How to Improve a Service Sales Process by Process Mapping ft. Bro-La

You guys have been asking for more real life examples of how you can apply process thinking to your businesses. And I just so happened to stumble upon one of the most perfect examples of a struggling, simple process when I went to the climbing gym recently. So I'll give you the backstory, then I'm going to go through the current process, the experience I had at this gym. Then you and I are going to pretend to be the gym owners and look at that sales process and figure out a way where we could reconfigure it to make a better user experience or a better customer experience in that particular climbing gym. Now, let me give you some backstory as to how we got into this situation and how the process is set up. So when someone comes into this particular climbing gym, they need to go to the front desk in order to become a member, to get a membership in order to go to the gym. It's just like pretty much any other gym you could imagine. So the person walks in the door, that's kind of the start of the process. And the process should end with someone purchasing some kind of pass. Whether it's a day pass, a membership, or something in between, that's kind of the start and the stop of this process. On its own, that start and stop makes a lot of sense. But where we're going to be optimizing our process today are these steps that take someone from walking in the door to having that membership pass. And just because it's fun, and why not, we're going to start off this journey by talking through what is the current process in place to get you from that start to the stop in the sales process of this gym. Ready? All right, let's go. It starts off with someone like myself opening the door and walking into the gym. When I come in, I see about three people standing at the front desk. Not too busy there the first time.

I should just camp as the thing to start.

They're all just kind of talking amongst themselves, so I kind of awkwardly butt in.

It's not a campus. Oh, yeah, We.

We just came in and we were looking to get a gym membership to kind of climb. And I'm kind of rambling at this point, honestly, but they then jump in with a question which completely catches me off guard.

Okay. Do you climb?

Yeah. Kind of a weird question, right?

No, no, I meant like, top rope, Boulder. Like what. What do you climb?

And then becomes the pile of information.

Okay, well, how it works is we have, you know, four different memberships and three specials, $59 a month. For one person, and it includes one buddy. Pass. The Second membership is $89 a month, but you have to prepay it with an enrollment fee of $59. Now, I think generally that's a good idea if you're someone who's going to be doing a lot of top roping. But if you're not going to be doing top roping, don't bother with that. Then after that, we also have the.

I'm kind of looking back and forth with my spouse at this point saying, like, did you understand the numbers? Because I certainly didn't.

In summary, it could be $59 a month, $89 a month, $159 a month with tax, or $120 a month without the enrollment fee, but with tax. So what do you think?

What do you. What do you recommend?

Oh, well. And generally the best deal is the $99 a month one. I guess I could have just said that.

Okay, confusing part over with. We just pick one and we go. Go with that one. We'll just go with that.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I'm just gonna need some information from you. Here you go. And I'm also gonna need your card. I'm just gonna type these things in here. Oh, yeah, I also need. Oh, I also need to sign the waivers. Have you signed the waivers yet? No. Okay, go sign the waivers and then come back and I can check you out.

Okay, good. Yeah, I'll fill that out. Oh. Oh, that too. Then there's a mess of paperwork that gets handed out, half of it interrupting the other half. While Alex is paying, I'm filling out paperwork, but then he forgot to give him the paperwork. It was just kind of confusing. Oh, you gave me the wrong one here. So we're just kind of all sitting there quietly as he's typing a bunch of things into his computer.

Oh, you're still there. No, no, I. I just have to type this. Just wait there for a second. I just gotta type this stuff out. Just keep typing. A lot of words. Gotta type, you know. Could you. Could you spell that? Okay, great. Yeah. Just when you're done the waiver, I'll just stand here and. Oh, sorry. No, no, I. She can help you. I'm still waiting on them to fill out a waiver, you know. Okay.

Finally we're good to go. And we start putting in the payment information.

All right, sweet. So you signed away your life. I have your certificate. I have your waiver. Here's your rental shoes, and have fun.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, man.

Do you have any Idea where we go from here? I have no idea. I guess that way I know.

That's why I told them too. Like, if you're gonna campus it, just campus it.

I don't know. I feel like we're bothering them. Let's just go. So already you're seeing some of the problems. Kind of a false start where the client has to kind of push for getting service. A lot of information at the onsite, which immediately puts the customer in a position of feeling like they don't belong or they don't know enough to be there. Then, rather than asking the customer what they need and finding the right match for them, we just give the customer all the information and have them make the decision. Finally, we get to the point where there's paperwork, and it's a little bit of paperwork here, a little bit of paperwork there, a little bit of paperwork here, and it becomes a little chaotic for everybody to keep track of all of the missing pieces. Now let's try to rework this process and retrain these front desk employees to think about our process in a new way. If you and I were the gym owner. All right, take two. I am opening the door, and I'm walking in the gym.

It's like, man, if you're gonna campus the thing, just campus the thing. Oh, hold on. Someone's coming in. Hey, welcome to Imaginary Climbing Gym.

