Issue link: https://www.ascpskindeepdigital.com/i/716901
BREAKING UP IS EASY TO DO When my favorite esthetician was unable to take me for an appointment before a last-minute trip, I tried another local skin care studio. After my service, I decided I would never return. Ask yourself if you would return if you experienced the following: • Clients with booked appointments waited while I was squeezed in. • No water or other refreshments were off ered before or after the service. • In the middle of the service, my esthetician left to take a phone call. • When paying the bill, I was asked if I wanted to sign up for the rewards program, but only if I paid cash for the program. • No home-care recommendations were made. • A 20 percent tip was automatically added to my bill. These mistakes made for a poor fi rst impression, because even though the quality of the actual service was good, the all-important customer service component was clearly missing. If you read online reviews of skin care providers, you will see these type of complaints (all of which are easily remedied) repeated again and again. RETENTION: BY THE NUMBERS Client retention tracking begins with the fi rst visit. The numbers do not lie; they will tell you a story about how well you are doing with fi rst-time clients. Your spa software should be able to easily calculate how well you and your employees are doing. You want to look at your overall business performance as well as each individual so you can identify where your business may have customer service problems. Start with a specifi c time period. You might look back over the last three or six months from today. What you want to determine is how many new clients you had during that time and if they came back again within a three-month time period. Why three months? Happy, loyal clients should return for a service every four to six weeks. Running your retention report for a three- month period will give you some wiggle room to see if you were able to capture the client who only comes in for skin care services occasionally—or only once. The higher your retention rate for fi rst-time clients, the higher your level of customer satisfaction, and the closer you are to delivering consistent, high-quality results. A CASE STUDY Skin Sisters is a skin care studio run by sisters Alison and Amanda. During the last quarter, they had 25 new clients. They pulled the names of those new clients to see which were seasonal visitors versus local potential clients, since Skin Sisters is located in a tourist destination. It is not likely that these seasonal visitors can or will become long-term clients. While it is important to know what your overall retention rate is for a fi rst-time client, you have to be realistic about who is a good candidate for a return visit. Of the 20 new clients who were locals, only fi ve returned for a service within three months of their fi rst visit; four clients booked with Alison, one with Amanda. The overall business retention rate is 25 percent (5/20), but in this case, Alison's retention rate is 20 percent and Amanda's is 5 percent. That is a lot of potential lost business, and it appears Amanda may be a factor! What can Skin Sisters do to improve their new-client retention rate? The same things you can do if you're unhappy with your retention rate: Ask some tough questions. You need to learn why those clients never returned. Pick up the phone and ask! Off er a complimentary add-on service or a discount as incentive to give you a second try. Also ask those who did return what it was about their experience that made them want to come back. Hold a staff meeting to discuss what you learned and identify what you can do better the next time. Comfort, cleanliness, and scheduling are the three most common areas of complaints seen on review sites. Be proactive. Resolve that every client receives fi ve- star service. Review the services those fi rst-time clients received. Ask how they found you that fi rst visit. Review the day and time of their appointments. It may be that you were not organized for the fi rst visit of the day, were tired by late afternoon, or had other scheduling issues. Evaluate your customer service standards and your hospitality plan. Read your online reviews every few days and respond not only to the positive reviews, but also address any that are not fi ve stars. Be professional, address any issues, and off er to make their next experience better. Take the conversation offl ine to address a poor review in more depth rather than engaging in an argument for all to see. RETENTION A loyal client may be worth as much as 10 times what they spend on their initial purchase. 50 september/october 2016