COSMETIC TATTOO TALK

Key Points

• Listen Actively to your clients needs
• Follow up with your clients, this shows you actually CARE.
• Always strive to improve the customer experience

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Show Transcription 

Hey, and welcome to this podcast and YouTube episode, where I am going to be talking to you today about customer service

So customer service is a topic that people don't find sexy. And it's actually one of the reasons why I've called this podcast episode. Customer service is sexy, because customer service is one of the backbones of your business. And it's one of the fundamentals that you have to get right in order to be able to serve your clients to create raving fans.

Now, one of the themes in our Diploma this month is creating raving fans, and building that foundation of how we can start implementing those processes. Now, as beginners in the industry and as learners in order to grow our business by the time that we're finished, and start looking at those processes, and how we can improve them in our salons.

So one of the things that sparked this topic for me was recently, I was trying to help my dad
put together his Telstra accounts. And he's 75. And he is not tech-savvy at all. He doesn't know how to do much with technology. He just knows the basics. And I was trying to organize his accounts for him in Telstra.

And to say that I was frustrated would be a huge understatement. My husband went with me, and he just saw me turn bright red with frustration and disappointment really, because it really shows you that even the big companies can get it wrong. Like and when it goes wrong. It goes wrong. For example, in this particular scenario.

I was in Mackay because he lives there and I was visiting him for his birthday. And I was there trying to consolidate his accounts to make it easy for him to pay. And because he wanted to know how much usage she had on his little internet square, so he could keep track of it. So he didn't go over and pay like an excessive amount, which, you know, fair enough. So I went into Telstra, and every time I went in there, they said, you know, it's a two-hour wait, and or you can book an appointment with us for two weeks time. I was only there for a couple of days. So I was like, Listen, you know, I'll come back. I said the best time to come back is nine o'clock.

That's nine o'clock in the morning when they open. That's when we have the most availability for walk ins. So, you know, I tried that twice. I tried two times at two different stores to get an appointment sporadically throughout the day, both said no, two hour four hour wait. And that's hard with you know, a 15 month old baby. So you know, I went back at nine o'clock on a Friday. Now, I plan to be there be the first one there. And I was so wrong.

There were people, there was a line of 10 people at 830. So I was the 11th person at 830. And then I ended up waiting. Get this two and a half hours from nine o'clock I think was even closer to three hours for them to tell me I have the wrong authority on the wrong account to help my dad, they could merge the accounts, which I would then have the right authority. It just didn't make sense anyway.

So for a 75 year old man to try and do that is overwhelming, and I can see why.

So that's what sparked this podcast episode. And to be honest, customer service is really one of my secret loves. I love to love upon customers. I love to get to know the journey that they're on and the journey that they go through from start to finish with a business.

I think it's so important to have that bird's eye view and that overview of looking at how do they find you?

What are the next steps that they take after they find you what is the journey that they go on from being you know, a cold lead to a warm lead to then buying and being a customer to then, you know, continual love from you throughout their journey of being a client of yours?

well, what I want to cover in this podcast I'm really sorry about the long introduction. I just wanted to tell you, like terrible customer experience story.

I went to a Tony Robbins seminar a few years ago. And it's really true when he says the fact that you know, to be the best in business, you no longer have to be great, you have to be amazing, you know because people are stepping up the standard of what it means to give great business.

Every year, we're always improving. So no longer you can't be, you know, good or mediocre anymore, you have to be amazing, you can't be great, you have to be amazing. So you really have to focus in on these points, and figure out how to best serve your customers.

Now, my first point is to meet your customers where they are. A really great example of this is close to me is Bribie Island. And a lot of the people that live on Bribie are retirees. And if you were to advertise, let's say you're out of context here, if you're a plumber, if you were to advertise on Facebook, as a plumber, to Bribie Island, you wouldn't get as many leads, as if you advertised in the local paper.

Because that genre of client reads the local paper. And it's one of the only areas that I know where the local paper is more
has more impact than say Facebook ads.

So understand where your client is, and understand your ideal client is where this comes in. You know, where are they? Where are they scrolling on a daily basis? Is it Instagram or Facebook? If they're on Facebook? Are they just in groups? Or are they scrolling their feet?
You know, are they more likely on Pinterest or LinkedIn, if they're on LinkedIn, they're more likely a professional, and you're more likely offering a professional service.

