Keith Smith explores how personal trainers can influence the client experience and positively drive client behaviour, leading to increased client adherence, retention and success.
We can’t listen to a podcast, read an article, attend a workshop or view online learning without the term ‘experience’ being mentioned. However, what does ‘the experience’ actually mean and how is it different from a ‘service’? If we have a reasonable understanding of ‘the client experience’, how can we apply our understanding to what we do? And ultimately, and most importantly, how does the client benefit positively from an ’experience’ that is layered precisely on top of a service?
Let’s begin with the elephant in the room: the fact that fitness and exercise to our members, customers and clients is basically free! With this in mind, in the context of a successful PT business, what we offer as PTs cannot just be fitness and exercise. Yes, an individualised pathway that supports a client to achieve their goals is massively important – it is the service; the act of help that PTs offer – however, in a competitive environment, there has to be more when aiming to captivate, charm, dazzle, woo, attract and retain clients.
As a trainer, only offering fitness and exercise and the ability to create an individualised pathway does not differentiate me from the other trainers. If all I have to offer a client is fitness and exercise, then success – and we all perceive success differently – is going to be very difficult when I am competing for clients with other PTs who offer the same, or competing against something that is fundamentally free on social media and the internet in general. In fact, the only way I could differentiate myself is by reducing my price, which no one who runs a business really wants to do.
So, how do we differentiate ourselves?
The PT ‘experience’ could be defined as ‘occupying a space in the client’s mind, beyond the primacy of the product’1 (the product being fitness and exercise). If the experience is in the client’s mind, then the experience is defined by the client; the experience is unique to the client. It is pointless me telling a friend to go to a restaurant because it’s a great experience, because every experience we have as individuals is unique to us.
Experience experts – and there are many – reference an individual’s feelings, both in the moment and post experience, to help cement an understanding of the experience. This makes sense, as feelings are one way we as humans interpret the world around us. The experience is how an individual feels in a certain situation in a particular moment, as well as how they remember the moment; the experience is hyper-personal and, if we get it right, it makes the client happier and increases the client’s sense of wellbeing, which in turn drives behaviour that brings about increases in client adherence and retention.
Feelings can be physical, such as “I am cold” or “this chair is uncomfortable” or psychological, such as “I feel uncomfortable here; this is making me feel awkward” or “I don’t belong here”. Within the context of PT, both physical and psychological feelings are continually influencing the client experience.
The experience is the client’s and the client’s alone
The client experience is NOT just the exercise, the piece of equipment, the training approach; although all of these things are hugely important to success, as they do influence the experience, there are feelings both positive and negative related to exercise, choice, order and intensity and the client’s current FLOW state2 which, if a PT gets it right, will make hours seem like minutes, assist in reducing the client’s worries of the day and will increase the client’s sense of self; however, fundamentally, the experience is the client’s and the client’s alone.
It’s the client’s interpretation of what is happening, the client’s perception, and all a PT can do is continually attempt to try and influence the experience via the creation of positive moments and memories.
For the client to see the value in personal training – and price is only an issue in the absence of value – there are multiple considerations. One of the major considerations is based on what we do (fitness and exercise) and creating an individualised pathway that supports a client in achieving their goal, ensuring what we do is safe, effective, realistic and achievable; another is based on how the client’s emotions/feelings are elicited or evoked, both in the short term via moments and in the long term via memories.
A ‘service’ or ‘service excellence’ is defined as an act of help, as well as the ability to consistently meet the client’s/customer’s expectations, expectations being defined as a strong belief that something will or should happen. In the context of personal training, a client’s expectations will likely be that the PT has an excellent understanding of exercise, fitness, programming and the products on the gym floor, and that the PT has good listening and empathy skills, responds quickly to the client’s communications, is always on time, is prepared for every session and demonstrates total focus during every session.
There are positive feelings connected to meeting the client’s expectations and they are important; however, these feelings are baseline, foundational or functional feelings. Meeting a client’s expectations are basically feelings of satisfaction and quite possibly not that memorable. As PTs we need to ask ourselves, are feelings of satisfaction enough to continually drive a client back? Are feelings of satisfaction enough to add value and to occupy a space in the client’s mind, beyond the primacy of the product1 (fitness and exercise)?
