Your most impressed participants are also your best advocates. Satisfied customers on average tell 9 people about their experience with a company. With a little extra effort you can impress your participants so much that positive reviews about your training spread far beyond these 9 people.

How can you impress your participants so much that you really stand out in a positive way? We give you 12 tips in this blog post.

How to impress your participants?

What does it take for your participants to have an above average experience? How can you really impress your participants?

1. Promise less and deliver more

How to make a satisfied customer an impressed customer? Deliver more than you promised. To achieve this, you may have to promise less or increase your efforts.

2. Make it easy to be your participant

In a survey with over 75,000 customers, it was found that the most important factor for a customer’s loyalty is to reduce the customer’s own efforts. Here are some examples of what you can do:

Reduce the customer’s own efforts to register for training. Have a registration form on your own website and be visible in channels where people are looking for training. Over 1 million training applicants are looking for training via the training portal Kursguiden.no. By being visible here, you make it easy for potential participants to find your training.

Reduce the customer’s own efforts to resolve a problem. Be sure to have contact information clearly visible on your own website and in other channels where you are visible. One example is to include contact information in the registration confirmation, so that the participant can easily reach you if he has questions and/or need additional information.

3. Don’t pretend you are available when you are not

If you include an email address or a phone number, then you actually have to respond. And preferably as soon as possible. Here you really have the opportunity to impress with fast response time. A survey showed that a customer was six times more likely to feel engaged after receiving prompt service.

4. Be flexible

Make sure that you are ready to make adjustments to accommodate your customers. For example, this may involve using a microphone when you have participants with poor hearing, or adapting your training to a specific company that has booked your training for their employees.

5. Be foresightful

Make use of tools that ensure you keep the quality you promised. This way you will solve problems before they occur. Using checklists can help you a long way. Feel free to download our Excel checklist template for training here.

6. Be spontaneous

Sometimes you may want to get carried away. If an unexpected situation occurs, try to make the best out of it. It is often the less planned moments that people remember! You can add to such situations by including your participants to a greater extent during the training. You never know what a participant can say or do.

7. Surprise your participants and customers

Do something they don’t expect. This can be the key to really making an impression. Here are two examples where someone has done something unexpected that made an impression:

Wufoo thank you cards

Each week, Wufoo sends out handmade, decorative thank you cards to loyal customers to show how valued these customers are. This has received a lot of attention. Do a quick Google search on “Wufoo Thank You Cards” and see for yourself.

BI-lecturer in dress

I remember a situation from. my time at BI particularly well. Our male lecturer promised us to wear a dress in the next lecture if everyone submitted a voluntary assignment. None of the students really believed in him, but everyone handed in the assignment anyway. The next week we were taught by a man in a long, pink dress!

8. Guarantee satisfaction

By guaranteeing satisfaction with your training, you are demonstrating that you are confident that you will deliver what you have promised to deliver. The risk is on your side, not on the participant’s. This makes it easier for a potential participant to trust that you will deliver what you have promised to deliver.

9. Say thank you

Show that you are grateful that the participants chose to attend your training in particular. This is a very simple step, but it shows that you really appreciate your customers. A customer who feels valued is much more likely to become a satisfied customer. There are several ways to say thank you, for example, by sending an e-mail after the completion of the training or by thanking the participants orally during the training participation. Also, do not underestimate the effect of handwritten thank you cards. This, of course, takes some time, but is much more personal than an automatically generated e-mail!

10. Say sorry

37% of all customers are satisfied with service recovery when offered something of monetary value. If the company adds a apology on top of the compensation, the satisfaction doubles to 74%. In other words, you have everything to gain from being humble to your customers.

11. Get to know your participants and make time for small talk

Try to talk to your participants before the training, during the break or after the training ends. Show that you are genuinely interested in your participants. Ask how the participant is doing, listen, and follow up with new questions. Show that you care. This is because many people do not take the time.

12. Follow up and respond to your participants in social media

Follow the participants who take the time to talk about you on social media. Not only is this important for delivering good customer service, but customer reviews also work well as resources for improvement work in your training operations, as well as as credible marketing communications. You can read more about customer reviews here.

Over to you! What do you do to impress your participants? How can you change your mindset from satisfying your customers’ needs to truly impressing them? Comment in the comments section!

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