How can you improve customer service?
Salon success is not just about your technical and creative skills, it’s also about giving your clients an experience that is commensurate with your brand positioning. [that’s a mouthful] But seriously how can you improve your service levels?
Here’s 6 ways to consider.
1. Get your team to experience great service
I used to take great delight in giving my young team members the opportunity to experience great service.
Across the street from one of my salons was a luxury day spa that delivered great service. Occasionally I would book in a young team member for a facial or massage or manicure/pedicure and more often than not it was the first time that they had ever been a client and experienced what it was that I was trying to get them to deliver.
Don’t assume that just because you have eaten in nice restaurants and stayed in nice hotels, maybe had facials and massages and been on the receiving end of great service that your new 20 year old employee has.
You can’t just teach the theory of great service, you have to experience and feel what it is like.
2. Reward great service!
When someone on your team goes ‘above and beyond’ and demonstrates great service, notice it and acknowledge it.
Pick people on your team out in your daily, weekly or monthly meetings and your annual awards ceremony and acknowledge those that have delivered great customer service.
3. Practice delivering it!
Great service doesn’t just happen. People are trained to deliver it!
That starts by first defining what the customer service experience is that you want your clients to have. Once you have defined what it looks like then you need to turn it into a written system so that your team can be trained to deliver it consistently again and again, every time, no matter who the client is, or whether you are there or not.
Define it, document it, systemise it, train people to deliver it and practice it… again and again and again until they get it right.
C’mon guys I didn’t say it was easy but you need to raise the bar and look at what other service industries or hospitality businesses do in order ‘to be’ and to deliver 5 star!
4. Make service your culture
Think of a great hotel like the Ritz Carlton, or a great airline like Emirates or Singapore airlines or a great restaurant like those bearing the name of Gordon Ramsey. What do they all have in common? A ‘5 star’ culture of service is part of what they do and it permeates everything they do!
Big business or little business, it doesn’t matter, have a culture of care and genuine service be part of your company culture!
To make it part of your culture is the most difficult thing to create. You can’t just pay lip service to it. You need ongoing investment and constant training of your people to maintain the standards that you want to represent.
5. Great service requires great teamwork
For great service to be part of your culture it requires great teamwork where each employee acts like a leader, pushing the culture of care and service forward. Sending a message of ‘People like us do things like this’. People like us, care!
6. Get your clients involved
Get your clients involved, give them the opportunity to give feedback, to acknowledge good and bad service experiences and feed those experiences back into the system.
Review processes and current best practices and always be asking “How can we do this better?”
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