Orangetheory Fitness Bedford head coach Michael Hinchcliffe and studio manager Connor Yeaney.
This article is part of a series I’m doing about the benefits of infusing kindness, gratitude, and presence into your work experience. Follow along.
Orangetheory Fitness (OTF) is one of the fastest-growing fitness franchises of all time, surpassing $1 billion in sales just eight years after opening their first studio. If you were to ask someone from their corporate headquarters to explain their rapid growth, you might be told that it’s a combination of science, coaching, and technology that led to their success. However, while those factors are certainly at play, I’d argue the answer is actually far more simple: It’s about the people.
Full disclosure: I have been a member of their studio located in Bedford, New Hampshire for almost two years. It is the only workout program I’ve ever been able to stick with long term, and it’s not because of the heart-rate monitor most members wear or because the workouts are so unique and unattainable elsewhere. It’s because the staff goes the extra mile to create a welcoming environment in which members feel known as individuals and appreciated.
According to Bedford studio manager Connor Yeaney, this is a purposeful effort. “Showing gratitude towards our members opens the door to real and raw connections between our staff and our members. When relationships are built between the two groups, that’s when the sense of community that everyone feels is taken to the next level, creating a snowball effect that rolls into all aspects of the experience at OTF. Members are more motivated to come into classes, and the staff feels more fulfilled when they spend time in the studio.”
Social media plays a key role in this strategy. Log on to OTF Bedford’s Instagram account and it’s full of photos with members celebrating different milestones and achievements, everything form achieving a personal best to hitting certain class milestones. Expressing gratitude in this way means just as much to the staff as it does to the members, according to Bedford head coach Michael Hinchcliffe. “It means a lot to me. As a coach, taking this journey with a member who trusts you enough to help coach them, motivate them and guide them through their accomplishments and milestones means you have made a positive impression on someone that will last forever. It’s a relationship. We, as coaches, need the members just as much as they need us.”
Gratitude is your competitive advantage.
Gratitude isn’t just about giving your customers that warm, fuzzy feeling. Showing appreciation has a direct impact on the bottom line. According to research from Bain & Company, it pays to keep your current customers happy. They found that a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit.
This makes sense. According to the customer intelligence platform InMoment, 61% of customers will go out of their way to buy from a brand they feel loyal to, 50% will purchase more products from that brand, and 75% will tell a friend or family member about it.
But it’s also worth considering why your customers might opt out of the relationship in the first place. Though it may be easy to assume that customers will stop patronizing a business because they found a competitor they prefer or will give them a better price. However, statistically, that’s just not the most compelling reason. When asked why they stop dealing with a company, 60% of customers will say it’s that they perceive indifference from the salespeople.
It’s about making gratitude a priority.
Showing gratitude isn’t always easy, especially during the busiest shopping seasons of the year. That’s why the businesses that do it well stand out from the crowd and set themselves up for more long-term success.
For example, Allegory Gallery is a retail boutique specializing in beads, art and jewelry located in a small town about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. As a retail storefront in a niche that is rife with online competition, it’s a business that should not be successful if you looked at it on paper in today’s climate. However, they’ve bucked the trend and were recognized as one of the top small businesses in the country during SCORE’s 2018 American Small Business Championship. Co-owner and creative director Andrew Thornton credits a culture of gratitude with their success. “It’s easy to get disenchanted and disgruntled in a retail environment but when we train ourselves to think about others and how we’re helping create a positive experience for them, that’s more than just about buying an object. It’s about empowering people to tell their stories and express themselves. Even the most trying customer challenges become an opportunity to grow and learn.”
Thornton describes that Allegory goes out of its way to make this a tangible part of the customer experience. “We know that today’s marketplace is a competitive place to be and that consumers have an abundance of options. We try to do as much as we can to let out customers know how much we appreciate them and their support. We have a gratitude board where we post thank you notes and cards sent to the shop. It helps remind us that our business is all about people and that we have a positive impact on the lives of others. We also handwrite thank you notes, send out short personalized thank you videos, and reward loyal customers with perks and free gifts. But most importantly, we let people know that their patronage directly helps us live our lives, follow our passions, and keep doing what we love.”
Handwritten thank you notes can be an especially impactful option. TheraSpecs is a company specializing in producing glass to help those with chronic migraines. They include a surprise handwritten note in each package they ship, a practice which they’ve linked directly to an improvement in their net promoter score according to director of marketing Greg Bullock. “Living with a chronic illness is incredibly isolating and frustrating. Our customers often feel misunderstood and face public and private stigma. One of the treasured ways that we show gratitude to our customers is through a little personalized ‘wish note’ that we include in every box that ships out. This note is our way of telling them that we can appreciate what they go through every day and, true to its namesake, that we wish for them to find relief with our glasses.”
This additional effort is not lost on their customers and creates a truly meaningful exchange. One customer recently posted their wish note publicly, expressing that the gesture made her a bit emotional because it seemed as though the company really understood what it means to live with a chronic illness.
A happy team is a grateful team.
Cindy Johnson, general manager of online retailer The Sock Drawer, emphasizes the necessity of taking care of the team first in order to fully capitalize on a culture of gratitude. “I worked for Costco for two decades, and one simple principle from founding CEO Jim Sinegal colored my view of gratitude and business forevermore: If we take care of our employees and vendors, they will take care of our customers, and shareholders will be rewarded.” This is a helpful reminder that the best place to start with creating a culture of gratitude to benefit your customers is by creating a culture of gratitude for your employees. “Who says you can’t be absolutely, gushingly grateful for your team?” notes Johnson. “If your corporate values don’t include a heavy dose of employee-centric and customer-centric gratefulness, then what are you really providing the world? You likely have a roster of competitors who do what you do, so you have to excel in retention of staff to retain and grow your customer base. Gratitude is simple, and it’s free.”
How are you showing gratitude to your customers? What new strategies would you like to try? Tweet at me at @DrKarlynB to share your examples.
