Why your Client Experience is more important than EVER right now

So, you may have heard this from me before, but here's the tea. Where I live in Pennsylvania, we have two massive, you know, coffee chain drive through situations that we can choose from, right? That are, like, at every single corner, every single town. We have a Dunkin' and we have a Starbucks, right?

So, I literally have a Dunkin', um, right down the road from my house, and I have a Starbucks that is literally right next to my salon suite in the shopping center. And, you know, Starbucks is definitely a little bit on the pricier side and Dunkin' is on the more affordable side, right? So, you know, you... It's just coffee.

Like, coffee is coffee is coffee, and so, I mean, anything that's gonna get my ass ca-caffeinated, I'm not gonna complain about. And so, you know, you'd think that you'd prefer to go to the more affordable option. Let me tell you why that's not the case for me with Starbucks and Dunkin', okay? Every single time I go to Dunkin', I could order the same very specific order, okay?

Like literally, like, "I would like a caramel cold brew, medium, with light ice and three pumps of caramel." That's a lot, but bear with me. This is just an example. I could say that every single time that I go to Dunkin', like, that specific order, and it will taste different every single time , okay?

It will taste different every single time. I can go to Starbucks and I can say, "I would like a venti matcha lemonade with two pumps of raspberry syrup in it and light ice," and it will taste the same every single time, okay? So, that's reason number one I go to Starbucks for my coffee order. Reason number two, I have such a pleasant, extraordinary experience every single time I go to Starbucks.

The employees are always so kind, so friendly, so welcoming, always doing special little things to, um, you know, make me happy and put a smile on my face before I've had the caffeine in my body, right? And I think that that is just so beautiful and fun and special, and so I love getting to experience that, and I love feeling appreciated as a customer and not just like any other number. I like that these people are going out of their way to do something that they absolutely don't have to do to make me feel special and make my day just a little bit brighter as I'm getting my coffee. And with that, I am so excited to be diving so deep into client experience.

We are gonna be talking about how to make your business to your clients the Starbucks and not the Dunkin', right? We are going to make sure that you set yourself apart from every other stylist and salon in your area with the way that you serve and impact your clients, and we're gonna be talking about why that's so important, how to go about it, and what that actually looks like, okay? We're gonna be diving deep into every section of your guest experience, and here's the catch. Here is the catch: we're gonna be talking about how you can level up your guest experience without stressing yourself out, without overwhelming you, without having to work more when you're not behind the chair, okay?

With being able to systematically implement it and insert it into your client experience that you already have behind the chair, okay? So, if you are ready for some kickass ideas for your guest experience, some deep dives into why it's so important to have a client experience that is exceptional in 2022 and beyond, then get ready, friend, because we are gonna be spending the next couple weeks together diving deep into how to create a stunning, iconic, gorgeous guest experience. Let's go. Let me guess.

You are a hustling, bustling hairstylist behind the chair, working so hard to build a beautiful career for yourself, one that gives you time, freedom, and energy to spend with yourself, your family, and your friends. But you feel like you're always working in your business, even when you're not behind the chair. My name's Hunter Donia, and I help you automate your systems and implement really beautiful strategies so you can grow your business without the overwhelm, and this is the Modern Hair Stylist podcast. Okay, I wanna start this off by just making you aware that, in my opinion, the vantage point that you have as a service provider, one that is touching people, one that is literally very personally transforming something on somebody's body, um, one that is spending so much time and creating such a deep relationship with their customers, you are in such an insane vantage point to create an excellent, insane customer experience, okay?

Way, way better and in a better position to do so than a lot of other companies out there who wish that they could do the same thing.And that's why it's really, really, really powerful when you start to get these ideas and you start to really focus on how you are serving your customer when, uh, we talk about client experience within this industry, because there are so many touch points that will set you apart and that will allow you to raise your prices over and over and over without churning clients, right? Without losing clients to other salons or stylists or whatever it may be, because they can't find another experience that is as amazing as yours, right? We all, as human beings, we need to see an experience that is really valuable.

We need to see it as valuable, right, to want to spend money on it. And so if you raise your prices and your experience matches the perceived value of what your client is spending with you and experiencing with you, then your client isn't gonna wanna leave you, right? So what that takes is having a bomb-ass client experience that sets you apart. I've had so many clients because I, you know, I moved from, uh, far away when I started in my new suite and my new business.

I'm- I probably moved, like, an hour away from where I originally worked, um, and I can't tell you the amount of clients who still come and see me an hour away after being open for almost two years, and they try to go somewhere else and they come right back into my chair because my experience is absolutely excellent, right? And I'm very confident in saying that because I have worked hard to get to this space where I am serving my clients with a next-level experience. However, I have worked hard so that way I don't have to work hard for it anymore. The way that I serve my clients, yes, it is exceptional, but I...

it is completely automated, okay? And it is super streamlined and it is super systematized and it does not stress me out, because you can't give an amazing client experience if you're stressed out about it all the time, right? So my point is that when you can create a really bomb guest experience, your clients will not leave you, they will stick with you throughout the price increases, you will increase your referrals, you'll be able to market it better, right? You'll be able to market and set yourself apart in the noise of all of this beautiful hair, because it's not just enough to do beautiful hair anymore.

