Yoga Studio Marketing Bad Reception

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bad yoga studio reception

Do top yoga studios practice good marketing?

In New York I was excited to try my favorite yoga studio I have known through the years in London. On a Saturday morning I woke up early and before having a morning coffee took a subway to the studio.

I walked in and up to the reception desk. The receptionist never blinked, looked at me, acknowledged me as I stood there! Eventually she had a moment for me.

“Namaste?” She said.

I told her I’d pre-booked the 9AM class and gave my full name – Machavariani Forrest-Smith

She stared at the computer for a while then without looking at me said..

“erm I can’t find you in the system, so I’ll just write you down as Smith”

At that point I started to feel a bit… puzzled with the attitude, so I told her Smith was not my name and would preferred to use my full name. The receptionist was clearly unhappy “It’s just a long name and it would be easier to type Smith” – I was annoyed.

She then called another receptionist, who looked like could have been a head receptionist, and told her I was insisting on using my long last name, really?

The “head receptionist” (without looking at me) asked…

“what’s your first name?”

“Tamara”

“OK Laurayne”

“No, it’s Tamara”

“So Laurayne which surname did you pre-book your class…”

Really?

Anyways getting my name must have taken around 10 minutes and you could tell neither of them were happy.

Obviously after that I was not going to go back to that particular studio, although the class itself was great.

Now what you have to remember yoga class in New York (or even in London) is not cheap.

For 5 classes you can pay around $100, if your receptionist is losing you customers every week because she can’t be bothered to smile (and the service matters even in yoga), and if 10 out of 100 were unhappy with the service and did not come back, that’s a $1000 weekly sales lost!

What you also have to remember is that it takes so much to build the brand and reputation so big that someone like me from Manchester, would want to visit particular yoga class in New York, so to have somebody who can’t be bothered to smile in the front desk is bad.

I could not help but wonder, do top yoga studios practice good marketing? Or have good in some yoga studios become associated with the word “Namaste” even if the receptionist is bad mannered and is even worse in sales?

Do your yoga studio a favor and make sure you have got the customer service right, or customers like myself who is happy to pay for the services will go to the competitors, just as I did for the remainder of my stay in NY.

Just a namaste thought 🙂

Warm greetings to you from Manchester, UK

Tamara

 

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