4 Salon Strategies for Unforgettable Client Journeys!

With more hair and beauty businesses than ever fighting for customer spend, retaining your customers, maintaining loyalty has never been more important. And to do that, you're going to want to get to grips with your client journey. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friend. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. Phil Jackson, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. As we steam into Q4, we're now in October, or we are at the time of this release, and this is my favourite time of year. The next three months can be the difference between a kind of okay year and an absolute stormer, an absolute corker of a year. Okay, those traditional patterns of spend around maybe Christmas and New Year's might have disappeared, or at least taken a bit of a battering over the last few years. We've still got plenty of opportunity. I also really like the way that the marketing shifts its flavour this time of year, and we start talking all cosy nights in and pumpkin spice. Not that summer was anything to write home about here in the UK, at least. So what are we talking about today? Well, we're talking about your customer journey. And the reason that's important is because we are facing a more and more competitive environment. So maintaining loyalty, keeping customers as part of your business has never been more important. To be honest with you, there's so much now that our customers can do at home, we've got to give them a reason to come in and enjoy the salon experience. And that's what a customer journey is all about. There are so many services they can carry out themselves. So much home care now is actually pretty good quality. We can do a reasonable job of maintaining a lot of our hair and beauty services without visiting the salon at all. So why would we come in? Because it's got to be enjoyable. It's got to be memorable. It's got to be an experience. It needs to be part of a well thought out journey. So here are my four tips today on how to build brilliant customer journeys. And my first tip is all around personalisation. I've been predicting in our wonderful hair and beauty industry that there will be a polarisation of our businesses. Basically, my feeling has been over the last five or six years, perhaps even a bit longer than that. My feeling has been that we've even got to be spit and sawdust. Just grab a seat. We'll get to you as soon as we're ready. Nice high churn rate of customers getting services done as quickly and as cheaply as we can and charging bargain basement prices.

Or we need to deliver a top end experience, charge as professionals and deliver an exceptional standard of service delivery. And I've always known which side of the coin I want to be. That middle ground, I think, is a very dangerous place to be. It's very crowded. It's very competitive. And it's very difficult to tell one business apart from another. But the only way we can elevate that experience, the only way we can reach for the top end of that marketplace is through personalisation. Think of it in clothing terms. If you're going to buy something straight off the rack, straight off the peg, then you're expecting to pay a lot less than you would for something that's been created bespoke for you, for something that's been tailored to your individual needs. So for us to gravitate to that top end, we've got to start personalising our treatments. And I don't see this happening very much when we're marketing our treatments at all. At the end of the day, if you're expecting people to order from a menu and just get what they're given, well, isn't that the McDonald's model? Isn't that getting to that spit and sawdust end, which I don't think is going to be particularly maintainable or particularly motivating in the longer term? So really focus on personalising your experiences, personalising your services and personalising your packages and bundles. Let's get this transformation happening in hair and beauty businesses. Tip number two, and in a similar vein, we've got to get to grips with our consultation techniques. Firstly, it's going to help us with that personalisation process. And I hope I've spelt out the importance of tailoring our packages by now. But our consultation is generally not that brilliant, to be honest. And I think that a big reason that we struggle with maintaining client loyalty, with keeping people in our businesses over time, is down to consultation. And I'm sorry, you know, I adore my hairdressing friends, but I'm pointing my finger very firmly at you guys in this. I think there's a very real danger in hairdressing services that over time, as familiarity builds and the customer becomes a regular that we've seen for quite some time, I think we get in a rut.

And I don't think we lose customers from our salons necessarily because we've done a terrible job. A terrible job. I think quite a lot wander off because they're just bored because they're not getting the ideas for next time. We've stopped selling them on the dream of the transformation. We've stopped selling them on the alternatives. We're just doing more of the same. And I think that's a very dangerous place to be if you want to keep a customer motivated to spend money with you. So it's got to come down to the consultation. And this is one thing that formed part of my salon promise, my five point promise. One of those points was that you would receive a full consultation every single time. And part of that consultation was going to be an idea for next time, something that we could move that journey forward with you. And I think that's something that you can implement in your own business, too. We're very good at investing in our technical training. Unfortunately, I don't think our technical training providers are very good at making sure that we're great at the consultation. And I think that's the bit that actually makes the money. So invest in some proper consultation training. If you can find a provider that just deals in consultation training, even better. Let's make sure the consultation is a valuable part of the customer experience, a valuable part of their customer journey. Heck, I've said for a long time that we need to be charging proper money for consultations. You can only do that if you're doing a really, really good job. So have a paid for consultation on your price card and make sure you're ticking all the boxes every time. My tip number three is about making the client journey much, much longer. And I'm not necessarily talking about keeping them in your salons, holding them prisoner behind locked doors for as long as possible. What I'm talking about is starting that customer journey much sooner and finishing that customer journey a lot longer after the appointment. What do you mean, Phil? Give us some clarity, for goodness sake. What are we actually trying to do here? Well, I think we miss an opportunity if we're not keeping in contact, particularly with new customers. We're not keeping in contact ahead of the appointment. So many times when I test a new salon and I do, my dears, be aware Uncle Phil is on the prowl for hair and beauty business providers.

