Last week I wrote about customer service. In gymnastics we need to do something to stand out against the competition. Whether that competition is another gym, another youth sport or recreation activity.
The other night while closing up the gym the front door wouldn’t close properly. I was able to figure out that a hinge had broken. We had had a pretty windy couple of days and I am sure the wind just slammed the door open breaking the hinge. I was able to get the door closed and secured and have a plan for opening the gym the next morning.
The door (and probably the hinge) are going on 25 years old. I knew I was going to need to replace the 2 doors in front. It being 9:30 PM I had to wait until morning to begin making my phone calls.
I got in touch with a company 2 towns away. All Door & Lock. Their receptionist said they would have someone there within 2-3 hours. Less than an hour later their tech came in. Took measurements, talked about what my options were for the door and then headed back to the shop to work up a quote. 45 minutes later I had a phone call that said the door I needed was going to take 4 weeks to come in. They knew that this was going to be a problem so they were sending a another tech back to the gym to jury rig the hinge so that we had a working front door.
When the tech showed up he got right to work doing his best at keeping the door mostly closed most of the time so that my customers did not freeze in out lobby. Although it says April on the calendar- It was snowing here!
The bill came today for the work done. I was not worried about the cost. It is simply the price of doing business. The bill was at least 20% LESS than what I thought it was going to be.
Now I am thinking- What can I do in my facilities to offer this kind of service?
- Make sure my customers are called/ e-mailed back in a timely manner
- Deliver what is expected When it is expected
- Find solutions instead of problems
- Offer a service that people are happy to pay because it exceeded their expectations
