Do you do a good job? Promise??

Sit down and see what's going on with the Queen of Salons. Hair, beauty, and more successful tips for business owners. All on Build Your Salon. Hello my salon friends, Phil Jackson here, Queen of Salons, coming in your ears for another episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. How on earth are you? Did you do something different with your hair looking good? So today, do you know what I love? You? No, seriously. No, I do. Of course, I do, dear listener. You know I do. Love you more than toast. But do you know what else I love? I love it when you hit on something in your business and you know you've scored a goal. You know you've done something really good. You know you've got something you're going to be able to tap into and maybe it's just something that no one else has thought of too. I love that little smug feeling when I've got something right. And that's what we're striving for, of course, in our businesses all the time. And today's topic, I want to talk about Salon Service Guarantees, which is not terribly sexy as a title, I admit. It's a working title. Work in progress, as is everything. And I hit on this a few years ago when I was still managing my own salon. And immediately started to feel pretty good about it. And it's something that evolved and developed over time and needed some tweaking and changing and adapting and actually growing in its scope. And I think it's something that you could be using in your business too. I don't see many salons actually putting guarantees in place. And I think that's a bit of a shame. And I think the reason is mainly through fear. I think some people say that you can't guarantee a service-based business because it's relying on people and people sometimes break down. People aren't necessarily consistent. And of course, not only do we have the people that are carrying out our services to take into account, we've got the whims and ways of our salon customers too. And we all know that they can be just ever so slightly unpredictable. But I think that is a dangerous space for us to be. I think we need to consistently deliver. And if we can't consistently deliver, I think we need to get ready for the robots. I think that leaves an industry which is ripe for automation.

And seriously, it's going to happen one day. I actually came up with an idea. However, I need to have a chat with Mr. Dyson. I came up with an idea where you would put this helmet on. And inside this helmet would be millions of tiny, tiny vacuums that would pull the hair straight from the head. And then with a laser, it would cut those hairs to length. And I thought you could, you know those photo booths we all used to go to when we were getting our passports reissued? I thought you could have one next to there and it could do your hair before you jumped in and got your photo done. But honestly, it's going to happen one day. That kind of automation on service is going to happen unless we can really up the standards of a personal service. It's a bit like the way that I see McDonald's going, you know, God bless them. It was always somewhere that prided itself on having the human touch. But of course, what McDonald's does, they don't deliver the best food in the world, let's face it. I'm sure McDonald's would admit that. But what they do is offer it consistently. And it's that consistency of service which is really valuable to a business. And over here in the UK at least, we've all got touchscreens in our McDonald's now. So you don't have to go to the counter and talk to little Leslie three stars behind the counter. We can just use the touchscreens to enter our order and then it's made and you pick it up from the counter. Or even better now, you can not even get out of the car. You can be in the car and do your order on the McDonald's app and then tell them that you've arrived and just run in, grab your order and run back out again to eat multiple double cheeseburgers and cry. And I don't think we can be too far, can we? Surely not. We can't be too far from that entire cooking process being automated now. I can't imagine that it's beyond the realms of robotics to produce a cheeseburger and know which toppings you asked for on the app. And I think it's the way that things are going to go for McDonald's. And it can be the way that things go for our industry too, unless we get to grips with offering a consistent service that involves human beings. So I do think that we should be using salon guarantees. And it's also a really good way of standing out in a very crowded marketplace. And put yourself in the shoes of a poor new customer. Oh gosh, how terrifying having to find a brand new salon. They're like deers in headlights, aren't they, darlings? And it's a big deal actually choosing a salon for the first time.

