Growing your business is about filling your calendar and establishing your brand without sacrificing other areas, like earnings or customer experience. Essentially, you want to increase your client bookings while still providing the quality services and individual attention your loyal clients love about you and your salon.
You could use another you because trying to do everything yourself can be overwhelming. It is hard to be at your best when you are exhausted. Your client’s reviews are one of your best advertising tools, so you want to keep providing every client with the best experience every time.
Plan For Success
Whether your appointment calendar is filling up, you are working on more certifications, or focusing on building your social media presence, it all points to a busier you. There are only so many hours in a day. If you are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with your busy salon, you’re probably at a place in your career where you need to make some adjustments. Scaling or improving your business practices for some tasks will enable you to do more without your customer service suffering.
It’s important to have a plan to scale up your customer service as your schedule begins to fill with bookings. Scaling customer service in the PMU industry means delivering more and better quality customer service experiences with your existing resources.
1. Keep What Matters Most, Drop What Doesn’t
First, figure out what matters most to your clients. Where can you relax some standards while building others? For example, maybe your clients are okay if you respond to messages within a few hours rather than the typical 30 minutes. Knowing that will free you from constantly checking your phone or website so you can focus on another aspect they care more about, like appointment reminders and receiving a pre-appointment checklist of “Dos and Don’ts.”
2. Make Your Clients Feel Important
It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to be well-known for excellent service. However, maintaining your top-tier reputation can be challenging as your business grows. Your artistic skills are still spot on, but other factors of the client experience from bookings and payments to communications can start to slip. You may have less time to make each client feel special or give them the red-carpet treatment you wish you could. Continue to make an effort to make each client feel important in meaningful ways.
3. Quit Trying to Do Everything on Your Own
The one-woman show that started this journey to become a successful permanent makeup artist, may not be enough to run a busy salon alone. Luckily, you don’t have to manage everything all on your own! While the artistry will always be all you, you can ask for help to guide and manage other parts of your business. A permanent makeup marketing agency can be an invaluable resource to help grow your business without sacrificing the quality of your client’s experience.
Put Yourself in Your Client’s Place
Imagine yourself in your client’s shoes. What would be most important to you? Define your perfect client experience. You might be able to use your personal experience in the chair of another PMU artist as a starting point. Think about what you liked, didn’t like or were neutral about.
Set your customer service goals based on how you define the perfect experience for your clients, keeping in mind that you may need to make changes as you implement your plan and test it out. Consult with your beauty marketing agency to learn more about strategies that have worked for others in your industry.
Invest in People and Technology
When it comes down to it, you’ll likely need to bring in more help to manage day-to-day tasks so that you can concentrate on your clients. An agency can take on some of your workload. Or technology can do the job in many cases.
An agency can provide extra people and experience to manage different aspects of your business without having the additional expense of hiring more employees.
Automated technology can help you manage recurring tasks at a lower cost. For example, you can use software that allows clients to book through your webpage. Then, the same technology can send them an appointment confirmation, a reminder and a checklist of what to do or not do before they come in.
Additionally, a nicely built webpage and a forum for your clients to interact with each other can help answer many common questions, saving you time and boosting your community.
The Upfront Investment is Worth it
As your business grows, you may need both technology and people to help you take the load off your shoulders and continue booking new clients for your permanent makeup business without sacrificing your outstanding customer service.
Whether hiring an agency that can put more employees at your assistance or using technical services and software, you will face some upfront costs when growing your business. However, the investment is worth it for your clients’ satisfaction and your reputation, peace of mind and longevity.
Infographic
Every artist wants a successful PMU brand. Once there is growth, you need to handle all the responsibilities that come with it. One of them is juggling calendar appointments, more certifications, and building social media presence. You don’t have to struggle alone. You can employ people and technology to scale up your customer service. Here’s how.
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