Taneesa Williamson Understanding the key drivers of client satisfaction.
Creating a memorable client experience is more crucial than ever in today’s climate. Our client relationships begin long before they step into our clinics; they start on social platforms where potential clients first encounter our business. This shift in the client journey means that being exceptional at both sales and marketing is paramount.
Where does a client interaction go right – or even wrong? To explore what truly makes a client happy or unhappy, we sat down with Rebecca Miller to delve deeper into the nuances of client satisfaction and the strategies to prevent negative experiences.
Rebecca Miller is a mindset and high performance coach, speaker, retreat and podcast host who started out as a solo salon owner to building her award-winning La Bella Medispa clinic – with 3 locations and 25 team members, and a 5 million dollar empire.
Rebecca is a certified high performance coach, NLP practitioner, breath work facilitator, DISC profiling expert with 30 years of real experience. She knows the formula to creating a successful clinic business and a life that feels good without sacrificing health and relationships.
What can really make an experience positive for our clients?
The game has changed when it comes to customer experience. These days, our client experience starts well before clients enter our business; they are watching us through our social platforms. Our two most powerful opportunities are being exceptional at sales and marketing, which are two sides of the same coin.
As clinic owners, we need to be clear on the problems we solve and articulate them through our business messaging to connect with the hearts and minds of our ideal clients. Our social platforms are the greatest opportunity to attract, connect, and build the know-like-trust factor to take our ideal client from “I’m interested” to “This is my person; this is the business for me.”
To make our client experience positive, we must understand our clients at a psychological level. Clients are not buying our products and services; they are buying the feeling, the solution, and the transformation our products and services provide, moving them from pain to pleasure, from their current state to their desired state.
We must become experts at problem-finding and problem-solving, not product-pushing. It’s about finding the gap between where they are and where they want to be. We achieve this through advanced questioning, tonality, and body language to disarm our clients, lower resistance, and encourage them to open up. If we stay at a surface level, we never fully motivate and commit our clients to our solutions.
We need to give people information in a way their brain needs to hear it to make better, faster decisions. A highly effective customer experience and sales process provides foresight on where you lead your clients, giving them comfort and psychological safety to make a decision.
What commonly influences a negative client experience? Does this start before or after they’ve been in the treatment room?
Negative experiences often stem from failing to understand what drives client decision-making. This begins well before they enter the treatment room. You’re probably familiar with the concept of left-brain versus right-brain thinking.
The left brain is known for logic and analytical thinking (L for left, L for logic), while the right brain is known for emotion and creativity. We label the left side of the brain the red brain, and the right side the green brain.
Conversations in red-brain thinking focus on logic and caution. When clients are anchored in their red brain, they are in a state of caution, asking:
- What if I make the wrong decision?
- What if it’s too expensive?
- What if there’s a risk I don’t know about?
Therapists often default to red-brain conversations, focusing on product features, process length, and price. While familiar and comfortable, this approach keeps clients cautious and hesitant, increasing objections and procrastination.
To create a positive experience, shift your conversations from a product-focused red brain to an emotionally charged green brain. This means discussing clients’ lived experiences, challenges, and dreams, and connecting with them on an emotional level to accelerate decision-making.
Effective communication engages both hemispheres of the brain. Lead with green-brain conversations to understand your client’s ‘why’ and guide your recommendations. When it’s time to commit, re-engage the red brain for details. This approach reduces objections and facilitates smoother decision-making. We delve deeper into mastering red and green brain conversations in my course, Heartfelt Sales, teaching this new era of sales and marketing.
What touchpoints or adjustments can spas or clinics make to ensure they are catering to all clients and allowing for a seamless experience?
Building an unforgettable client experience is essential for client satisfaction, retention, and creating raving fans in our business. Our client’s experience was a significant topic in our quarterly development days to ensure we were not only consistently improving and refining their time with us, but to have our whole team involved and invested in the design of it.
We grabbed butcher’s paper and walked through the whole process with all the touch points, calling this the “La Bella WOW.” We had 17 unique touch points throughout our process, creating a sensory experience from the moment our clients walked through the door.
This included the visual representation of our business, the smell, the music playing, how our reception team greeted them, the consultation area, the decor of our room and bed linen, receiving a client welcome pack, and follow-ups after treatment. Our clients felt like the most important people in the world.
Our client retention sat at 95 to 98% because we really worked on building relationships, delivering exceptional results, and providing an experience that blew their minds. We never took for granted any client who chose our business.
Long-term clients can sometimes be neglected because we think they will just keep returning. We can move into the friend zone and stop being professional. We created a culture of gratitude for each client who walked through our door and chose our business to meet their beauty and skincare needs.
Take the time to work on your client experience, especially if retention is a problem. Remember, clients leave our business if they are not getting the results or haven’t built a good relationship with us.
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