By Bryan Durocher, Durocher Enterprises

Salon and spa clients have hundreds of choices for beauty services, so the goal is to provide them with the best complete salon and spa experience they have ever had. That experience begins and ends with the salon coordinators at the front desk. The salon coordinators’ vital role involves more than making client appointments and handling cash. They are projecting the image of the salon and spa to your clients and that has to be 100% positive. This can be enhanced by measuring their productivity and offering incentives.

Customer service is the bottom-line valuation every client uses to determine where they choose to do business. Frontline personnel are a critical component to the Extraordinary Client Experience. Hire the right person and the business flows beautifully, hire the wrong person and the business can be thrown into dissent and chaos. Frontline staff have more contact with the overall client base than anyone else within the work environment.

First Impressions

The first few seconds of contact between two people is crucial. The saying goes that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. People make up to 10 different judgments about you just based on how you look. So a professional image is of the utmost importance. The way you handle your first contact with people is one of the keys to the door of social success and overall business achievement.

Why someone truly chooses your business is the personality and image established in the first interaction. Your salon or spa’s image is projected through your personality and attitude. You have a limited amount of time to create an outstanding impression, and by telephone that amount of time is even less because there is nothing for the other person to look at and absorb. Everything depends on what the client hears:

> Your tone of voice

> What you say

> What the client hears in the background

This is an opportunity for creating an extraordinary impression.

A positive first impression can translate over into other interactions. When people project a positive image it creates an environment where people look for the best from you and others within the salon and spa.

Reward Them

The old saying goes, “You get what you pay for.” This shows up loud and clear in many salons and spas when clients meet the front line. It is important to invest in the best you can afford. Offer innovative ways to compensate the front desk, creating the opportunity for unlimited income potential. The right front desk incentives and education will produce extraordinary results. There are several ways coordinators can earn above their base salary:

Retail recommendation: They are there to facilitate the close of the sale with the client. In order for them to be compelled to follow through and make sure retail recommendation is a priority there needs to be an incentive in place for closing the sales with each and every client. All incentives should be paid as an override and not cause the front desk to compete amongst themselves or the technicians.

Gift Certificate Sales: Look at the sales for the year prior. You can calculate this on a monthly basis. Put an incentive in place that offers a percentage of the sales to the front desk for their recommendation. This figure should be based upon reaching dollar figures above last year’s totals for the business and split accordingly using the same mathematical formula used for retail compensations.

Pre-Booking: Pre-booking is a critical part of closing the client’s visit with your business. Offer an incentive for the desk to split. Take the total incentive earned and divide by the individual hours worked. The dollar incentive can be adjusted to the size of the business and the number of staff.

If you find missing gaps in your training program look to the Frontline Service Mastery CD and the Success Circle.