Critical Areas for Satisfactory Customer Service for Fit and Fab

This article discusses the critical areas for satisfactory customer service for Fit and Fab, including communication, service delivery, issue resolution, and customer recognition. It also includes a survey form, expectation outline for customer service staff, key points for training sessions, and legislative requirements such as the Sales of Goods Act, Health and Safety Act, Data Protection Act, and Equality and Discrimination laws.

Deliver and monitor a service to
customers
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Table of Contents
1. Critical areas for satisfactory customer service for Fit and Fab.............................................3
2. Survey form............................................................................................................................4
3. Expectation outline for the customer service or receptionist staffs?......................................5
4. Key point for training session................................................................................................5
5. Legislative requirements........................................................................................................6
Reference....................................................................................................................................8
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1. Critical areas for satisfactory customer service for Fit and Fab
The customer service not only remains limited to the front desk or the reception area of the
gym but also other staffs who are providing the services to the customer by being the actual
representative of the organisation (Schneider and Bowen, 2010). Considering this aspect the
follow critical areas needs to be taken care of for the greater success of the gym.
 First requirement is the start of a communication between a staff and the customer.
This is the beginning of the service need request from the customer end and for that
the customer must find it easy to identify the appropriate staffs in the gym (Cook,
2017). Therefore for the customer ease uniform would be provided to the staffs and
different department would have different colours of uniform. For example training
and fitness instructor would have oregano colour, nutritionist green colour, and
administrative staffs in formal attire.
 The next step is the actual communication and conversation with the customers. In
this process first responsibility of the staffs would be to make their name and
themselves familiar with the regular customers to make it easy for the customers. A
smiling face with proper greetings to the customer would be important for the start of
conversation. The staffs must address the customer by their name to become
impactful in the conversation. The staffs must remain active in listening mode
throughout the conversation and also must provide specific reply as per the
customer’s quarry with great deal of care (Marandi and Harris, 2010). At the time of
attending the customer the staffs must avoided any distraction from their mobile
phones.
 The next step is delivering certain services. The staffs would have sufficient
empowerment to customise certain service as per the customer needs (Schneider and
Bowen, 2010). They should not behave as the staffs but as like the business owner as
that would reflect their proactive and accommodating response to the customer needs.
 Customer comes with specific goal about their health and fitness. Training staffs must
assess them in that process and also must provide continuous encouragement and
evidence of improvement.
 Then there are services when things go wrong. The staffs must use the above
empowerment to own the customer issues and respond proactively (Cook, 2017).
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Apologise after listening the problem and than them after solving the issue for being
so patient in the process.
 The next step is to meet the expectation of the customer through continuous
improvement process. Here a customer service need survey would be done to
strategies customer satisfaction development.
 The last step would be recognising customers (Schneider and Bowen, 2010). Here
rewards, loyalty program, some personal communication would be utilised.
2. Survey form
Your experience of Fit and Fab’s customer service
Negative Somewhat negative Positive Somewhat positive
Do you find it easy to find the right staffs to avail your service need?
Easy Somewhat easy Not so easy Difficult
Do you find the approach of the staffs friendly and reliable?
Agree Somewhat agree Disagree
Do the staffs understand your query?
Totally understand Understand well Somewhat understand Does not understand
Do you find it quick enough to resolve your issues and meet your service request?
Very fast Faster than expected About to expectation Slow Very slow
Do your find any proactive or customise approach from the service staffs’ part in meeting
your requirement?
Every time Majority of time Sometimes Rarely
Do you find it easy to reach your fitness goals through the help of the fitness staffs?
Very easy Moderately easy Not so easy Difficult
Did you notice improvement in our service is last few months?
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Yes No
Do you find special offers and communication attractive?
Yes Somewhat attractive No
Would you recommend any one about our services? (0 being not likely; 10 most likely)
0 2 4 6 8 10
Do you have anything to share?
3. Expectation outline for the customer service or receptionist staffs?
The customer contact or the receptionist staffs at the time of dealing with the customer face to
face or through the telephonic conversation must expect the following situations:
 The prospective customers may ask for the gym’s membership costs and the location.
 The prospective customer may want to know about the demographic pattern of the
membership and ask for their appropriateness.
