Mastering Customer Care: Pro Tips to Keep Your Barbershop Buzzing with Loyal Clients
If there is one aspect men are pretty considerate about in their lives, it is finding a good barbershop that checks all their boxes. While, as a barber, you may believe that providing a good haircut or service is the only skill a customer might come in looking for, you may not be more wrong.
One of the most underrated skills in the barbering world is an asset that holds the most value and is often neglected. What is it? Well, customer retention, of course! Every barber wants to bring new customers to their shop, but they also do not want the old ones to leave for good, right?
So, ensuring that your new customer ratio remains elevated and the old ones stay in place is essential. How will you do it? Well, through providing the best barbershop customer care services in the business. Want to know how you can do this? We have you covered below!
Ways Through Which You Can Improve Barbershop Customer Care Service
There are multiple barbershops out there providing top-notch services. However, it is understandable that everyone searching for a high-quality barbershop would pick one out of this lot, right? The question stands how will they make this choice? How to find new customers and increase sales?
Well, according to experts, clients are more likely to choose or return to barbershops that provide them exceptional services at the best prices and make them feel like they belong there. Wondering how you, as a barber, can offer the same experience to your clientele? Here are a few actionable customer service tips that work like a charm:
Make Your Clients Feel Welcomed!
First impressions are often the last impressions, and this saying sits pretty well regarding the aesthetics of a barbershop. When entering your space for the first time, it isn't your services or how to clean your work is that people will notice firsthand. Instead, they are bound to consider the aesthetics and how the overall environment makes them feel.
Hence, ensuring that you set up your barbershop in such a way that it provides a clean, welcoming, and relaxing environment is necessary to ensure that your customers keep coming back and is essential to drive newer clients too.
Prompt and Efficient Appointment Management
One significant aspect that will make customers love your services and drive them to return often is how well-managed your appointments are. We live in a fast-paced world, where people are usually packed on schedules. Hence, when they take a certain period of their day to get their services done and make appointments beforehand, they expect their time to be well-spent.
As a barbershop owner, it is, therefore, essential for you to keep this factor under immense consideration. Be prompt and efficient with your client appointment management and be ready for them before they arrive.
One of the best ways we suggest you do this is by the use of free online appointment scheduling. Wondering which one to choose? We suggest signing up on the IN THE CHAIR for free. This service allows a barber or barbershop manager to display their availability online using a customizable booking page. Their audience can select a service, choose a barber and confirm an appointment time independently.
Be Authentic and Transparent with Your Customers Online
When booking a new barber or confirming appointments with a barbershop, people are prone to check out its social media pages to get a list of prices. Each individual has a budget for the services and will only make an appointment if your price factors fall within their budget.
Therefore, as a barbershop owner, it is essential for you to be authentic and value transparency in business. Make sure to list the prices for each service online on your social media page. In case of any changes in pricing, always remember to leave an update too. This is one of the best ways to improve your customer services and generate a strengthened clientele for your business.
Active Listening and Understanding of Customer Needs
Once your customer has arrived and is seated, listen and understand what they want – ensure you offer accessibility in customer service. While you might be a professional, chances are the person who has come for a haircut, shave, or any other service knows better what will suit them.
Even if that is not the case, some people find it easier to carry out certain styles more efficiently than what you might advise them. Therefore it is crucial always to listen and understand your customer's needs instead of diving head-first into what you believe will look good on them.
Give Sound Advice
When your client is finished explaining their point of view, it will be your turn to talk. Start by repeating what the client has told you and explaining to them thoroughly what you have grasped from their demands. Proper communication like this will not only put your client at ease that you understand what they are asking for and also create a rapport between you and them.
The next step would be offering them some sound advice. While they understand what suits them best, you are the professional in the business and know what goes with the skin type and facial cuts. Hence, inclining with what they have asked for, pitch in some advice of your own in a way that makes them understand that it might be a great pick for them.
Be the Ultimate Solution for Their Hair-Related Concerns
As a professional in business, you have had more experience on your hands than your fingers on them. Hence, you may recognize the issue before the client speaks about their hair problem and many more.
Remember, one of the core foundations of ensuring your customer satisfaction
with the customer care service and comes back is helping them get rid of these problems. So, help them understand the root of the situation, fix it and advise your clients on ways through which they can maintain their service to make sure the problem doesn't reoccur.
Offering Personalized Customer Services and Follow-Ups
Multiple people will come and grace your chair throughout the day or month. Each client that will arrive will come with a different personality and expectations; personalizing your services and follow-ups with each accordingly is another essential key to enhancing your barbershop customer care service.
It is a great idea to personalize your service depending on the client's request and chat with them to make them feel comfortable. The next step would be to make a follow-up report on them. When a client leaves, note down what services they took, whether they liked it or not, or whether they removed a specific item from the overall service or included some.
Such information will help you remember what the client asked for the next time they come in or book an appointment. Plus, when you discuss it with them, they will feel special that you remembered such little details about them and praise your services to others.
Create an Experience
People often come to the barbershop for services, to have some 'Me' time, and to unwind from their hectic lives. It is, therefore, necessary for barbershop owners to provide them with the experience they are searching for. There is no denying that you, as an individual, can be having a bad day, but when it comes to being a barber, it is essential to be ready for your client with a smile.
Apart from greeting them nicely and making sure they have a great time, adding in some extra services, no matter how small, out of your goodness, is a great idea too. This will make your customer happy, and they will not only come back again but also rave about your shop to many of their friends. This, in turn, will increase your customer ratio as well.
INCH – Make Client Bookings Easier with Online Appointment Booking System
The world of technology has advanced, and it is about time you use it within your barbering services. IN THE CHAIR – or INCH- is an online barber appointment application that helps barber share their availability online, max out their appointment calendars, and allows their clients to select an appointment slot that is suitable for both of them directly through the application.
The best part is that the application rarely gets any appointments missed. This is because once a customer has booked a meeting, the barber and the customer will be reminded of the appointment near time through a notification. If the customer deliberately misses the appointment, the pre-paid service on the application will save the barber from wasting his time and ensure he gets paid for the slot he missed because of them.
If you are a barber planning on taking their services one step ahead, the INCH app will be the best place to put your business trust.
Conclusion
Ensuring you provide customers with the best customer service care and they leave your vicinity satisfied is crucial when running a barbershop business. We hope this article was sufficient to help you understand how you can improve your barbershop customer care and why implementing these dynamics within your business is essential.