2011 customer care award: the colour room
Making your clients feel special is at the centre of any successful salon's ethos. It is something that the team at The Colour Room in Stockport excel at.
This dedication to clients' needs won them the Customer Care Award at HJ's 2011 British Hairdressing Business Awards.
Sean Tetlow explains what made their entry stand out from the crowd.
How important is customer care to the salon experience?
Customer care is paramount to the salon experience at The Colour Room. From day one we have set out to be the best we possibly can and have customer care at the top of the agenda every single day.
We ensure our customer care is constantly evolving to meet our clients' needs. We take the time to get to know the individual preferences and priorities of each and every one of our clients so that our provision of customer care is tailored to suit their individual needs.
Do you have a specific customer care policy and what does it includes?
Our Customer Care Policy outlines the basis and the foundation of our customer care programme and is the blueprint for the provision of care for all our clients.
It is designed to cover every aspect of a client's journey through the salon - from booking their appointment, the hospitality and care they receive during their appointment, through to the ongoing after-care and customer relationship management initiatives we undertake.
What makes you great at customer care?
Alongside fantastic hairdressing, world class customer care is our number one priority. Making our customer care second to none is a hugely inspirational and motivational process for me as a salon owner and for the salon team.
In the eight years the salon has been open, I have built a team of people who are passionate about customer care and who can bring expertise and experience from other business sectors.
The other key feature of our customer care success is that we treat every client as an individual - what works for one, may not work for the next. Our service is tailored to our clients' needs, not our own.
What mistakes do you see salons making when it comes to customer care?
I can only speak from our own experience, but what I have learned is that it is not enough to write a customer care policy, roll it out to your team and then sit back and expect it all to fall into place. It won't.
The priority of providing great customer care is something that must be talked about all day every day, with every member of the team, until it becomes second nature to them, like breathing. The moment customer care slips down the agenda as the number one topic of conversation between your salon team, is the moment customer care standards start to slip.
One of my favourite quotes is "There's no queue along the extra mile." And it is only by striving to exceed your clients' expectations and thoroughly delight them as opposed to just satisfying them, that you achieve excellence.
Describe your customer care in three words...
Exceeding clients' expectations
