Responding to Criticism in Your Martial Arts Business
Without a doubt, you love receiving positive feedback about your martial arts school, but what happens when you receive negative responses? Holding your customers to the adage “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” can prevent your business from achieving growth.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
It’s important to use criticism you receive to improve your offering. Doing this will create a constant cycle of growth because no business is ever perfect. Even with years of experience in running martial arts schools, TIMA co-founder Graham McDonnell advises, “The tip that I’d recommend for most people is definitely find out first and foremost why people are leaving.” Finding out the reasons people are leaving is a great way to identify what tweaks need to be made to your business. Pinpointing these specific areas will allow you to provide a better service, and will improve your student retention.
Be sensitive in your approach
Unless your customer is extremely angry or dissatisfied with your service, they will feel uncomfortable about giving negative feedback. For this reason, you should actively invite them to share their feedback, positive or negative, and provide an environment for them to do so where they don’t feel scrutinised. This may mean inviting current clients to anonymously give feedback via paper form or online. You could contacti past clients in a confidential manner and invite them to share their experience. It is supremely important you remove your emotions and personal investment from these conversations. They can easily turn into arguments otherwise. The time for self-defence is on the mat not in the face of negative feedback from your clients.
Make it up to them
Even if a customer is extremely dissatisfied and upset, there is still a way to transform this negative feedback into a positive experience. An extensive body of research shows a customer is more satisfied with a service after it is done incorrectly but effectively corrected, than they are if no error is made in the first place. This means criticism and negative feedback can be an opportunity for you to make the most satisfied customers. In order to repair the relationship between you and a disgruntled client, listen to their concerns. Make the appropriate changes and offer them an extra incentive to retry your service. This may mean offering a free trial or other exclusive deal. It’s worth the lost revenue if you can create a loyal customer and advocate.
Don’t take it personally
Just because you are the business owner does not mean you are personally responsible for every error occurring under your roof. A student may have a complaint about an instructor that has no reflection on the way you run your business and could be fixed simply by extra training. Try to view the criticism you receive as a step in the right direction for your business. For more information on how to improve on your areas of weakness, contact TIMA. We have several proven strategies to help your martial arts school succeed.
Why not grab some free Martial Arts Business training or check out our programs below!
Some of what you'll find...
- Free Resources and Courses
- Affordable Trainings
- World Class Coaching Program
- Marketing Services to Dominate
TIMA Spartans
This is our full service training and coaching program designed to scale you to 7 figures. It is by application only
Categories
All Categories