Internet and be sure that your YMCA can be found easily inside Google and other search engines.
I recently was emailing with one of our first YMCA clients, Lake County YMCA. We have formed a great bond with their entire marketing team and have been able to learn a lot about their needs and wants with their YMCA website over the past year.
Fortunately, we have experienced mild success and growth in this vertical market. This growth has caused us to re-evaluate our current process; sales, implementation, follow-up and communication to our most valuable asset, our YMCA customer. I prefer to use words like partner or teammate but for now we will use customer.
This next line is copied and pasted from my email referencing our current Customer Service:
It's currently good, but good isn't "good" enough for us!
This should be your motto with Customer Service and, quite frankly every aspect of your business. Let’s face it, many people and companies are good at what they do. But, how many are great? Great can be hard to quantify but for me, it revolves around effort and interest.
Are you really concerned about your client? Do you care whether the client received the product or service they were expecting? Are you on to the next sale and not “servicing the customer” on your previous sale? Gary Vaynerchuk, aka @garyvee, mentioned at Hubspot’s Inbound 2012 conference that Client Retention is the name of the game. And, in order to maintain your client, exceptional and unexpected Customer Service is mandatory!
Do you take an interest in their business but more importantly their life. I like to form friendships with my business associates. You don’t have to be intrusive, just let it happen naturally. Do they like football, do they have kids, do you share interests? Before you know it, you will have a much deeper bond with your client and may become Facebook friends!
I believe the phrase “good is not good enough” should apply to many facets of your life. For your business to succeed in this social, ever-changing environment, you and your business must stand out from the rest. Your Customer Service is the heartbeat of your success and you should wake up every morning thinking “Good is Not Good Enough!"