I would say if you're a salon, your customer is more likely going to be on Instagram. So focus your attention on Instagram, and you can focus on Tik Tok, if you want that I found a lot of my new students come from Instagram and find me that way. So meet your customers where they are.

And on that note talk to your customers. In basic terminology, don't confuse them.

So many times I see people in this industry in particular making up terms. You know, I saw one the other day saying that they had, they were giving them like a lip blush service, but with BB glow. And they were calling it a transparent lip color, something like that. So that salon has just made up that term.
And to me, I mean, I'm in the industry, I don't really know what that means. And the people that I read, who I read on the thread as well, who are discussing it, we're like, what does it mean, a lot of the terms in this industry have been made up.

And the same thing can be termed or coined differently for different salons. So discussing it with your client in basic terminology will help them understand how you can help them and will build that level of trust as well.

So number two is respond promptly. So in this day and age, and I'm sure you know, we are all super busy. We all have so much going on and so much to think about, especially women, we have so much on the go. You know, we can't everything that we think about is connected.

I saw a comedian, I'm getting off topic on this podcast, but I'm just having a lot of fun. So go with it. I saw a comedian once talk about men and women's brains. And he described it as having a garage full of boxes. And in each box, each box was labeled a different thing, let's say school, the other box was labeled car, the other box was labeled work. And men's brains had all these boxes, right? So just each individual box. And in a men's brain garage, they even had a box for nothing. So when you ask a man what they're thinking about, and they say nothing, they are inside that box.
Now women's brains have all of these boxes as well. But each of these boxes is interconnected with a wire. So if she's thinking about school, she's also thinking about the laundry and what needs to be washed in order to prepare the kids for tomorrow. And then do the kids have lunches that need to be bought or packed or cooked. And then what dishes and chores need to be done around the house before. You can see how our brains work.

And I resonated so much with this, that I still remember it and it makes me laugh every time because when I described it to my husband, he agreed he's like yes, we do have a box for nothing. Women don't have that box.

We always have so much on the go. So when your customers contact you respond promptly and clearly. Set clear expectations of what your services are about, and how you can help them based on what they're asking of you. And also with all of these communication channels that we have now, in terms of Facebook, and Instagram, and email, and, you know, website and all of it, you know, make it as simple as possible.

If you're using bots, be as open and honest with your customers and say, Hey, this is, you know, this is Beck's bot, you know, can I help with these questions that you may have, if not, leave a response. And Beck does check her emails, or her DMs or her messages every Tuesday at nine o'clock, and she'll get back to you then, if it's urgent, please send us an email because we check these every day or twice a day.

So be really open and honest about your communication channels, and how your customers can contact you.

One of the other things is showing empathy. So with my Telstra example, of my frustration, turning bright red. One of the things that the customer service employees didn't do was show empathy, about how clearly frustrated I was about how clearly frustrated everyone was in order to be able to get their phone looked at. Because across the way, Optus was taking people left, right, and center, just as walk-ins, my husband got seen and got a new phone within an hour. And I had to wait two and a half hours to be told, I'm sorry, no, you don't have the proper authority with a 15-month-old as well that we're trying to entertain while we wait.

I clearly saw everyone after me who heard you know, it's a two and a half hour, three hour four and a half hour wait, we won't be able to see you today, you'll have to come in in two weeks time. They're clearly frustrated, and the employees needed to be able to show empathy, but not blank empathy, you know, you needed to be able to offer a solution. And if the solutions that you're offering aren't working, you need to look for different solutions.

Number four here is personalize your interactions with your customers. So make sure that you use their name. And if you are not good with names, especially in face to face interactions, use it a couple of times, prepare yourself and use it a couple of times, choose things that were will be easy to remember, I used to think of people I went to school with and that helped me remember people's names. If I didn't go to school with the person with the same name, I would just double check their client form before they came in.

And then also, after each appointment with them, I would take notes on what we talked about, you know, how many children did they have? What have they been up to lately? Are they still in same job? You know, so next time I talked to them, I could ask, you know, how did this go? How's how's your grandson? With his such and such, you know, how's work? Do you still love working at the train station, all those little things, and they loved it because it makes them feel special.

