Addressing customer misinformation – DSP 82

Every float center owner has to deal with customers who get, maybe, a little overenthusiastic about the float experience. What is the best way to deal with customers who say things that are just patently false about the benefits of floating? Do you just let it slide? Do you correct them and potentially offend your customer? It’s not their fault, they’re just excited. It doesn’t seem right to punish them.

This is definitely a tightrope walk type of conversation and it can have an impact on your customers and your reputation as a business, as well as the whole industry. As stewards of the tank, Graham and Ashkahn offer their advice on how best to have this difficult conversation and offer some resources to help with it as well.

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Today’s question is, ”what do you do when your customers say blatantly wrong things about the benefits of floating?”

Ashkahn: Yeah, this happens. It’s not fun, it’s not a fun situation. I wouldn’t put this in the category of good times, you know.

Graham: Yeah, yep, yep. So there’s many situations this can arise actually. The one that I find the most uncomfortable is when someone is bringing in their friend to the float center, and they’re describing to their friend some kind of false benefit of floating and I’m overhearing.

Ashkahn: Uh-huh.

Graham: Have to figure out what to do, and we’ll get to that. Someone comes in and is like, “Yeah man, two hours in this tank will give you a full nights sleep. So if you’re doing a two hour float tonight, don’t even bother going back to bed” and you’re like “Ohhh! Kablooey”.

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s just so embarrassing. Are you gonna go and embarrass your customer, or are you going to just sit idly by and let misinformation spread through the world?

Graham: It’s tough, it’s a tough life being a float center owner. So, for me, I find the need to correct it in the most inoffensive way possible. It’s pretty much the goal there.

Ashkahn: You have to correct, I can’t, you can’t just have people keep thinking things that are wrong. You feel like we’re stewards of-

Graham: “That has 80,000 pounds of salt in there!”

Ashkahn: Yeah, so what I do is I get a big buzzer, as soon as they say something.

Graham: I get like a shepherd’s crook that I can just like pull them off to the side with it and then fill in their part of the conversation.

Ashkahn: Yeah, use that telescoping rescue pole. The one hung up on our wall.

Graham: So I usually just try to figure out, for me the least offensive way to get people right is to agree with them, and then start just shifting what I was agreeing about.

Ashkahn: Usually in kind of a high pitched voice, it’s like, “Yeah, yeah, exactly but not exactly like that.”

Graham: Then you lower the voice as it gets toward real facts.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: It just seems more natural.

Ashkahn: It’s my tactic as well, yeah.

Graham: So if someone comes in and they say, “Ah he had two hours in here and it was eight hours of sleep.” You’re like, “Yeah float tanks are incredibly restful. They rejuvenate you, they rejuvenate you a lot. We don’t actually have data about exactly how much time in a float tank equals exactly how much sleep, but definitely a really common response that we get is that people feel like they’re way more rested than coming in. Or almost like they’re fresh in the morning or something like that.”

Ashkahn: Yeah, I feel good now.

Graham: So again, it’s like the agreeing and then sort of spreading out actual facts. The thing that you don’t want to do in my mind is be like, “Oh that’s wrong. Your friend’s an idiot. Both of you leave, you think you’re allowed to float.”

Okay, another scenario is someone just starts bragging to you about the benefits of floating, right?

Ashkahn: Well here is there any scenario where you wouldn’t correct it?

Graham: Me, personally?

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: I guess there’s like wishy washy stuff. People get out and they’re just like, “Oh man, I totally astral projected in there.”

Ashkahn: Okay, uh-huh. Sure.

Graham: I mean, they totally could have. I don’t know.

Ashkahn: I’m not going to correct stuff like that.

Graham: Right? And also, and I guess it’s not wrong, so they totally could have, I don’t know if you can astral project or whatever, who knows?

Ashkahn: Yeah. I guess I’m not going to impose my belief of reality onto them at that moment.

Graham: Yep, yep. So here’s another common example too that I get. Is people saying that the salt water will just suck all of the toxins out of your body.

Ashkahn: Detoxifying effects.

Graham: Which have definitely not been proven. I don’t even know exactly what that means, or what toxins they’re talking about, that’s a whole ripe subject even not in the float world.

Ashkahn: But it’s a weird one because it’s a hard one to lightly refute. You know what I mean?

Graham: Yep.

Ashkahn: You can’t just be like, “Oh yeah, totally.” The thing is, “I don’t know what you’re talking about and those words don’t make sense.”

Graham: Yeah, and so again, I’ll say something like, “A lot of people come out of the float tank feeling really nice and they’ve almost released some stuff that was making them feel bad. We don’t really have any studies exactly on this idea of detoxification in the float tank, or whether magnesium is actually sucking things out of your body, but certainly the reports of users are right in line with feeling great afterwards like that.”

Ashkahn: The situations like that can be tricky I’ve noticed, because it seems like the customers really want you to agree with what they’re saying.

Graham: They’re like pausing after they say it.

Ashkahn: Yeah, they say something and they pause. They’re like, “You know what I’m talking about.” You’re like, “Oh.” Yeah, you do have to kind of like gently steer. I don’t know, I’ve never been in the situation where I’ve just outright said something that I didn’t believe. I’ve never felt a need to do that.

Graham: No, and honestly there’s so many people who like all kinds of different types of floats, that it’s really easy to point to your other customers as well when people come in with kind of crazy claims or things like that as well. Again, even saying things that are more in line with personal problems that they’re suffering with or something like that. Like, “This helped me through my childhood emotional trauma.” It’s like, “Great,” other people have also had that experience, or something. We don’t have to go into the fact that there’s no research done on that specifically. And similarly I guess I always go back to research, because claims can be made about anything that’s going on. And it’s a really easy thing to say, “Hey there’s not any published peer reviewed research on that, that I know of. But a lot of people report that the impact of that is similar to what you are saying.” It’s kind of my soft go-to I guess.

Ashkahn: So yeah, it’s kind of gentle like bringing people back into your opinion.

Graham: And keep in mind this is just our opinion as well.

Ashkahn: You see how we’re like soothing you into agreeing with us?

Graham: “I know we all thought in the past agreeing with Graham and Ashkahn was a bad idea, but now that we know the facts, I think we can get on to similar terms here.” That’s all I got. It’s an awkward conversation, it’s going to come up. And I just think it’s our duty as people who are actually running these things and are more well informed to spread a little bit of knowledge and truth out there and not just go along with what people say because it’ll make the conversation easier.

Ashkahn: Definitely.

Graham: And if you have anymore awkward questions that you want to ask us, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and send them on in.

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