 Extra service questions may come with regard to same or additional cost structure.
This came in the form of request also and if the service is not available in Fit and Fab,
the receptionist must covey but retaining the interest of the customer (Evenson, 2017).
 There could be questions about the personal trainer and cleanness aspect of the
service. Existing customer may have complaint regarding these issues and may want
improvement or change.
 There could be issue regarding the functionality, quality and knowledge about some
fitness equipment.
 Dissatisfied customer may ask for the membership cancellation. Here the staffs must
be able to pursue the customer to remain.
 Sometime the staffs may expect violent outburst from the customer side about the
service. The staff must keep patient and act as per the guidelines and scope (Evenson,
2017). The goal would be resolution of customer issue amicably.
4. Key point for training session
These following points would be addressed in training sessions.
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 Developing mind set of customer service. Judging the situation from the customer’s
perspective is crucial here.
 Improvement of skills of customer service through providing training on aspect like
patients, empathy, consistency, adaptability, ethical working, appropriate
communication, knowledge development, developing a thick skin (Evenson, 2011).
 Cultivating the smiling approach of customer interaction and caring approach of
service delivery.
 Customer relation development knowledge and skill development.
 Provide knowledge approach of every touch point based customer service.
 Customer interaction and experience improvement through the approaches like
customer interest sharing, development of active listening approach, mistake
admission and way to apologise, proactive actions, solution delivery and following up
(Evenson, 2011).
 Customer service goal and strategy sharing
 Customer’s feedback generation tools knowledge and usability.
5. Legislative requirements
Sales of Goods Act
The contractual part with the customer regarding the terms and condition of the products and
services in Fit and Fab gym, warranties if any, terms of service, regulation of fair trading
would be done in the training session to meet these legislative requirements
(ablis.business.gov, 2018).
Health and Safety Act
The business owner as per this law has strong responsibility in meeting the workplace health
and safety needs of the employees as well as the visiting customers (business.gov, 2018). In
the gym there would be different equipments, noise, and aspect of manual handling and so
on. This knowledge would help the staff to maintain their and customer’s health and safety.
Data Protection Act
Fit and Fab would record many personal and sensitive information about the customers.
Maintaining privacy, confidentiality, security and storage time of that information would be
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important as any violation may result in customer complaint and legal complications
(Efa.org, 2006).
Equality and discrimination
There are separate laws for the age, sex, racial, disability and other discrimination prohibition
in Australia. Human Rights Commission of Australia is a statutory authority for monitoring
that (humanrights.gov, 2018). In Fit and Fab there would be customer from different social
background. Considering this an anti discrimination and equal opportunity aspect needs to be
met by the staffs to serve customer effectively.
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Reference
ablis.business.gov. 2018. Sale of Goods Act 1896 - Queensland. [online] Available at:
https://ablis.business.gov.au/service/qld/sale-of-goods-act-1896/7298 [Accessed 22 Oct.
2018].
Business.gov. 2018. WHS/OH&S acts, regulations and codes of practice. [online] Available
at: https://www.business.gov.au/risk-management/health-and-safety/whs-oh-and-s-acts-
regulations-and-codes-of-practice [Accessed 22 Oct. 2018].
Cook, S., 2017. Measuring customer service effectiveness. Routledge.
Efa.org. 2006. Data Protection Laws in Australia. [online] Available at:
https://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Privacy/privacy.html [Accessed 22 Oct. 2018].
Evenson, R., 2011. Customer Service Training. American Management Association, New
York, pp.25-27.
Evenson, R., 2017. Customer service training 101: quick and easy techniques that get great
results. Amacom.
Humanrights.gov. 2018. A quick guide to Australian discrimination laws. [online] Available
at: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/employers/good-practice-good-business-factsheets/
quick-guide-australian-discrimination-laws [Accessed 22 Oct. 2018].
Marandi, E. and Harris, J., 2010. The impact of perceived service provider empathy on
customer loyalty: some observations from the health and fitness sector. Managing
Leisure, 15(3), pp.214-227.
Schneider, B. and Bowen, D.E., 2010. Winning the service game. In Handbook of service
science (pp. 31-59). Springer, Boston, MA.
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