Battling Through The Snow Even When It Has Gone

Us Brits love a bit of weather talk, don’t we?

• Media in full swing with ‘Beast From The East’
• Clients cancelling one after the other
• Huge drop in takings

No matter how much we try to carry on as normal, we were always going to see some effects from ‘The Beast From The East’ It was a pretty strange week for most of us. It threw us completely out of kilter, our normal routines went way out the window and the novelty of the pretty white stuff had completely warn off after day 2. So with the beautiful weather deciding to throw loads of snow upon us last week, small businesses will be feeling the effects for weeks and maybe even months to come. Clients cancelling, salon closures, wages still to pay we are going to feel the sting.

I’m not sure about you and your salon business but our pockets are certainly feeling a little lighter from last week. Being based in the South East we were hit by snow on Tuesday, this was the day the media were in the thick of advising their viewers and listeners to avoid travelling towards the end of the week unless it was absolutely necessary. Of course the majority listen and take the advice of the BBC, so yep you guessed it, the phone in the salon was off the hook, with call after call we had clients cancelling their bookings. Ahhhh…! When Thursday arrived I really didn’t want to look at the salon dashboard on Salon iQ to see the total takings for the week. It was not good, so many clients were cancelling. Worse thing of all was it was out of our hands, we just had to ride this one out. One of our salons is based in a department store, so we’re limited to when we can open. The general manager of the store said they had to close early and would operate Sunday opening hours for the rest of the week. From bad to worse! (The store ended up closing early 4 out of 6 days)

For someone that is constantly trying to improve customer service, move forward and stay a float of the challenges the world throws at small business’, I was beginning to feel physically sick. VAT bill is due next week, wages the following week, we simply can not afford to have £££££s less in the till. BUT

New Week in Your Hair & Beauty Salon

Today it’s the start of another new week, we can either continue drowning in self pity and feeling down OR we can turn this around and make the most of what we have at our finger tips. Turning The Beast From The East into a positive for your Hair or Beauty Salon is the only way. So…

Tips to claw back revenue lost from ‘The Beast From The East’ in your Hair and Beauty Salon

With the amazing Salon iQ software working it’s magic, we are able to run the cancellation reports for the whole week of the snow disruption and see exactly who cancelled or just didn’t turn up for their appointment. As a salon owner we want to keep this really personal to the client so we spent some time finding the best way to contact our clients and make up for last week.

1. Courtesy calls – Why reach out over the phone? 

We are not targeting them with a promotion or an offer, it is simply a light hearted, gentle reminder to get their appointment booked back in.

“Hello Hannah, It’s Sam from GREAT hairdressing. How are you? I can see you had to cancel your booking from last week, I hope the snow didn’t cause you too many problems? Hannah, we have a couple of bookings available this week with your stylist, can I get you booked with them?”

If they say “No” thats fine, no problem. No doubt once you call them about last weeks snow you will end up having a light hearted conversation about it. I feel this really does keep it personal and shows you care about them as an individual and that you have taken the time out of your day to reach out to them.

2. E-blast You can be a little bit more detailed in an e-blast and make it as comical or serious as you want with the help of pictures too.

Again personally I wouldn’t throw promotions to get your clients booked in. But just a gentle reminder that we can see you missed your booking and you have availability this week.

3. SMS Sending a text message is one of the quickest ways to reach out to your clients, a very high percentage of people check their phone several times in one hour. Tip – If you do decide to send an SMS remember to keep the number of characters to a minimum so you only use 1 credit.

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