How Customer Experience Changes Lives

Kim Healey is our Director of  Logistics here at The Abs Company, which includes our Customer Experience Department. She's been at The Abs Company for over 17 years and could write a book on what she has learned in that time! We're sharing some of her thoughts on Customer Experience in today's blog post. Enjoy!

Whether you’re in the field or not, sales is just a part of life. We’ve all tried to sell something even if we’re not in sales at all. For instance if you went to a great restaurant and you want to tell your friends about it, your explanation of your experience to them is your ‘sales pitch’. Whether they ‘buy it’ or not depends on how good your sales pitch is. Usually if the sales pitch comes from your heart, and the restaurant was TRULY GREAT, they will buy in and go try the restaurant as well. Your deep seeded belief in the great restaurant and your desire to spread that experience to others showed in your sales pitch because it was authentic.

The same is true in business. If you’re selling something that you believe in, if you truly know in your heart that the thing you’re selling will help someone else, your sales pitch will be authentic and people will most likely buy in. At The Abs Company one of our core values is “We Believe in our Products and the Benefits they provide to our customers”. And our Purpose is to CHANGE LIVES from the core. So by selling equipment that we believe in, that we KNOW will provide benefits, we are able to change lives thru our innovative and accessible equipment. The thing that we celebrate here at The Abs Company, is not the day when we run the credit card and make the sale, the thing that we celebrate is the day our customer tells us about a success story due to our equipment; a potential member who climbed onto one of our machines and subsequently joined the gym because they felt comfortable using our equipment; the weight loss contest that a club offered to members incorporating our core zone or hiit zone workouts, pounds lost, muscles built, lives changed. That is what we celebrate.

I think that all of the above leads to a good customer experience for our customer list. It all starts with common beliefs. Those of us in the fitness industry probably all believe deep in our hearts that Fitness Changes Lives, you really can’t argue with that belief. Because of this common belief we all want to help others through fitness. Our sales team is small but mighty. Each member shares the belief that our equipment is unique, innovative and accessible to all fitness levels, from beginner to advanced. Therefore the start to our customers experience is that of education and sharing the knowledge we have about how our equipment solves problems and benefits others.

The next step in our customer experience falls under another of our core values, We LEAD with Gratitude. Our customers are our GOLD. We do not accept the fact that we might have a one time customer. We want them coming back for more and we want them telling their friends about us, just like the great restaurant. If our customers have a great experience with The Abs Company, and they tell their friends about us, with a deep seeded belief in our products, that’s about as powerful of a compliment we can get! We work hard every day to make raving fans out of our customers. Our Customer Experience department is constantly searching for ways to thank our customers for their business. Our Parts Department works tirelessly to keep our equipment in perfect working order, we will never be satisfied with our work unless our customers are happy with our products.

We are in over 10,000 facilities and over a million homes WORLDWIDE; just picture one of those clubs and one piece of our equipment, imagine how many people climb on that machine on a daily basis, imagine they are sore the next day from the workout they did, then you BELIEVE, you KNOW in your heart that our equipment has made a difference in someone’s life. That is pretty motivating to all of us here at The Abs Company, a reason to keep going, to do our best on a daily basis. We have a model here at The Abs Company called the TAC Continuum. It’s meant to remind us that no department is more important than another. For instance if we didn’t have a sales department no-one would know about our equipment, if we didn’t have a logistics department no one would receive our equipment, if we didn’t have a finance department we wouldn't get paid etc etc. By reminding ourselves on a daily basis that our equipment is improving and changing lives all over the world, our work, no matter our position here, is important and is life changing. This mindset leads to a great customer experience because every single person working here knows that we must do our best, we must treat our customers like gold, we must provide the greatest experience we can to all of our customers in order to continue to improve and change lives through our innovative and accessible equipment.

I have worn a lot of hats here at The Abs Company, after being here for 17 years. I’ve watched us grow, and as we’ve grown I’ve shed a good number of my hats and now concentrate on Logistics and Operations. This company is my pride and joy and it’s my family. Most of our team is very similar, people stick around here. This family like atmosphere, this love of our company and of our product line is palpable when you meet us. That makes us authentic and that means that we stand behind our products. We’ve all had bad experiences with companies that don’t do this. There’s no worse feeling than buying something and then realizing it’s a piece of junk and the company you bought it from was just looking to make a buck. Our Core Values, our incredibly committed team, and our common belief in our products and our work are just the opposite and that is what our customers experience once they start their journey with The Abs Company. We Change Lives From the Core, every single day and I personally feel so blessed and lucky for the opportunity to be a part of that!