I noticed something different when I checked into my room on Thursday, and I’ve carried it with me the entire weekend. The front desk staff at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare hotel has noticeably stepped up their customer service. Front desk personnel are generally affable people, otherwise they wouldn’t be put in this front-line service opportunity. But the man who checked me in punctuated his service with one small gesture that made a difference. After keying in all the proper details, he stepped out from behind the desk, came around to the front where I was standing, handed me my room key and showed me which way to go.

 This “stepping out” dissolved the boundary between guest and employee. It made me feel like I was being met, one on one, and that I was more than just another customer. He brought hospitality back to life for me (I worked in the hospitality industry for several years). Fitness professionals, who are also in a service-oriented industry, can learn a lot from this type of personalized, branded customer experience.

For example, if you are a personal trainer, can you think of ways to deeply customize your first meeting with a new client? Is there a new layer of service you can access? Perhaps you can use your already great listening skills to really hear that this person sitting in front of you has a more pressing goal than weight loss. If you are a group fitness instructor, maybe stepping out from behind the desk looks like greeting your participants at the door with a big smile and welcome. If you are a director or manager, you might even want to suggest to your front desk staff that they literally step out from behind the reception kiosk and greet members one on one.

Every session I had the privilege to see this weekend, on some level, preached the stepping out technique I describe above. In his Cardio Dance session, Rob Glick talked about how to make your class feel not simply motivated, but successful, whatever that looked like for each person. In his Balance for Boomers session, Evan Omar, DC, shared his infectious passion with the room. His mission was to help personal trainers grow a new pair of sensory organs when dealing with older adults and balance issues. That kind of commitment takes some “stepping out.” For IDEA members who have been stepping for years and who continue to find new ways to modify and keep this format alive, it might be beneficial to cross apply techniques.

From the outside looking in, I wonder if fitness professionals can see how far they’ve grown with the industry itself. I see passionate people who love helping others. I see professionals who consistently improve their own games so they can impact their communities. I see intelligent, dedicated personal trainers, group fitness instructors and fitness facility managers who--after two decades for many--are still hungry to refine their skills. The 2008 IDEA Fitness Fusion Conference  brought scores of these inspirational people together for an experience that defined how stepping out from behind the desk can have a ripple effect on the world.