And let's say you're in a new town and you've got two propositions in front of you next door to each other. One of them offers a 100% guarantee that you're going to be happy with your hair or with your facial. And the other one doesn't. Well, which one are you going to go to? It takes a little bit of fear away for new clients. It reduces the boundary to spend. And I'm all about making it easier for customers to spend money. The other nice thing is that the salon with the guarantee also gets to charge more. You get to charge more than a service provider who doesn't offer a guarantee. But you've got to mean it. And this is where I see people going wrong when they start bringing these salon guarantees in. There's so many terms and conditions and that takes the teeth out of your guarantee. Reduces the effectiveness. Reduces the marketing capital that you're building up with this amazing innovation. But it means that when you make a promise, you've got to deliver. And it can teach us an awful lot. This journey of systemization, this journey of offering a consistent standard, so valuable, so interesting to me. And actually, it forms a large part of what I do as a salon coach. And it means that we're keeping our standards consistent. That inconsistency will kill your business. In fact, and this is an uncomfortable truth for salon owners, it's actually better to reduce your standards and be consistent than it is to have a good day and a bad day. The standard of service needs to be the same on a Tuesday morning as we open the doors all the way through to Saturday afternoon as we lock up for the week. And it doesn't matter which team members are involved. We have to offer that consistent level of service. And there have been times in my business when we have reduced the standard in order to offer consistency. Let me explain. So we used to have a salon receptionist, a front-of-house manager. And she was always a good, lovely girl, actually. In fact, she used to work in the salon industry as a service provider. She used to be a hairdresser. So she kind of knew the business, too, even though she didn't want to carry out service anymore. And she was really good. The problem is, with a full-time receptionist, they're not there every hour that you're open. Because we used to open at 9 in the morning right the way through to 8 in the evening, three days a week. And she actually didn't want to work five days a week. She was a part-time receptionist. But even if she'd been full-time, she wouldn't have been able to cover all the hours that we had. And she has legal entitlement to breaks and a lunch break and all those good things, too.

And, of course, so many weeks a year, she was on vacation. So what we noticed very quickly was that there was an inconsistency of service. The service was better when we had a front-of-house manager than it was on the days and times that she wasn't there. Or, you know, let's say she'd called in sick or she had children. So let's say she had to stay home with one of the kids. There was an inconsistency in that service. And, in fact, we did the sums. And we couldn't afford to have a second receptionist to cover all the hours that we had. It just wasn't part of the pricing structure at the time. So, you know, much as we loved her and she did a brilliant job, we sacked her and decided to have no receptionist at all. And we extended the appointment times of the teams so that they had time to greet their own clients and take their own bills. We outsourced the answering of the telephone to an answering service and encouraged our clients to use online booking. Now, all of those things may have felt like a step back, but it meant that we could consistently offer the same standard of service all day, every day, all week, every week. So sometimes it's better to just pull back a little, but make sure we're offering that consistency of service. So I'm going to take you through the salon guarantee that we had. Now, you're a clever bunny, and my salon was a hair salon, so you're going to have to do some translating. If you're in the aesthetics business or if you are running a beauty salon, then you're going to have to have to do some translation. But it's not beyond you, dear listener. And if you've got any questions, of course, pop them in an email, phil at buildyoursalon.com. I love hearing about how well you're doing in your business, and, you know, it can be lonely up here in Build Your Salon Towers. You know, I'm in a room on my own. It'd be quite nice to get a couple of emails, dear. Anyway, my five-point promise. Let's jump into that. They say if you teach a man to fish, he can feed himself for life. But let me tell you, darlings, I've been in the situation during my career where sometimes you just want someone to give you the bloody fish. And that's what my new programme for 2023, Eight Weeks Bums On Seats, is all about. It's the marketing training that you need to fill up some of the white space in your appointment book and turn you into the salon owner you were always meant to be.

