Good Customer Service Tips for Your Massage Business

We often hear that good customer service is one of the most important elements a business can employ, but what are we doing to ensure that every one of our clients is getting the best customer service possible?  Massage therapists are especially in need of good customer service in order to stay in business.  Who would want to spend an hour with a surly massage therapist who has an impatient, crabby front desk staff, let alone pay for it?  The benefits of good customer service are many:  your work environment will become more pleasant, you will take more pride in your company, you will expand your profits, and you will be happy knowing you made a positive difference in a customer’s life.  The following are some easy-to-use tips that make customer service a top priority in your business.   

1. Make sure you are offering a respectable service.  This may not seem to have much to do with actual customer service, but it has actually huge effect on it.   The customer expects a quality service when she spends her money.  If she does not receive it, no amount of smiling or niceties is going to make her happy.  Do not set yourself or your staff up for failure.  Fix what needs to be repaired and constantly work on improving it.

2. Always greet and say “goodbye” to your clients warmly.  Customers most remember the first and last interactions that had with you.  If you can concentrate on ALWAYS enthusiastically saying “hello” to clients and sincerely sending them off with a heart-felt “goodbye,” you will be ahead of the game. 

3. Use proper language when speaking to clients in person, on the phone, and on email.  People either consciously or unconsciously evaluate companies by the manner in which their employees speak.   You do not want your customers thinking that your company is incompetent, so be aware of how you come across with the language you use.  Encourage your staff to have a standard way of answering the phone that starts with a greeting, a way of identifying the company, a way of identifying the speaker and finally offering assistance.  For example, “Hello, XYZ Massage Therapy, this is Pete, how can I help you today?” 

4. In continuing with importance of language, be careful with how you compose emails or letters.  Spelling mistakes and flagrant grammatical errors can be a turn-off to potential customers.  Also, consider swapping not-so-attractive words with ones that are more pleasant and positive.  For example, problems can be now called challenges, an aggressive person can be considered assertive.  This may seem strange at first, but it goes a long way in making interactions with you and your customers as well as your staff more positive.

5. When something goes wrong, admit to the mistake (even though it might not have been your mistake to begin with), sincerely apologize and plan on making it better.  There can be many reasons why something goes wrong in your business and the customer ends up unhappy.  The important thing is to not to try to explain your way out of the error, or worse blame the customer for it.  Simply apologize (sincerely, of course!), fix the problem as soon as possible and offer the customer something additional in return for their trouble.  Oftentimes, the customer just really wants the problem to be fixed along with a heartfelt “sorry.”   The additional gift is something that makes them more apt to do business with you again as well as referring others to your company.

Using good customer service goes a long way in making your business more profitable and overall happier.  When in doubt on how to handle a customer service issue, remember the golden rule:  “Treat others how you would like to be treated."

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