Over the last 20 years we have regularly tweaked and amended our customer service training and over the last few years have used some of the resources from Mark Sanborn’s excellent book called “The Fred Factor” which I would highly recommend to anyone who operates a customer service business. It’s simple and effective and tells the story of a postman in Colorado who took customer service to unprecedented levels.

The book fits neatly with our core values. Two of the four principles it is based upon; “everyone makes a difference” and “everything is built on relationships,” speak right into the heart of what we try to get our teams to focus on. Indeed for a while we ran a staff incentive scheme which we called “The Freddies” and which celebrated great customer service moments delivered by individual team members

Now, of course, we don’t always get things right every time but I just wanted to tell one recentstory when one of our team captured what outstanding customer service is about.

Becky is a one of the younger members of our fitness professional team at one of our East Anglian spa and health clubs. She has worked for us for just under a year and, in my opinion, is just a natural at making customers feel valued.

Last week whilst Becky was out shopping in the local town she bumped into a member she hadn’t seen in the Club for a while. They chatted and the member explained that she hadn’t been up to the Club as she felt awkward about working out. Becky explained that she was working a late shift the next day and invited the member to pop in to the Club and see Becky.

The lady duly arrived at the Club the next day and Becky chatted with her over a cup of coffee. From this conversation Becky realised that the lady lacked the confidence to work out on her own and so suggested that they both came back to the club the following evening, which was Becky’s night off, and work out together.

So the next night, we got a member back into exercising at our club and Becky gave up her night off to achieve this. I don’t know how for certain how much this lady values her club membership right now but I bet it’s as high as it’s ever been. And I know for certain just how much we value Becky as part of our team.

I love being able to share Becky’s story with you – it is a great example of outstanding customer service and we are so very proud of her.

Have you got a story to tell? Please do relay it to us by posting a comment below.

It was great to hear that one of the members at the LA Fitness Spa in South Kensington who loves the Babor product house wrote to the MD of Babor who are based in Germany saying:

” great news – Babor has been launched in my gym!! I thought; this is a good sign! It’s Imagine Spa in LA Fitness South Kensington, a great place to be, perfect target market. The therapist I met was very informative and passionate about the brand ”

We will keep working to give the customers what they want!

Just as with South Kensington, Imagine are taking over a spa where the existing operator has failed to make the spa viable. The confidence to turn this situation around is based upon the implementation of the online marketing campaigns and the use of Boost, the single customer view database, already in use at other Imagine Spa Management sites.

It is hoped to repeat the success of the Lakeside Spa at Legacy Botleigh Grange where the spa revenue has trebled in the nine months since Imagine Spa Management took on the operation of the spa.

Imagine are looking forward to getting into top gear very quickly at Brands Hatch too!

Every year I go I’m always sceptical of whether there is any suppliers that we are not already aware of and doubt whether there will be anything new that will be of value to Imagine Spa Management. But every year I always come away with a great new idea or product and this year was no different.

So this year I think we’ve found a great supplier of a high quality wax for our South Kensington Imagine Spa. The Thalgo Group have always impressed me as a product house that supply a number of different product ranges. We’ve had their Thalgo range in one of our spas and it proved to be hugely popular and they supported us well so we are looking forward to the prospect of working with Marian and her team with their Perron Rigot waxing brand.

We’ve worked really hard at our online marketing too and I had a great meeting with Wahanda which is one of the biggest online wellness sites and we are definitely going to work with them on our spa promotions and marketing. We will be launching three spas over the next month so I’ve already pencilled in a meeting with Lopo, one of the Wahanda founders, when I return. I know our Digital Media team will love meeting with him.

Finally I had a great meeting with Amanda Barlow who has created her own range of organic spa products called Spiezia. Now her products are so organic and so natural she actually can eat them – whihc did in front of me in our meeting. Now that’s different. I think we could be working with Amanda when we develop our organic day spa retreat in North Norfolk.

Of course it’s good to also catch up with our core suppliers, Babor, Jessica, Comfort Zone and St Tropez. It’s amazing how much easier it is to sort out a number of plans and issues when you are out of the work environment and away from distractions!

So I’m back from another worthwhile SPATEC and ready to get cracking on opening our 3 new spas in May – check out the news section of the website for more detail.