Get more bums on seats in early 2023. Head over to buildyoursalon.com and join the wait list to be the first to hear and get my special early bird pricing. So my five-point salon promise. Well, the first thing to point out is that it wasn't always a five-point promise. It actually started life as a three-point promise. And it was a three-point promise for quite a long time. Then we added point four. And then point five came quite a lot later. Because as we bring these promises in, there's a whole raft of systemisation. There's a whole raft of processes that need to follow. Firstly, to make sure we're delivering consistently. But also, we need processes in place in case we don't deliver. What are we going to do if we fail this customer? It's going to become a bit easier as we go through the examples. So let me jump straight in. And the first promise that we made to our customers was that they will be 100% happy every time. Or we would redo your hair for nothing until you are happy. Now, that sounds like an awful lot to promise. But honestly, I think in a hair salon, it's not the least that you can promise. Is that people are actually going to like what you've done. I think, you know, any less than that, really. I mean, honestly. Or we've done the job at all. If they're not actually happy with what we've done. So they needed to be 100% happy. Or we would keep redoing their hair until they were happy. Now, we need some T's and C's around that. Some terms and conditions. But not too many. You know, I said before, if you're going to keep putting lots of terms and conditions in. You're going to reduce the effectiveness of your guarantee. You're going to take the teeth out of it. It's not going to have that marketing collateral that we're trying to build. So the first thing to think about is how long does a customer have to tell you they're not happy? I didn't think it was particularly fair if somebody came in after eight weeks for another appointment. And said, oh, I didn't like my hair last time. I don't think that's something we can pay out on our guarantee. And I don't think that's unreasonable. Let's say you buy a nice shiny new car. I don't think you have 15 years to decide whether you like it or not. There's usually a cut off point as far as your warranty and your guarantee is concerned. So we turned it into a question. At the end of the appointment, once we'd carried out the service, shown them the back and we were getting ready to send them back out into the world, we would ask them, are you 100% happy with your hair? And if they weren't happy, that gave us an opportunity then to say, OK, what is it you're

not quite happy with? Do we need to take a little bit more weight out of the haircut? Do we need to reduce the length on those bangs? What is it you're not happy with? Now, the other thing that we put into place was using the complaint or using the payout on the guarantee as an investment in the business. So what do I mean by that? Well, if we were going to pay out on the guarantee, there was a questionnaire. It wasn't hugely onerous, but there was a questionnaire that the customer needed to fill out to let us know that they weren't happy. And that's where the gold is, because the customer would be coming up with things that you need to improve on next time. And we build those things into your team meetings, build those things into your training program for next year, and make sure that we're raising that salon standard next time round. Here's a nice easy one. So part two of my five-point promise, actually, this was the very first bit of guarantee that we put in place. In fact, this stood on its own for a little while, I seem to remember. And it tapped into something that was basically a money spinner for us. So this wasn't huge on customer service, but my goodness, it made a difference to our bottom line. And that was that we would offer you a conditioning treatment every single visit, or you don't pay for your haircut today. So conditioning treatments, if you're not in the hair business, are a really good way of increasing your average bill. They tend to have a very, very low cost of products attached to them. It's a nice luxurious feel for the customer. They always feel like they've not had long enough on the head massage when they're at the basins, and they see it as a bit of a treat. But so the profit margin is really good. It doesn't take much extra time at all. And in fact, I stole this idea from TGI Friday. So TGI Friday, years ago, I haven't been to one for quite some time, but they used to have a promise at the bottom of their menus that if you weren't offered a dessert, then the dessert was free. And I love just tapping into things that aren't part of our industry and seeing how we can apply it. And you need to be doing this too. Anytime that you're impressed with something or something just makes you go, hmm, that's different. That's interesting. How can I bring that into my salon business should be the next question. So TGI Friday and their dessert promise. I stole that and made a big poster, put it in front of our basin area, and promised our

customers they'd be offered a conditioning treatment every time or they didn't pay for their haircut that day. So it wasn't just the treatment they got free. It was, in fact, their hair service. And we went from being a salon that did a couple of treatments. See if this sounds familiar, darlings, where you're doing a couple of treatments a week. And even then, it's only when you're running behind. And you say to your apprentice, go and put a treatment on, give her a nice massage, and I'll be there in 10 minutes. I'm just running a bit behind. And then we'd give that service away complimentary. And we went from that to doing, I think, seriously, in the first week, we added about 12 or 15 treatments to the number of services that we carried out. And it kept growing and growing from there. Now, each of those treatments was worth between 10 and 30 pounds. So straight away, no extra customers at all. I'm adding hundreds to my turnover. Over a month, you know, maybe 1,000 pounds, 12,000 pounds a year in extra turnover with no extra customers at all, just by consistently asking the question. And I have twice had to pay out on this promise. And both times, it was a breakdown in communication between the stylist that was carrying out the main service and the apprentice that was taking care of the hair wash. So the stylist thought the apprentice was going to ask the question. The apprentice thought the stylist was going to ask the question. So what do we do? Who do we punish? Who are we going to tie to the back of the door and slap with a wet mop? Well, nobody, actually. We don't punish anyone in that instance. That was something that just needed systemizing. So we said, actually, we would rather they were asked twice than not asked at all, whether they'd like a conditioning treatment. But ideally, that would happen in the consultation with the stylist. So the stylist knew it was their job. But it was OK. If the apprentice wasn't convinced the question had been asked, it was OK to ask twice. Now, here's when I knew that we had cracked it. So that conditioning treatment poster was very visible in the basin area. It was almost what the customer was staring at while they were having their hair washed. It was right in front of them. And one Christmas, we were running a promotion on hair straighteners. And it was their Christmas sets, which used to be quite a big deal. They used to bring out a limited edition for Christmas. And everyone would go absolutely gaga for them. And I knew I'd overordered. And we were going to have to do some selling. So I took the conditioning treatment poster down and replaced it with one which had a beautiful picture of the hair straighteners that we were selling.

