Ingredient No. 4: A Commitment to Excellent Customer Service.
Above and beyond basic professionalism is customer service. When I asked
people who had received massage what they liked about their experience,
the happy clients mentioned funny, surprising things like electric foot
warmers, flannel sheets, and customized aromatherapy oils. They talked
about how much their therapist seemed to care, asked about their lives,
and sent birthday cards. Given that many schools and therapists place a
primary emphasis on bodywork modalities, I was shocked to discover that
most clients I interviewed rarely talked about the technique the
therapist used or even mentioned the bodywork itself. Unless the
therapist was hurting the client with too much pressure or was using a
painful technique, when an interviewee went back in his or her memory
bank to answer my questions, much of what was talked about was the
ancillaries: temperature, music, oils, pillows, conversation, number of
minutes in a session's time, flowers, and other mental bric-a-brac that
the client gathered up to form his/her massage experience impression.
Quite honestly, I think that the vast majority of the American
population still has no idea what constitutes a good, quality massage,
much less has the vocabulary to discuss or describe a good massage. This
is not a sanction for massage therapists to do low-quality work good
hands-on skills are very important but customer service is much more than
just efficiently and effectively massaging muscles.
Above all, people want to feel cared for,
important and special. In their heart-of-hearts, clients believe they
are the center of the universe, and if during the brief time of a
session they feel they are treated as such, they will come back again
and again. By emphasizing a client-centered practice, the little things
that add up to excellent customer service will come naturally, and happy
clients will return and refer their friends.
Ingredient No. 5: An Ability To Surpass Clients' Expectations.
The Golden Rule is "Do unto others as you want done unto you." However,
the new Platinum Rule of marketing is "Do unto others as they want done
unto them." Unless, of course, what they want done unto them is illegal,
inappropriate, harmful or ineffective.
Unfortunately, what a lot of new clients expect falls into the don't-do-it
category, and how one handles such expectations can keep a prospect from
becoming a client or keep a client from rebooking.
Two major marketing skills come into play here the ability to listen and
ability to educate. Successful therapists know how to listen to client
expectations and then communicate how those expectations will be met. If
clients initially want a technique or modality that the therapist cannot
or should not do, reshaping the expectation becomes even more important.
For example, if a client says "Just shove your elbow into that sore
point on my shoulder and work it deeply for an hour," the therapist must
listen for the real need under the request, and then educate the client
on how to reach the same goal in a different way.
Underneath the ability to set and meet client expectations is one of the
most important marketing skills of alla thorough and conversant
knowledge of anatomy. Understanding anatomy opens up the ability to
explain to clients what is being done during a session: It helps you
describe why one technique will work when another will not; demonstrates
how the muscles work in relation to each other; and justifies
strategies, techniques and amounts of time spent in a given area. Clear
communication about these factors creates three things unpurchasable in
advertising or traditional marketing: a sense of trust, an accurate and
positive perception of the therapist, and an understanding of the true
value of massage.
Nothing is more fascinating to people than themselves, and educating
others about their bodieshow they work and how they are going to be
treated is the ultimate in customer service and marketing. Educating
clients before, during, and after sessions creates the right
expectations, delivers what is promised, and then reminds them that what
they purchased was valuable and worth the time and money spent. When
clients' expectations are met and they are happy and satisfied, they
will market and promote you better than any formal marketing program
could ever hope for.
The Recipe
So, after five months, 15,988 miles and countless interviews, did I have
a recipe for successfully marketing massage? I would have to say yes and
no. No, because every massage therapist faces internal and external
obstacles toward highly personalized goals, and has definitions of
success that require unique marketing tools and skills and customized
solutions that no single recipe could anticipate. On the other hand,
yes, I think I found the key ingredients I was seeking, for they had
gone into the recipe of every long-term success story I had met.
Amazingly, the ingredients were simple, yet profound, and as I was
overjoyed to discover, they were available and affordable to every
therapist willing to dedicate themselves to their own success.
Desire, commitment, professionalism, customer service and meeting client
expectations are the foundation of success in massage. Stir them into
your marketing mix, warm them with your heart, knead them with time, and
watch your practice rise.
Monica Roseberry, speaker and author,
has trained thousands of students in the art, science and business of
massage. She is committed to helping massage professionals build
successful practices and is currently completing her book on marketing
massage. Roseberry can be contacted at: 800-707-3462, or monica@marketingmassage.com.
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