We’re confident that Breathe Spa will be another great addition to the Imagine Spa Management stable! (Surely we are allowed one horse related pun!)

It’s a simple strategy but one that has worked pretty well for us over the past twenty odd years. So when we started to develop spas we started from the premise that the marketing would work in a similar manner. How wrong we were! The reality of course with our spas is that people travel to use our spas from a far greater distance – we’ve tracked that over 30% of our spa guests will travel over 60 minutes to get to us. That’s a lot of banners and leaflets to cover that kind of geographic spread! And of course a relatively small percentage of guests will have visited our spa before they visit so we rely upon the staff and how they handle the phone enquiry and to a certain extent the spa’s website to secure the booking.

We’re learning all the time but our online marketing strategy is responsible for over 90% of our bookings. It’s a totally different route to our marketplace than that we employ for the health club business. So we’re experimenting with Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and blogs, as you can see(!), creating a whole new marketing strategy and learning a whole new set of skills along the way. We cherish people’s email addresses in the same way we love to get the telephone number of potetial health club members.

And it’s exciting and it’s really starting to work. Over the last 12 months we have increased our spa turnover at our three main spas by a factor of 3. That’s some growth when we are supposed to have been in the depths of a recession. Over the next few months we’ll share some of the things we have learnt with our marketing but, of course, if you’d like to hear about them first hand and how you might increase your spa business through online marketing then please do give me a call on 01603 812727

Owners Ashdale Hotels see this investment by Imagine as being a crucial development in their relationship with us and will enable them to create a USP for the hotel allowing to attract more weekend break business in what is a highly competitive North Yorkshire hotel market.

The “Fat Face” slogan is that “life is out there”! Its about playing hard, taking risks, living life to the full, having an adventure – “better a bad day on the water than a good day in the office” was another of their favourite merchandising slogans. It’s what their core culture is, and it’s what makes them what they are.

So back to my story. I’m in Fat Face with my two daughters and my youngest is in a pushchair. The childrens and female section (we were looking for my wife’s birthday present!) are downstairs and so I carefully bounce the pushchair down the stairs, which were fairly steep and, unsurprisingly my daughter’s not overly impressed. I’m not overly impressed that two assistants just stand and watch me.

Anyway purchases are made, I gave in to my eldest daughter’s plea for a new top too, and we need to go back to the first floor to pay. The lip of each stair makes it impossible to drag the pushchair up the stair without virtually tipping my daughter out. After a bad trip down the stairs she’s now crying at the thought of going back up. Eventually a friendly shopper takes pity on my struggles and takes one end of the pushchair and helps me lift it up the stairs.

As I go to pay the sales guy who has witnessed all this says something to the effect that he’s sorry he couldn’t help but it contravenes health and safety. Now of course, I know, he doesn’t mean health and safety at all he means insurance. Health and safety is all about minimising risk and clearly to get a pushchair safely up stairs is a two person job not a one person job, so health and safety would actually require them to help – or to provide a lift, or anything rather than stand and watch to be honest! No, he’s worried that if he helps us lift the pushchair up the stairs and something goes wrong we might sue him. It’s a damning indictment on the legal and claim culture that exists in the UK right now.

But it struck me how sad it was that a business that grew out of two guys going on an adventure and which wants it’s customers to believe they are buying a brand with a culture of risk and adventure has become so weighed down with corporate governance and rules that it won’t help customers with pushchairs. It won’t take risks – it’s sold out on it’s culture.

If ever our organisation gets so big that we forget the vision and the culture we started out with – please do tell me. It will be time to turn off the lights and go home.

The Walton family have developed the seaweed bath concept to include a whole range of products and treatments for the spa market which are 100% organic and approved by the Soil Association. Best of all – they still hand harvest the seaweed themselves. You just can’t get a more personalised service than that!

How can I be so sure? Well last autumn I took a team from Imagine over to Ireland to experience a few spas and to visit the Voya centre at Strandhill. We met the team who harvest the seaweed and we experienced for ourselves a seaweed bath. It was wonderful!

So we are working with the Voya team to add some seaweed experiences to our spas. We think VOYA’s is a great story and if you’d like to check them out for yourself then try their website at www.voya.ie

And if you’d like to experience a seaweed bath then book one at our Imagine Spa. With spas so close to the sea – this was an opportunity we just couldn’t turn down!