What do your clients experience when they interact with your massage practice? Is the office clean? Comfortable? Too often we are too busy doing projects and forget about what the client sees with papers all over the desk.

If you have office staff, are they polite and helpful? How is the quality of the service? Are you giving your best massage (or other service) possible? Did you thank your client? Did you remember to ask if the client wanted to reschedule?

In your business, what you don’t know about your clients’ perceptions of your quality and service can hurt you. Put yourself in your clients’ shoes and pretend you are a client entering your practice for the first time, what do you see?

One of my consulting clients was having problems getting clients to rebook after their first massage. She didn’t have any problems with existing clients. So I asked her to pretend she was a new client coming to her office for the very first time. When she opened the front door, what was the first thing that she saw. My client told me that she saw her desk. When I asked her to describe her desk to me, she said that it has about 5 stacks of files, papers, etc. all waiting to be taken care of. I asked her if she thought the clients were seeing tasks that were being taken care of and thought maybe if she can’t take care of this paperwork, how can she take care of me? I told her how clutter affects people, so she agreed to clear the clutter with the aid of her staff. Almost immediately, she noticed that new clients were rebooking.

You may conduct the evaluation of your business yourself, enlist the help of a few friends, or hire a mystery shopping company to implement a formal, ongoing program. You might be surprised (pleasantly or not) by what you learn.

When you see yourself as your customers do, you can identify problems that may be costing you clients. Make it easy to do business with you and watch your profits increase!

So how did you do? What did you see/discover about your massage practice? What changes do you need to make? Share your experiences below. I would love to hear what you learned.

You did do the exercise, didn’t you? If you didn’t, go do it now.