Hi.

Can I help you with something?

Yeah. So we just came in and we were looking to get a gym membership to kind of climb.

I'm so glad you're here. So are you looking to climb something specific today or you're just looking for kind of an overall pass to let you try a bit of everything at the gym?

I think a little bit of everything. I mean, we're new to this, but we're looking to try. Just try out the gym.

So if you're looking to climb a little bit of everything, you still want to just try it out for a month? I would say the $99 a month plan would be the best fit for that. Does that sound good to you?

Okay.

Sweet. And there's also other plans if you want to check them out. They're up there, but I think you've got the right choice. So to get you guys started, I'm going to need four pieces of information from you. First of all, IDs from both of you. Car keys as collateral for the rentals, waivers filled out, and of course, a credit card to pay for everything here. So you see the picture there on the desk actually breaks down the four different items that you need in case that's, you know, you're a little overwhelmed. I know this is a lot of info. You can actually take a seat over to the side with the waiver, start filling this stuff out. As soon as you guys have that bring that paperwork back up here. I'll knock out all the typing I need to do, and you can actually get started on your rental shoes while I get that information ready.

Oh, I see. Okay, the four objects. Let me just look through my bag here, and. Yeah, we'll come back up when we have that ready. I'm filling out all the paperwork.

Sweet. Oh, you're next in line. You know, I can take you here. We're going to be waiting a few minutes on those waivers. Come on over. I can check you out as well.

All right, here you go. We've got all the stuff filled out.

Oh, great. The waivers are done. Thank you. I'm going to fill this stuff out. Susie's going to hook you up with some rental shoes, and once this is filled out here, you'll be good to go. So check in back in with me. In about five minutes, I'll have all this stuff filled out.

We'll go grab the rental shoes, and we'll come right back.

I'm typing a lot of words to type.

Go over to get my rental shoes.

Oh, look, they gave me their ID So I already have their name. Oh, they got the license. It's all right here. Great. The waivers are already filled out. No one needs to wait.

Walking back to the front desk.

Sweet. Okay, so all the paperwork is done. You've already got your rental shoes, which speeds up that process for you. And this is all I need at this point. So welcome to the gym. If you need a map of any sort, it's actually over there on the wall. Bathrooms are right around the corner as well. And if you need anything while you're here, please just let me know. We're always up here and happy to help.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Climb on, man.

So already we're seeing a change of tone here, because now, rather than the customer starting the interaction, the front desk is being proactive in starting that exchange. Then, rather than the customer being put on the spot with jargony terms that may or may not make sense to them, the front desk is kind of keeping it simple and asking a basic question that's going to help them point in the right direction. Finally, when it comes to picking the right plan or membership level for this person, rather than putting the onus on the customer to understand all of your options and find the right fit. Instead, the front desk uses their own expertise of knowing what other customers like this person needs, listening to what this person has to say about why they're there in the gym and matches them with the right fit for them, giving them the other options if they want to explore, but giving a clear recommendation as to what exactly they need to know and what is the best fit for them. Then, when it comes to the paperwork, the stuff that's pretty complicated, we have it all front loaded. We have a clear visual showing the four items we need. We get all of it from the customer first. In one period. We input all of it while letting the customer focus on other activities. And by the time the customer comes back, we have all of the paperwork done and the customer is being entertained and served at each moment and not in this weird holding pattern or this constant state of interruptions or onus being put on the customer. Finally, we end this with a much more positive interaction and giving them some additional information they didn't yet know to ask for, but that they know would be helpful. And voila. We have a revamped sales process. Now, I'm sure I missed details here, and just doing that acting might have thrown off some of the accuracies of the situation, but the flow charts I hope will help you understand how this process could easily be improved. If we wanted to implement the changes that we talked about in this video with this particular staff, with this particular staff member, all we would need to do is retrain our front desk. Just like we'd create a picture showing the five items that a customer needs to give us in order to set up a membership. We could also create a simple five step process or whatever it might be for our front desk to know what they're expected to do and how they're expected to engage with customers. Unless we do that, we can't be upset when we have these kinds of awkward sales exchanges like the one that myself and my spouse experienced when we went to this gym. This is especially the case when we're dealing with places with a more casual staff. So many people at this particular gym will work there part time on top of other responsibilities. Or they're just hobbyists who happen to always work at the front desk because they love the Sport that much. That is 100% okay. But in those situations, we want to be even stronger with our process to ensure even casual workers or volunteers have all that they need in order to deliver an experience that's on par with what we want our brand to be like. I know this was in many ways a weird video, but if this is helpful to you, please do let me know in the comments. If you'd like to see more like that, let me know. And if you hated this video, also let me know in the comments. While you're down there, please do like and subscribe to let the YouTube algorithm know you enjoy this, and until next time, remember to enjoy the process.