And nothing changed. Because it was so embedded in the habits of my stylist. It was so embedded in the culture of the business that this is just the way that we do business. So nothing shifted. We were able to consistently deliver on that promise, even without the poster being there. Next up was retail. And don't groan. Don't roll your eyes, dear. I know your reaction when I start talking about retail. But here's one. If you're struggling with retail, how about this as a promise? My Salon Owners Retreat is a unique event where you get to create the agenda. This isn't a retreat of boring presentations in conference rooms without windows. The entire program is a mix of group coaching, mastermind sessions, and one-to-one coaching with me, your favorite salon coach. There's also time built in for implementation. Yes, you're going to leave the retreat having actually got some important work done on your business with our support. Our spring 2023 retreat is now sold out. But you can be the first to hear about the next Salon Owners Retreat and get the very best early bird pricing by heading to buildyoursalon.com and joining our wait list. I can't wait to see you on Salon Owners Retreat. Don't forget your speedos. So we promised that we would tell our customers about every product we used on their hair or they took them all home for nothing. Quite a big promise, isn't it? So how do we consistently do that? Well, that was an education thing. We just had to educate our stylists that as they were applying product to a customer's hair, just to mention what they were using. And we had to revisit this. I'll be honest with you. It did not land the first time around. I've never had to pay out on this promise. We've always been pretty good. I don't know if sometimes maybe I can see actually a situation where a regular customer perhaps lets them off the hook because they're worried the stylist is going to get in trouble if they forget. But we did have to go back in. And that was because the stylists, bless them, they were rattling through these products so quickly just to put a tick in a box. And we had to kind of go back and say, no, actually, we're doing this for a reason. We want our customers to understand what we're doing. So actually take the time, take that 30 seconds just to explain why you're using what you're using and do the job properly. And also our apprentices then would be explaining which shampoos and conditioners they'd selected to use behind the basin. And where we advertised this part of the promise was on every mirror in the salon.

So we had mirror clings, little stickers made, which went to the bottom of the mirror, promising that we would tell every customer about every product we use. It took all of the embarrassment away around those retail conversations. The client knew they had to have this retail conversation. They knew it was coming. The stylist knew they weren't going to get away without having that conversation. And to be honest with you, let's have an analogy, shall we? Let's imagine you go to the GP and ask them to give you some help with your hemorrhoids. And they give you four different drugs. Would you not want to know what you were taking? Would you not want to know what the GP, what the doctor is actually recommending that you use and why so that you could perhaps do some head scratching and thinking and wonder if it's quite right for you? Would you not want to know what's being put on your hair or your face? And not just the one or two things that you want to flog them at the end. Let's tell them about everything that we're using. And I really like this as a promise and it made a big difference to our retail takings as well. Getting towards the end now, point number four on my five-point promise was that we would deliver a proper consultation every time. And again, this was about consistency because I started to get a bit paranoid about one customer getting one experience and a different customer getting a different experience. And this actually came from the new client journey. And we can talk about the new client journey some other time. If you're interested in any of the topics that I mention as we meander through the success of your salon business, darlings, then please reach out, phil at buildyoursalon.com. Let me know what you're interested in. And the new client journey was a big part of my business and something we looked at in quite some detail. And then I got worried because in a hair salon, there's not a lot of privacy. In fact, the next customer could be mere inches from you while you're having your hair done. And people can hear what's going on. So if you had, let's say, a new client who came in and as part of that extended appointment, they had a really in-depth consultation talking about lifestyle and aftercare and what products they're using at home and their requirements of work and all the rest of it.

