Designing Your Customer Experience: What Happens After Class Registration?

Congratulations! You got a bunch of people signed up for your tennis program.

Now what do you do next?

You can either 1). Have them go through the regular tennis club experience, or 2). Blow their mind off with how you pay attention to the smallest details and make playing tennis at your club the most fun new experience for them!

Which of these two options do you think would earn you repeat lessons and committed tennis players?

In today's technologically advanced world paying attention to all the little details that happen immediately after a person jumps on board is extremely important for your program's success and growth. We conducted a survey with few tennis clubs' customers and club managers, and what we discovered is that the customers are experiencing massive customer service quality drop immediately after they sign-up for a class or a lesson.

So, why is that? Is it because many believe that once a person has made the purchasing decision, it's a done deal?

To us, at Resourcely®, a successful customer experience means something else!

Of course, there’s no universal definition on how to provide a successful customer experience. It’s different for every tennis club and it strongly depends on your brand. There is, however, a short universal "small details" guide we made for you to follow. Keep reading!

1). Send the customized "Thank you for signing up" email

So, what happens normally right after you make online purchases? You get an email confirmation. Why not do the same with customers who sign up for your tennis lessons? Now granted, you can send a simple, quick message to them and say "thank you, look forward to seeing you on the court," after which they will probably read it and move on with their day. But we could do much better than that!

First, while we think the "Thank you for your registration" type of message is ok, it does not provide information about your brand or show what you would like your new customer to do next. At the very basic level, you could do things like: add a video to your message that would help them learn something about your club (or tennis pro) or recommend products (which you may also happen to sell at your pro shop!). This way continue to build on the experience with you, your club and brand.

One great example of a "thank you for registering" email is from a NYC Midtown-based dance studio we love. Each signed up student receives a detailed email right after their registration is completed, explaining the starting date, time, location, the name of their teacher along with suggestions of comfortable shoes and clothing to wear during class. Now this is an email your student will keep in their inbox and go back to.

2). Set up an automated email marketing for your tennis program participants

The thing about automated email marketing is, it gives you a chance to keep your new customers excited and confident about their purchase. Also, you only need to set it up once. Additionally, you have an opportunity to further introduce them and make them part of your tennis club's programs. Subscribing to an email marketing platforms such as MailChimp, Hubspot and Constant Contact, is one way this could be easily done. Email marketing platforms usually offer beautifully designed and easy to customize email templates, which you can build and setup to work for you indefinitely.

Your emails could be about anything helpful that also complements your tennis program:

• Video lessons
• Complementary products/services
• Tennis events in your club or area
• Partnerships
• Collecting feedback
• Promote your social media accounts

Even if all you are doing is introducing your brand's message, tone, sense of humor to your new tennis customer, it can go a long way. It can also get people in the habit of opening (or ignoring, if not done well) your future emails.

3). Send email reminders

Setting up reminders when you have an event, appointment or class is not a habit every person has. Imagine how helpful it would be for your students (who might also be working, busy moms and dads), to receive a quick reminder about their upcoming appointment. This way you not only get them excited ahead of time about their lesson, but also continue to build on your brand while reducing the number of no shows.

Now, don't start setting up reminders for yourself to send reminders and individual emails to each student. Use your email marketing platform (few of  which we recommended above) and create all emails in bulk and scheduled them to go out for whatever date you like. Learn more about email marketing here.

4). Send the follow up email

You have now delivered your tennis lesson and done all the steps we previously discussed, but that doesn't mean that your customer is still excited about it.

This, we find, is one of the biggest missed opportunities - businesses do not encourage customers to give feedback or take another action. Customer feedback provides you, the business owner, an insight of what you can do to improve the business, your products and/or overall customer experience. It can also be used to identify customer advocates. Customer advocates are those happy customers that will be your best marketing campaigns and refer new people to your tennis programs. The follow up email can also help your student identify the next best suitable program for them or get them involved with the rest of your events such as tournaments, round robins or socials.

Little details matter!

There are so many uncertainties and doubts that come from joining a new tennis club and a brand new community in your area. You are, however, in a prime position to exceed expectations and surprise the heck out of your new tennis players.

Get an expert advice on how to setup email automation!