PTs must continually strive towards improving service excellence, reflecting on their client offering, learning, developing and improving the client journey from the first touchpoint – which could be a website or social posts – through the use of interactions, via acknowledgement and small talk that goes a long way in the creation of trust (another important feeling in both the building and maintenance of client relationships) to the consultation and the continual client reviews, to the use of technology and digital, as well as session delivery.
Along with service excellence, PTs must bring value. Value is defined as not only what the product or service does and its function, which has worth, but as the individual’s perceived emotion/feelings about what the product or service says about them in a social situation – the kudos, the prestige, the status. Valued brands not only do the job they are asked to do, but they also help define and reinforce an individual’s self-image, their personal values and beliefs, their tastes, and also send a message to others about how they want to be identified by those around them and in their community.
Clients don’t buy personal training; they buy the feelings associated with a particular PT
The clothes, shoes, trainers, accessorises, cars, watches, bags and phones we purchase all have feelings associated with them that assist in telling or reinforcing our story – our own unique narrative that we want to communicate to the world – and personal training is no different. A potential client will get to a point where they recognise that they need personal training; the pain of remaining in their current situation may be too much, they may need to change and they recognise they require assistance. However, when choosing and fundamentally remaining with a PT, clients don’t buy the personal training per se. Actually, they buy the feelings they associate with a particular PT.
Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist, suggested that individuals are driven by sign value – what a product, service or object says about an individual in a social context; an individual’s perceived status, a feeling – and that sign value also influences the exchange value, which is how much someone is willing to pay for that specific product, service or object. As PTs, we must not only attempt to deliver service excellence but we must also ensure that what we offer is of sign value to our audience; sign value could be seen as an influencer in the experience.
To trigger feelings of sign value and the experience within the client that increases happiness, that sense of wellbeing and the reinforcement of an individual’s self-image (which drives behaviour and increases adherence and retention, as well as creates those positive memories) PTs need to do the following:
- Know their audience. The PT needs to completely understand whom they are targeting, as well as understand and feel comfortable in the fact that not everyone is a PT’s audience. I fully appreciate that, at times, there is a requirement to generalise, when perhaps entering the industry for the first time to gain experience, to pay the bills, to get established within a club; however, when it comes to providing client experiences, delivering sign value and eliciting feelings that drive behaviour, knowing one’s audience is fundamental. Airlines, hotels and restaurants all know their audience and they create, plan and deliver products and services with the specific aim to awaken particular positive feelings within their audience that increase happiness and wellbeing, which drives individual’s behaviour.
- Understand their identity, story or brand. The PT also needs to have an identity or story that is attractive to their audience and will elicit the positive feelings within the client. People buy into an identity, a label, and they are willing to pay more for the privilege: “I buy therefore I am”. As discussed previously, what we wear, what we own, where we eat, who we mix with reinforces in our own mind who we are, and also sends a message to others about who we believe we are and how we want to be perceived. Identity is not our qualifications, although qualifications are important. Identity is built around our mission, vision, personal values, how we act and our behaviour around others, the role we play in-club and our performance. Some of you may be uncomfortable with playing a role, or performing, but we do it all the time; when mixing socially, we are continually acting, playing a role to get the most out of a situation for others and ourselves.
To be successful, PTs are required to set a context (the circumstances that form the setting for an event) and an identity is part of the context; without a context, there are limited emotions; without emotions, there are limited feelings; and without feelings, there is a limited experience, which will have an effect on both adherence and retention, due to a lack of drive that stems from the happiness and wellbeing that comes from the feelings created within the context of the event.
The ‘experience’ is the client’s and the client’s alone. It is the client’s current reality and all a PT can do is continually attempt to try and influence the client’s experience via the creation of positive moments and memories, ensuring that ‘service excellence’ is maintained in the context of delivering an event, or series of events, that reinforce an individual’s self-image, their personal values and beliefs, their tastes, and that also sends a message to others about how they want to be identified by those around them and in their community.
To discover more about enhancing the client experience, head over to Keith’s CPD course on the FitPro education platform.
References
(1) To occupy a space in the clients mind, beyond the primacy of the product – Differentiate or Die by J. Trout
(2) FLOW state – Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
