Author: Zealus

Categories
annoyances personal

Is Crisis Over? Gyms Think So

Last week the Crunch gym that was conveniently located downstairs in the same building where I work suddenly moved. E-mail came in on Tuesday stating that starting Tuesday the gym is located within 15 minutes from the previous place, everybody’s welcome. Now, that’s what I call a good customer service (note: this is the case of heavy use of irony).

Crunch offered 3 months of free membership while at the same time upgrading the existing members of that location to all-locations membership at the previous discounted rate. However, a 20 minute travel eats out of workout time, not work time. I got concerned and started visiting other nearby gyms – to see if I have any alternative.

The closest one was NY Health & Racquet Club. Conveniently located within 3 minutes of walking time, it was an obvious choice. The drawbacks were a bit messy appearance, a bit too crowded cardio floor and narrow staircases between gym floors. However, nice sales reps, swimming pool with jacuzzi and attendants in the locker rooms made up for it.

Next on my list was the other Crunch location (where they actually moved to). I figured if I could work out after hours, it might be still better, plus I got a bit lower rate. However, lack of the pool, just the same amount of mess and cardio machines packed a little too tight made that a “NO”. Additionally, there was no guarantee that this new gym would not go yet another place overnight again.

Another one, within about 5 – 6 minute walking distance, was NYSC – New York’s sub-network of of a larger network of sports clubs. Being regarded as “Manhattan’s Bally’s” the gym truly stood out – in a bad way. I’ve spent about 10 minutes waiting for someone to come up to me and at least greet a potential client. Cleaning lady seemed to be the friendliest person to be found, as she was asking if I needed anything to dry out (I came in from the rainy outside without an umbrella). Ten minutes later the sales rep appeared, but figuring I am coming from corporate account he’s got nothing to sell me, he quickly vanished again, saying that another guy will take care of me and show me around. That another guy was, actually, a nice person, but having waited for him yet another 10 minutes while he was finishing the conversation with his colleague was in no way fun. I don’t know how traders react (the gym is located right on Wall Street), but I had enough patience to actually wait out till the end. He showed me around briefly, but I already disliked the place – because of the customer service. I don’t ask for much, but a simple courtesy of not wasting my 20 minutes on just waiting – that’s too much. Also, sales reps were boasting about having a pool as being a privilege of off-the-work gyms, rather than ones that are in the city. Too bad, as a sales person is such a dense area you should know your competition better. It really doesn’t cost a cent to send someone down the Broadway to check out three other gyms on the street. Takes one person less then 2 hours.

So there I was, left pretty much with only one choice on the list – New York Health & Racquet Club. The gym won without really trying, with their old-fashioned approach when sales woman talks to the guy and sales guy talks to female client definitely had added more positive influence (I liked that sweet girl that showed me around), the gym with the pool in Downtown Manhattan is definitely a plus and it’s the closest one I have found.

Now why all the trouble if I could’ve just went to NYHRC and not waste my time on gym visits? Well, for one – I am serious about my workout and I really do put a lot of time and effort into it. So I want a place where I would want to go to, with good atmosphere. Second – I workout during the day, so I need to spend on “other stuff” (like waiting for showers, equipment, lockers, etc.) as less time as possible, maximizing the workout time – this ruled out new Crunch location. Third – I want nice people around me. Most gyms in Manhattan keep a certain level of professionalism, where they treat the client as a decent human being. I haven’t seen that at NYSC.

Overall, I spent less than 2 hours on all three gyms, did my homework and made the best decision I could – based on what people who wanted to sell me a membership had showed me. What does your sales person actually show to your prospective clients?

Categories
clients

Can You Please Stop The Spam For Me?

Anyone who ever worked with customers knows that customers are ignorant. They don’t care how, what or when, they want their instant gratification now. Now, damn it! I mean NOW! Certain providers are happy to oblige, some would spit in customer’s soup to return the favor, some would turn such a customer away and ask not to come back ever. Everybody’s got their own favorite story to tell.

However, there’s another trend, that you may observed if you stick with your clients long enough, especially if your relationship is more or less successful. It’s the trend of ignorance rising, based on belief that you, the service provider, can solve any problem out there. From e-mails bounced off to Sun stopped rolling around Earth. And the better you do your job, the more unreasonable client’s demands become. While working as a systems administrator awhile ago, I have experienced this firsthand. Once you fixed something unbelievably hard once or twice, clients start thinking you can fix internet for them, no less. With them just asking.

Recently, one of our clients asked us to route a few common e-mail  pointers to actual people’s mailboxes. Immediately they started having, what they called, a “spam problem”. As in: “After he did this we started to have a spam problem”. Inclined to say the famous “welcome to the real world, Neo”, I tried to educate client’s staff on what is spam, how it originates and why I can do absolutely nothing to stop it, except for a set of measures that will definitely reduce it, if applied properly. Client wasn’t interested in spending any time on implementing spam protection (not to mention implement any of the commercial tools), while his staff is forced to use web mail instead of any other e-mail client. I still did what I thought I should – turned on SpamAssassin on the server to at least mark the most obvious cases of spam, so they could bulk-delete them and explained how to use filters in Outlook. Not that I expect any significant improvement of the “spam problem” for that particular client, but too I can’t be very pushy.

