1X Customer -> ManyX Customer

• Pre-class/at booking
• It is totally irrational for your first booking email confirmation to not include some text like “Welcome, new customer!” as well as the address and contact info for the specific studio and class start time, and probably an ‘add to calendar’ link. If your system can’t do this, do it manually. I can’t think of a valid excuse for this; it’s 2014, and having to revisit a mobile-hostile website to get info at 6:30am is a bad customer experience.
• I’m going to skip further comments on websites, but a clean, simple one with integrated payments/a checkout like other types of e-commerce would be a crazy differentiator, imo. The main product isn’t the website, though — and at least fitness studios typically don’t make you download a .pdf to see their classes (looking at you, restaurants ☺!)
• Welcome/upon physical arrival
• If the studio isn’t crowded, desk staff should stand up and come out from behind the counter to greet customers, show them where locker rooms/restrooms are located and ask and remember their names (to check customers in later). Coming out from behind the counter is a required practice at Nordstrom and The Peninsula hotels, and the name recall is a detail I love at Michelin-trained restaurants. [Remembering one first and last name is not so difficult when choosing from a list.]
• Smiles are not optional.
• In-person customers should be a priority over phone customers, and callers should be asked, “May I place you on a brief hold?” if a physical customer arrives. No exceptions.
• When it gets busy, staff should be reminded that busy is a healthy state for a business, and one to get used to and try to optimize processes for and around (busy = customers = keeping our jobs & making money!) Staff need to be confident and polite about moving repeat customers as needed to keep access to a front desk clear for greeting new customers. Insider chat is a fun thing when it can be accommodated, but there’s nothing worse than coming to a party where you don’t know anyone and being ignored (not to mention missed up-sell opportunities if you offer water, juices, socks, hair ties, mats or clothing).
• I love it when instructors introduce themselves to new students and ask something simple about them. This can be simple intel for the business — how did you hear about us? Or something to humanize the intimidating experience of being trained by a fitness model as a mere mortal.
• In Class
• Trainers are teachers, and in an ideal world they would begin classes by considering how to create an environment where people could ask questions comfortably, and addressing common concerns in advance.
• Physical equipment needs an overview. Many Woodway treadmills, for example, have large, tactile speed and incline buttons on it’s arms that help runners accelerate or decelerate faster than the buttons on the screen that most treadmills at gyms have. I watched a student next to me struggle through 2/3 of a class using the slower buttons before I stopped my own run to show him how they worked — don’t leave that responsibility to your community, as it’s not a community yet for a 1xer.
• Feedback and physical presence all around the space are important to newBs. Remember in grade school how your behavior changed when your teacher was over your shoulder, or corrected you? At a class I took this week the instructor spent 90% of her time on the right side of the room, and didn’t correct a single back posture or tell someone to get lower or further back on their heels doing squats.
• Probably better to be safe than sorry on touching students — asking doesn’t take that long and I really respect it. I love Paul Ford’s recommendation that politeness is “see[ing] people as having around them a two or three foot invisible buffer.” “Can I stretch you a little further?” is so easy, and would have saved me the personal frustration of wondering if I’m a crazy person after not wanting to be touched and tolerating it.
• After class
• I was so. damn. pleased. when I got an encouraging email from one of my instructors afterward — I was so sore and thought maybe I did better than I had thought. Leverage administrative staff, templates, bulk emails/mail merges, whatever — but do this, and ask for specific feedback! General feedback is harder to structure and seems less ‘interested’ than something about the type of soreness, the class time or fullness, even the products in the bathroom.
• If a week goes by and someone doesn’t come back, consider another personal message. Not badgering, but something authentically curious about how a student is feeling or what would bring them back is smart.

I have already spent about $180, or twice what my old gym membership cost, in the last month on classes at a fitness studio that does a bunch of these things — would love to hear from people that agree or disagree about practices, and / or from folks that will never be converted. I’m @kathl2en_ on twitter.