The Role of the 'Day Call' and NPS: Listening to Evolve

I will confess one of the most challenging - yet undoubtedly the most revealing - parts of my routine as the founder and managing director of Koolfitness. It happens when I sit at my desk on Monday mornings, gather my department directors, and open the global report of the previous week’s customer satisfaction surveys. It is the precise moment when we decide to pick up the phone and directly call someone who gave us an absolutely terrible score.

Yes, you read that correctly. While the overwhelming majority of corporate managers tremble at the mere thought of hearing a front-facing complaint, and often delegate that uncomfortable task to a junior assistant or an automated email system, I view it as an absolute goldmine. In my leadership philosophy, negative feedback is never a personal attack; it is a precious, highly detailed map, offered completely for free by the client, telling us exactly where our operations are failing and where our internal processes are cracking under pressure.

The Cold Shower Incident: When Operations Fail

A few months ago, during our weekly metric analysis, we stumbled upon an NPS score of 4 (on a 10-point scale) from a veteran member, Mr. António. His written justification in the software’s comment box left zero room for interpretation: “The water in the men’s locker room showers took three whole minutes to get hot on Tuesday morning. Completely unacceptable for the premium price I pay.”

The vast majority of modern fitness clubs would simply brush this off by sending an automated email generated by a Customer Service bot, containing generic corporate text like “We apologize for the inconvenience caused, we are working hard to improve.” What did we do? We triggered a sacred internal procedure that we designed from the very foundation of the brand, which we call the Day Call. I refused to delegate it to my front desk. I picked up my phone and called him personally.

“Mr. António, this is Samuel Guerra, the founder of Koolfitness. I just finished reading your review with my management team. We actually had a temporary failure in one of our heat pump circuits that morning, and I have already demanded an urgent intervention from our maintenance company. I want to sincerely apologize that you had to take an almost cold shower before heading to work.”

The man was completely shocked. There was absolute silence on the line for three incredibly long seconds. Why? Because in today’s modern economy, companies constantly hide behind chatbots, ticketing systems, and “no-reply” email addresses. Mr. António appreciated the call - and the fact that the founder of the business had the humility to own the mistake - so much that not only did he forgive the technical failure, but the very next week, he brought his wife in for an assessment to sign her up. The impact of direct, unfiltered empathy, when structured as a mandatory management process, is indescribable and brutally profitable.

NPS: Much More Than a Vanity Metric

For those managing teams or businesses who might not be familiar, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a system created by Bain & Company specifically to measure the exact likelihood of a customer recommending your brand to a friend or family member. From my perspective, it is the most brutal, honest metric that exists in the corporate world.

Many businesses use highly advanced survey systems like Qualtrics or integrate Zendesk to collect massive amounts of data. The problem is that those managers forget that technology, no matter how expensive it is, does not solve the underlying problem. The technology only gives you the X-ray and the diagnosis; the treatment must absolutely be human.

When I implement my operational vision through our technical consulting teams, I demand that the NPS score is never treated as a “vanity metric” just to put on a pretty PowerPoint slide to show investors at the end of the month. It must be a living, breathing document.

In our operational management, we strictly divide clients into three groups: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. For the Promoters (those who give us 9s and 10s), we require the reception team to call and thank them. And the most fascinating part is that when you ask them what makes them love us so much, they never mention the technology in the electric treadmills; they talk about the receptionist’s genuine smile and how the floor coach memorized their name on the very first day. For the Detractors (those scoring under 6), like Mr. António, management mandates the immediate execution of the Day Call by a senior leader. We want to understand and mitigate their pain before the cancellation ever occurs.

The Courage to Listen Face-to-Face

In our premium spaces, such as KVBE, we push this culture of active listening and feedback to the extreme operational limit. That is precisely why I structure my daily agenda so that I am never locked inside a glass office all day.

Being physically present on the gym floor allows me to keep a real thermometer on the business, something I often call a “daily, face-to-face NPS.” When I walk around the weight room supervising my team and greeting members, I ask them openly: “How is your training going today? What could we, as a team, be doing better for you right now?”

It can be daunting and exhausting to constantly invite the raw truth. It can be annoying to hear that the music in Studio 3 is slightly too loud, that the yoga studio floor wasn’t swept perfectly, or that our ecommerce supplement store has inventory issues. But it is exactly that profound management humility - the ability to openly admit to a client that we aren’t perfect and that we are willing to roll up our sleeves and fix it on the spot - that transforms highly critical clients into our fiercest, most loyal defenders.

Modern business and service delivery are built on a single currency: trust. And trust is never earned by sweeping operational problems under a shiny marketing rug; it is earned by looking the problem and the client directly in the eyes, taking full management accountability, and saying: “You are absolutely right. My team and I will fix this right now.”