I don't care how talented you are, my friends. I do not care how talented you are. You will not get butts in your chair unless you are setting yourself apart in all the ways. And you can post a bunch of pretty h- p- uh, pictures of hair, but if you're not posting how amazing and unique your experience is and amazing and unique you are, then you're not gonna be able to fight through all the noise in your local area, on the Instagram, on the Facebook, on the whatever else-er.

So in this series that I'm gonna be giving you guys on this podcast, I want to help to give you these ideas and help you elevate what you- the service that you're giving your clients now, but I want you to understand that it does not have to be an overwhelming, hard thing, okay? It takes a little bit of work to get this stuff set up, yes. It takes a little bit of uncomfortability to start these things if you haven't done them before, yes. But once you get started, it becomes a well-oiled machine, and 90% of it is completely automated, and you're be a- you're gonna be able to do so much more by doing just a little bit, okay?

So let's dive deep, first off, into some statistics. So these statistics are kind of wild, okay? Um, they're kind of wild and they kind of really pack a punch when it comes to bringing my point home as to why customer experience is so important and more important than ever nowadays, okay? Um, I got this report and these statistics from Forbes, okay?

So here we go. So this first one is pretty general, but it's powerful. So 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, right? So same exact product, right?

Same exact coffee, okay? Same coffee, but a better customer experience, right? Same haircut, same quality of color, but a better customer experience. So girlfriends, everybody knows how to do a popping balayage nowadays, okay?

Everybody knows how to do a popping balayage and some freaking flat iron curls, all right? But not everybody is giving an excellent customer experience. So if you want to raise your ticket, if you wanna be charging high prices so you can work less and make more, then you need to have a great customer experience. 86% of buyers will tell you that, okay?

Second statistic, 80% of customers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences. Ooh, okay, okay, okay. So personalized experience, are you personalizing every single one of your client experiences as much as you possibly can? And no, I'm not talking about, of course, we personally personalize and tailor their consultation and their haircut and their color to who they a- No, that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the amenities, the experience, what they hear, feel, and see when they walk through the door, what they're smelling, all of that, okayHow are we making the experience around the product that you're delivering 10 times better and more personalized? How do we make it so that way your client is literally the perfect fit for the experience that they're walking into and it's perfectly tailored to them only, right? So I'm gonna be breaking a little bit more of that down in future episodes but I think that this statistic is super important and super impactful, especially in 2022, all right? 87% of customers who say they had a great experience will make another purchase from the company compared to 18% of customers who had a poor experience, right?

So that's a pretty obvious statistic in my opinion. However, if you think about it, 87% of customers who say they had a great experience will make another purchase, so that's, like, a lot of customers, right? Like, that's a lot and if we're not retaining people, right? If we're not retaining people then we are going to have a much harder time growing a sustainable business which brings me to this next statistic that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.

Now I want you to not only think about the money that you might be investing into your marketing but the time. Time is money, right? Time is a resource so it's gonna take you five times more time and/or money to acquire a new customer to replace the loss of an existing customer in your business. So therefore, your amazing customer experience is supposed to retain your existing customer to reduce that churn and keep the efforts that you have to make to create a sustainable business very nice and low.

Because especially if you're an independent stylist, like, you don't got time, friend. Like, you have business hours and then you need to have, like, personal life hours. Like, that is just, like, how life needs to go, okay? Life is too damn short and you can't be spending, like, 99% of your time trying to get new clients into your chair after you've already built up your clientele.

Like, you need to use what you have and maximize it as much as possible to then automate and i- keep those efforts nice and low and easy and streamlined, okay? So I have a little bit more statistics from Forbes but I'm gonna keep them in the back of my pocket for the future of this series, but what I want you to take away from those statistics is that it is more important now than ever that you have a customer experience that is lit, that is setting you apart, that is growing your business sustainably, okay? So let's talk about the different categories of your customer experience, um, and we're just gonna break this down super simply into, you know, the- the timeframes. So you have your pre-visit experience, you have your in-the-chair experience and you have your post-visit experience because I personally believe that your customer experience doesn't just start in the chair anymore, especially now that we live in such a digital era, right?

And like I said, these people, they got wandering eyeballs. They're- they- they are very distracted by all the things on the socials, all the other emails that they get, all the other businesses, all the other things. So therefore, your customer experience starts before their appointment and it does never end. It just keeps on going, okay?

So in the series that we're gonna be doing in this podcast, I'm gonna be diving deeper into each of these categories. But first, let's do a high-level view. So first thing's first, your pre-visit experience, okay? So your pre-visit experience starts when they get onto your website, all right?