One of the reasons, as I see it, for not adopting any solution whatsoever, is that instant gratification thing:

What? You can’t turn off the spam? What about that solution? Still not 100% proof? Then I don’t want any solution at all!

While this approach works perfectly in 10022-SHOE zip code, it doesn’t really work in a world of Bayesian approach to catching spam. The only way to do this is to hire an interpreter from SHOE-ish to English.

Categories
software

Spa Software – What Makes One A Leader?

This Sunday (i.e. yesterday) I went to a International Esthetics, Cosmetics & Spa Conference. The word International in the title means that there was a lot of Asian vendors (in fact – I had a strong feeling they have dominated the scene). However, since I was more interested in a technology perspective of the conference – I was dealing primarily with homeland vendors.

What attracted my attention was a spa management software. Before looking at it closely I was under impression that a simple MS Outlook set up would pretty much solve 90% of the problems. I wasn’t that far away, however, certain things have been showcased a lot better.

The three vendors that I had a chance to talk to were SpaBooker.com, Millenium (from Harms Software) and Spaware Salonware. Every software suit had their own advantages over the competition, however, since I am not even remotely the user of the software I wouldn’t go too deep into reviewing it. What I will do instead is concentrate on how each company was selling their software product.

SpaBooker had three average-looking ladies (nothing to see here, move along) and one loud-speaking boss-guy. The gentleman turned out to be very friendly and pretty much showcased all the advantages of the product in a bliss. For some reason when I asked directly if this is a hosted solution (it was obvious that it is to anyone who can read off the browser’s address bar) presenters went too shy and I sensed an attempt to hide some sort of guilt. Not sure why that’s a problem, but I guess since pretty much all other spa management software comes as a standalone package – there might be some doubts. On the other hand – they might have sold it as an advantage point (if your PC crashes – your data is safe, and so on), but they didn’t. The actual web service is developed using .NET technology and looks very bright and friendly. Definitely a plus from my point of view, since it doesn’t look as boring and as DOS-like as other packages. A little better marketing can just give this service a needed boost, since these guys are pretty new to the market.

The Millenium package, developed by Harms Software, had a stand right across from SpaBooker, so it was very natural that I approached them with the question “How’s your software is better than software of the guys right across from you?”. Unfortunately, the lady who was answering my questions was talking in somewhat low voice, so I simply could not hear some of the answers. She was much better looking (which is always a plus), but she wasn’t definitely confident in the software package she was selling, defaulting every now and then to a defensive stance. It may work in a single’s bar scene, but not when you have people asking you about the product you are selling. Since the company is in business for over 20 years (or so I heard), they might have come up with someone more proficient or more proactive. The marketing materials looked a lot better than those from SpaBooker, but when I heard that the version of the software they’re showcasing is dated 2007 – that was a definite Oops moment. Don’t know if they will improve their presentation for Monday and Tuesday, but that’s what they had on Sunday.

The last stand I was able to browse was the Spaware Salonware. Aside from hard-to-pronounce name and totally horrible-looking web site, the company showcased a pretty decent product. In fact, despite the program’s interface looking like 90’s are a-calling, the ease of use was amazing. The package is tailored to be used with touch-screen monitors (or heavy use of mouse, if you don’t want to invest in touch screen LCD), with additional modules, like Marketing (that’s just an automated discount tracker and e-mail management piece) and payment processor (which – from the presenter’s words – is custom tailored to your merchant provider). There were two people at the stand – the gentleman who was trying to pitch me that their company is using MS SQL server while all others are using Access (don’t know how true is that), therefore you can book millions of appointments (like that’s a possibility), and a very friendly nice-looking lady. The presentation was conducted in a very friendly fashion, although the overall stance was “we’re so much better than the others because we use Windows interface and SQL server” which was a bit surprising. In any case, the whole concept of a software with touch-screen friendly interface beats any other thing by leaps and bounds. From my perspective, the only two things this company needs to do is get a better-looking web site and default to touch-screen interface altogether.

To sum it all up, it was a nice experience looking at software products for totally unfamiliar market and seeing how problems are solved there. Even though I haven’t seen much of fresh ideas floating around (probably because management software isn’t considered a top-technology market), but there were a few things that got me thinking.

Now, if you ask me – after seeing all these products what do I personally think on how such a suite should look like, I would say it has to have the following:

  • touch screen friendly interface (a must!)
  • bright-colored calendar for ease of reading (spas use darker corners to hide their PC equipment, so it might come in handy to have easy to look at colors)
  • interchangeable web and standalone pieces (so that one can manage his/her spa from the PC in the office with installed piece of software and from home laptop without installing anything on the it)
  • data backup capabilities with encryption
  • client-tracking capabilities (which client purchased what and when, do they need a refill, a reminder of ongoing appointment, etc)
  • inventory-tracking capabilities (what product is in stock, what supplies are needed to be ordered), preferably with hookups to vendors
  • money-tracking capabilities (i.e. who got what service, how much was paid, what’s the commissions, etc.) or total payroll management
  • reporting on anything you can imagine

Anyone is in the mood to invest in a spa software startup?