In service industries like beauty and wellness, staff training plays a pivotal role in ensuring client revisit and customer engagement during the gap between services. Here is how you your improved staff training can ensure both.
A new salon opened near my office recently and I must laud the strategic location selected by the brand. The nearby area has no other competing brand and this prove the salon has adequate opportunities to establish niche for itself. However, as most of the over confident brands fail to encash on their services, in span of one month, this newly opened salon also got deserted.
During my next visit to the salon, I’ve noticed a consumer creating big fuss over the salon staff’s attitude towards her. Seeking my intervention, the staff member asked me why they’ve been treated wrong by the consumers. On which, I could clearly see that it’s the lack of Salon Owner’s vigilance of ensuring staff training.
Often, salon owners focus on opening a well equipped salon with beautiful infrastructure and multiple services to choose from. However, they tend to forget that it’s their staff which will ensure happiness of their potent consumers.
Therefore, here are some effective tips for those salon brands which are constantly ignoring staff training in their salon brand.
It’s essential to ensure that the customer service team in the salon has the right skills for client management. No amount of CRM software can compensate for shortcomings in this area. Thus, it’s essential to find what skills should you be looking for in your staff while hiring them?
- Empathy, patience and consistency: Salon business receives diverse nature of consumers which includes irate, fussy, interrogative and even over experimenting consumers. You must infuse adequate amount of empathy and patience in your staff to ensure the consumers spend maximum amount of money on the variety of services available at your doorstep.
- Adaptability: Every customer is different, and some may even seem to change week-to-week. You should be able to handle surprises, sense the customer’s mood and adapt accordingly. This also includes a willingness to learn– providing good customer service is a continuous learning process.
- Clear communication: Ensure you convey to customers exactly what you meant. You don’t want your customer to think he’s getting 50 per cent off when he’s actually getting 50 per cent more product. Use authentically positive language, stay cheerful no matter what and never end a conversation without confirming the customer satisfaction.
- Work ethic: Customers appreciate a representative who will see their problem through to its resolution. At the same time, you must have good time management skills and not spend too much time handling one customer while others are waiting. Stay focused on your goals to achieve the right balance.
- Knowledge: Ultimately your customers rely on you for the knowledge of a treatment or service. Stay updated to respond to most inquiries and know where to turn if the questions become too detailed or technical for you to answer. However, don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know and may let you know after finding out the answer’ instead of misguiding your clients. This way, customers appreciate the honesty and efforts to address their query with right answer.
- Thick skin: Always follow the management tip which says- customer is the king and is always right. The ability to swallow one’s pride and accept blame or negative feedback is crucial. Whether your team works directly with customers or looking for feedback on social media, they’ve got to keep the customer’s happiness in mind.
At last, to ensure if your staff has the right customer service skills, its is essential to often conduct survey or customer feedback to understand whether your service team is showing each of these traits right. Running a customer feedback survey through your CRM program, at the point of sale, or when you send customers an invoice is a great way to see where your team’s skills do and don’t measure up.
Also, remember, your team is your strength, so never grill them in the morning for any complaint or wrong deeds, always talk to them in eve’s time so that your staff spend entire day in much chirpy manner and may leave with a lesson in hand, instead of spoiling their mood in the morning.