Your website. Now you could argue that, you know, their marketing experience, uh, starts even before that like when they get onto your Instagram and then- when they see you on their s- on your stories and all those good things, but let's just stick to when they get to your website, all right? So from your website all the way up until the time that they get to your doorstep, what does that experience look like? Do they have to fight through a bunch of pages on your website to get to start their booking process with you?

Does your service menu make sense, make them feel comfortable, non-judgmental, not intimidated like you're creating a safe space for them where they're actually gonna understand what they got going on? Does your service menu, you know, disclose everything that they need to know to be prepared to understand what their investment is gonna look like with you or is it super confusing and does it turn them off and make a weird, uncomfortable, you know, w- experience, right Like, you should be listing very transparent prices on your website and they should be e- intensely simplified if you wanna create a gorgeous pre-visit experience from the bat, okay? Is it super easy for them to start your booking process? Are- do you have buttons all over the freaking place, right?

You want buttons all over your website that direct them to the call to action to get the booking process started and then once they do go through your booking process and they get an appointment on your books, what else happens? Nothing? Do they just not get any sort of correspondence before they hit your door on that appointment time? Because that is a beautiful unused space to level your shit up, friend, if you aren't utilizing it yet.

And it's a space that, you know, can get really overwhelming to want to create something cool for your clients to receive in between that- that time, you know, when they book and when they get to your door, but I promise you there are so many ways that you can level that shit up a... automatically, I promise you. But what you really should be doing there is proving to your client that they made the right decision to book with you, okay? That you're making them confident in the i- in the, um, investment that they're going to be making with you, okay?

So that way, you know, you reduce them getting cold feet. That way they're super confident to spend, you know, even more than what they may be expecting to pay with you, right? Um, all of those things. And that they feel really comfortable for, you know, what they're gonna experience when they come to see you.

So what's your experience look like? Do you have your address? How do they contact you? What's parking look like?

What's the, uh, payment methods that you prefer? Um, what should their hair, you know, what kind of condition do you want it to be in for when they show up? Like, breaking all of that down in that pre-visit experience will change the game, okay? Change the game.

And there's so much more that you can do in there, but let me not get too, uh, too, uh, too ahead of myself. And then let's talk about the in-the-chair experience, right? What we wanna look for in a great in-the-chair experience is definitely number one, consistency, and making the client feel special, and creating a unique experience, okay? Those are three things that we really wanna look for when it comes to an in-the-chair experience, okay?

So the consistency part is super important. You should be able to list out your in-the-chair experience step by step, like number one, number two, number three. Number one, I greet them at the door and I do this, this, this, this. Number two, I, uh, I sit them down and we have a consultation.

This, this, this, or this happens, right? So you wanna have a system for how you consistently serve your clients every single time they walk into the door, all righty? Because that way you'll hold yourself accountable to giving that excellent s- experience every single time. Because if they experience an amazing experience with you the one time because you had this certain order of the way you did things, but maybe it was just off the cuff and on the fly, and they don't have that same experience with you the next time they come back, they're gonna be turned off and their expectations are not going to be met.

And when it comes to making your client feel special, do you have a systematized way of doing that? It's quite simple, my friend, but you do have to set up a system for it, right? Um, the way that you can make your client feel special is making them feel like you really care about them, right? Th- that they're not just another number.

So I'll break that down a little bit more in the specific episode that I do on the in-the-chair experience. And setting yourself apart by creating a unique experience, right? A experience that is way more than just getting your hair done. It is going and relaxing, it's taking care of yourself, it is a place where maybe the client can get some work done, um, a place where they can live their damn best life.

And that's really just gonna depend on who you serve, right? And who your ideal client is. And it's gonna look different for everybody, hence creating a personalized experience which we will also talk about later. So that's in-the-chair.

Now let's talk about post-visit. Your experience should never end, okay? It should never end if you wanna have really effective retention and referrals. So in a world where you can stay connected to people so easily, you can have so many different digital assets and touchpoints in which you can keep in touch with your client, still serve them when they're at home and they don't have physical access to you, right?

And that is not to say that you should not have boundaries. Dude, you can have a million percent boundaries, like the highest of boundaries, and still serve your clients so excellently in your post-visit experience. I promise you, it is possible, okay? But like I said, we're gonna dive way deeper into what that actually looks like in the series.

So I hope that you are so excited to spend the next three weeks talking all about your client experience. We're gonna be diving deep into the pre-visit experience, the in-the-chair experience, and the post-visit experience in three different episodes over the span of the next three weeks. So if you are ready for that shit, then I am ready to give it all to you. So if you agree with me that it's time to deliver a badass client experience, if you agree with me that it is time to make a bigger impact in our clients' lives, and most importantly in our own lives in 2022, then get hype, get ready.

So much love to you. Peace out, girl scout. Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2022 Hunter Donia LLC.