And then next to them is a regular customer who's been coming for years and their consultation was seconds where the stylist said, same as last time. Oh, that's going to sting, isn't it? Firstly, that new client's going to go, oh, OK, is that what I can expect in the future then? That very brief assumption that everything was OK last time round and nothing's going to change. Or does the regular client feel a bit taken for granted that actually nobody really cares whether she's happy or not or whether she's got other requirements from her styling? That lazy consultation didn't like it at all. So we had to make a promise. We will give you a full consultation every time. Now, this took a little while and it took some team meetings because then, of course, we had to define what a full consultation is. What's actually, how could we say to a customer that we've carried out a full consultation? And essentially, it boiled down to a checklist. So we were looking at things like, did we talk about aftercare? Did we talk about lifestyle? Did we offer her an idea on a service that she could try next time? And basically, we came up with a list of, I think there were four or five criteria. And if we ticked all those boxes, then we would say that we've carried out a full consultation. Now, of course, the depth that we go into on those five questions might be very different for a regular customer that you've been seeing for years. But we still touch those points. And then with a new customer where we don't have that history, we don't have that background, we might dig a bit deeper. So that proper consultation was a really interesting one. I think it was a series of about three team meetings by the time we got to grips with it and drawn up exactly what was involved in a consultation so that we could offer it every time. And then finally, the last point, and I always leave this one last because it was the toughest one to bring in, it was the last one to bring in, and in fact, it took us years to get to the stage where we could offer this as a five-point promise. And we promised our customer that we would finish their service on time, every time, or they pay zero today. Wow, that's a big promise in a hair salon. Now, the first thing I want to point out is that every point of your promise, everything in your salon service guarantee needs to be important to the client.

It needs to enhance their experience or make them feel that you're doing a better job or make sure they're receiving a more complete service. So to my client, my customer avatar, and if you need help with avatars, reach out. I've got a little worksheet somewhere, I think. To my customer, though, time was really scarce. We had lots of people that would whiz in and have their hair done on a lunch break. The free parking in my town was limited to one hour. So if we were running 15 minutes behind, they were looking at their watch and worrying they were going to get a parking ticket. And my client avatar is very busy. She has her own business. She's an executive in a business. She's not got much time anyway. So it was very important to my client that we were punctual. It may be that this isn't important to your client, in which case doing an on-time, every time guarantee is not going to have any teeth at all. It's not going to buy you any favours from your customers. And yes, this was tricky to put in place. But don't shrink away from it just because it's hard. Of course, a guarantee should be challenging to the business. It should make you break into a sweat in a good way, my darlings. We are exercising your entrepreneurial muscles here, building your entrepreneurial six-pack. And we had to do lots of thinking and lots of team meetings and lots of what-ifs. So what if the client turns up late? Well, we can't guarantee that they're going to be out on time every time if they turn up 20 minutes late. Or what if we're running late on an earlier appointment? What do we need to build into the day to make sure that one late appointment doesn't spill over and mean that we're not going to earn any money today because we're paying out on this guarantee? Alongside some simple stuff too. For example, one of the reasons that we established people could be running late is because the stylist didn't understand what the time was because nobody was wearing a watch and there were no clocks in the salon. So if you don't know what time it is, how do you know when you're running on time? So we had to make either a watch or a fob watch. We had to make that part of the uniform policy. And it took a very long time to get this in place. But once we did it, oh my goodness, we made a big song and dance about that. And our clients really, really appreciated it. So that's my five-point promise. What would be in yours? What help do you need to get a guarantee in place? Where are you going to start? Reach out. Let me know. You know I love hearing about how well your business is doing. Phil at buildyoursalon.com.

I would love to hear from you. And please, if you've got anything out of today's broadcast or anything else that I've done, in fact, why not drop in a little five-star review for me? You know it's the biggest thrill I'm going to get this week and it would just take you a few seconds. Just seven short days until we're together again, my darlings. Until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty, and more successful tips for business owners. All on Build Your Salon.