And it it's like you put in the effort to love up on your clients. And that is what creates raving fans.

So number five is to solve problems quickly and efficiently. So don't get an email or call or text from someone with them hating their eyebrows. And then don't not reply to them for a week, because that will send them off into a fit of rage.

If you don't know the answer reached out to someone who does. And that's one of the that's one of the bonuses of my newest membership, called the master artists method is it's a community of like minded artists, but it allows you to reach out to me or to other artists in case you don't have the answer. And that's what I used to do. When I started out. I used to reach out to my trainer in Melbourne and say, Hey, listen, I've had this scenario, need your help? What do you recommend, and I did that as quickly as I could, so that I could get that email because you don't know how long they're going to take to respond.

So I can get that response to the client and give them the best advice possible if I didn't know the solution.
On that note to follow up with your customers. So if something goes wrong, if they're not happy with something, don't just think okay, there's your information. Don't contact me again. I'm gonna hide in the corner or cry in the shower.

Follow up with them in a few days. Give them the information and say listen, if you hate your eyebrows, I want you to gently and I want and I am going to emphasize the word gently here exfoliate them out in the shower, using a soft,
a really soft microfiber cloth or a fresh face cleansing sponge. Because if you scrub too hard, you can cause scar tissue and do this once every three days.
Very, very gently.

And then say I'm going to follow up with you in a couple of days to see how you're going. And put that in your calendar and follow up with them, call them or whatever, because it will put them at ease to show that you actually care about the outcome and you care about how they're feeling.

And my final point here, I've lost track of how many we're up to, but continually strive to improve your customer service experience.

So you need to collect and analyze feedback, talk to your clients, when they come in, find out how they found you found out what their experience with you is, like so far, send them a feedback form, get that feedback.

Any way you can, whether it's a you know, give us feedback, and we'll give you a Refer a Friend Code or talk to them in salon or give them a call and ask them directly. Ask them if there's any way that you could have made it better, if there's any way, you know, they would have liked the service to go differently.

Obviously, we'll have those clients that we just can't please. So we won't ask them.

Because we won't gel with everyone, you know, we're not here to always, you know, please everyone, we just want to please our ideal client. So this is a system that you have to continuously look at and improve, and document. Once you've got your customer service process down and you understand it from A to B, from finding you to purchasing and becoming a client and then a long term client, generate a system or generate an overview and then look back at that every quarter or every half yearly.

And make sure that you can't, if there's you make sure there's nothing to add to that for you to improve.

But what I want to leave you on is this is just a really quick thought is what was your most recent best customer service experience? And why? Why did you love it? Do they use your name? Do they know the things that you liked? They talked directly to you? Did they?
Do they greet you quickly and efficiently? Was the place clean? Were the employees friendly and approachable? You know, all these different things, write them down in a list and then I want you to think about your most recent worst customer experience. Why did you not like it? How did it make you feel? You know, what was your initial reaction?

You can use my Telstra one to to prompt any thoughts.
And then what did you want to do afterwards? Because I'll tell you a secret after I had that terrible experience with Telstra. And I'm not one to ever leave a review. I went on and left a review for Telstra Mackay,
I deleted it about 15 minutes after I wrote it because I just don't like that negative energy. And I don't need it.

But it actually made me go and leave a negative review, which I never do.
And I was surprised at that, that that's you know, when when all the emotions settled, I deleted it. And I'm fine. I can laugh about it now.

But be aware of what actually tipped you over the edge and made you act out in a way that maybe you weren't proud of.

Anyway, the focus for this month is customer service creating raving fans and in are getting a view of your business and finding out how we can improve it. So I'll leave you with those two questions of what was your best most recent customer service experience? Why did you love it? And how did it make you feel? And what was your worst recent customer service experience? Why did you hate it? How did it make you feel and what it makes you want to do? Alright, that is it for me today.

As always, if you have any questions, send me an email, send me a DM, leave a comment on our website or on our YouTube channel because these videos are on YouTube, and I would love to hear from you. Thanks again and I will see you next week for a new podcast episode.