But every time I try a new salon out, I can pretty much guarantee, especially if I make the appointment online, that I'm not going to get any contact apart from maybe an appointment reminder before the day of my visit. And I think that is a huge wasted opportunity. Sometimes in a beauty service, then I might receive a consultation form or some disclaimer that I have to sign before I turn up. But there's nothing to help extend that journey. There's nothing to nurture my custom. There's nothing to make me feel part of the salon. There's nothing to start bringing me into the family. And I think we should be putting a lot more contact points ahead of those appointments. We could, for example, be directing people to a walkthrough video. Going to a new salon is actually really intimidating, even for me, who visits salons all day, every day. It's just not nice to not know what to expect behind that door, where to put your coat, for example, where to go to the loo, where can I get a drink, where am I going to be sat waiting? Perhaps even a small personalised introduction from the team member who's going to be taking care of me. Also, there's an opportunity if we've got those touch points ahead of the visit. Every single one of those is an opportunity to be upselling me on further services. For example, I've been going to the same salon to get these awful unkempt brows, tweezed and tinted for a very long time. Have they ever tried to sell me on any other service while I'm led there on the bed? For goodness sake, this is money for old rope. You're already paying a beauty therapist to stand behind me and talk while we're waiting for the tint to take. Could she not be carrying out some other service? In fact, I had to ask about what other services could be included. And so many of your salon clients will not be asking those questions. So let's get the upselling happening a lot sooner ahead of people's appointments. Furthermore, after the appointment, what contact do I get? Well, I might get a confirmation if I've made another appointment. I might get an automated text message asking me to leave a review. There won't be anything else. And I think we could be automating an awful lot of aftercare advice. And then in between visits, don't forget to keep in touch. I want to hear from you away from social media. I want you emailing me at least weekly with hints and tips and sharing your knowledge, positioning yourself as an expert, positioning your other services as valuable to me as the customer.

So that customer contact is a vital part of increasing the experience of our customer journeys. And finally, please don't ignore the importance of the ambiance of your salon. And I get it. We are very busy people or hopefully busy in our salon businesses. I get that we're on a schedule and we're working to appointment. I get that somebody might have called in sick and maybe the last two customers were running late for you. I get that there's 150 things that you've also got to do after you finished my appointment. But my experience needs to be soothing, calming. I want to feel that I'm in safe hands, not somebody who's rushing from one customer to the next. Can you imagine how anxious you would feel if you were speaking to a surgeon ahead of a very important operation? And they kept looking at their watch because they knew they had three more appointments to see after you. And they couldn't wait to get to the end of your bit of surgery so they could get on with the next patient. Oh, my goodness. Please, can we stop flapping around our salons like startled ducks? Can we start gliding through the salon experience like serene swans? Yes, underneath the surface, you might be paddling like mad, but at least to the customer, at least on outward appearances, it feels like you're calm and in control. Create a space where I feel safe in your hands. And I promise you, I'll be much more willing to spend money with you in the future. So there we have it. My tips on building an exceptional salon experience. But what are you doing? What have I missed? Reach out. Let me know. You know, I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. Also reach out with your questions for my Ask Me Anything episode towards the end of this month. Those episodes are so much more valuable when people actually send me questions in voluntarily, rather than me beating you over the head on my Instagram account trying to get people to send questions in. I think they're actually the most valuable podcast episode. So please, please don't let them die at death. Reach out. I know you've got hundreds of questions for me. Also reach out if you'd like to feature as a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of my wise hour wisdom. And until then, take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care.

Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care.