Talk Skin Academy Podcast

7 Steps to Creating Unforgettable Facial Experiences

• Katie Howell • Episode 6

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What if you could transform your facial business and attract a loyal clientele, all without spending a penny extra? That's the promise of this episode, where we dive into understanding and enhancing the customer journey in a spa or facial business. We reveal the seven crucial checkpoints that your customers pass through - from your online presence to the booking system to your menu offerings. We discuss the importance of creating an easy, seamless online experience and having a clear, concise menu that leaves your customer satisfied and eager to return.

We don't stop there, we also delve into the art of building relationships with your clients. The focus is on understanding and addressing your clients' individual needs, along with lifestyle factors affecting their skin. We delve into the importance of customer rapport, personalization, and follow-up, all of which can be game-changers for your business. Furthermore, we highlight how to elevate your business by simply enhancing your checkpoint experience, with no additional cost. Listen in to gain invaluable insights into transforming your customer's experience, boosting loyalty, and ultimately, achieving business success.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Talk Skin podcast. I can't believe it's already episode six, insane. I just want to say, though, if you are enjoying these podcasts, please, please, please, show me by subscribing, liking, leaving a comment. Tell me what it is that you're loving about it, because it really does give me a direction of where you want these podcasts to go, because, at the end of the day, they're all about helping you build either successful facial business or a spa business. So let's get started with all about the customer journey experience, and I call it the checkpoint experience, because it's all about your customers, right, so let's get started. Okay then. So checkpoint experiences.

Speaker 1:

When you build your facial business or your spa business, you have to think about every single thing your customer goes through, because everything impacts their experience. When I go and work with spas, I will speak to their customers, and I want to find out why they would come back, but, most importantly, why they wouldn't go back to that spa, and I always ask the question how was your facial, how was your facial experience? And you either get people go. Oh my god, it was phenomenal from start to finish. It was just insane. Okay, it was pretty much nailed. Every part of the experience, then, but the majority of customers don't ever really say that. They're like, yeah, it was, and you see, or you can feel or hear their shoulders kind of rise and it was a good facial. Yeah, it was a great experience. Would I go back? I don't know, and it's those. I don't know is that we want to focus on.

Speaker 1:

If you're thinking about how you know how you can elevate your business, don't think about what you need to go and invest in. You know, products, equipment, anything that basically makes you have to spend more money. What you want to do, first and foremost, is start to look at your customers checkpoint experience, and we're going to go through what those checkpoints are today. In total, there are seven checkpoints that your customer will go through for their entire experience with you. What you have to remember is, when we talk about your customers facial experience, we're not just talking about the facial, it's the whole thing, and there are seven checkpoints that they will go through. What are the checkpoints? Let's start talking about them. So the first one is your online presence. If someone gets recommended that you're a great facialist, they're going to go check you out first. They're going to go check out your reviews. They're going to go check out your Instagram handles. They're going to go check out Facebook if that's where they are at. So they're going to check you out and what you want on your social media is a snippet of what they might or are going to receive.

Speaker 1:

So things that you don't think about, that maybe should be within your social media, is how to get to you. What does your premises look like? What offerings do you have? Do you have squiggly writing? Like every other, tom Dick and Harry beauty therapist out there has Avoid the squiggly writing. It looks pretty, but it's really difficult to read, and if you want it to be a seamless experience, you wanna make everything that they look at, touch, watch, hear it to be seamless. So your social media yes, it's all about, you know, getting the followers, but the fact of the matter is that you wanna think of your social media like is, if it's, if it's, you're walking them through, they come onto your page. What is the experience that they're going to receive with you? And that's what you want your social media to state.

Speaker 1:

Then, from that social media, how easy it is to find your booking system. Do you have a booking system? If you don't, how do they then book with you. Are you a just message me and we'll get you booked in scenario that's great for some people, but actually the majority of people just wanna be able to book by themselves. Some people wanna speak to you, and that's fine, have that availability there, but also have the availability for people to just book. Because, again, what do you wanna make? Your whole business? You wanna be as hands off as possible in the areas that you don't need to get involved in. You wanna set up these operational, you know things that allow you to have a easier life, so that if somebody, at one o'clock in the morning, is up because they've got insomnia and they're like, oh, they fell upon your page and they've been recommended to you, then they're gonna have to message you, then they're gonna get a reply from you until you are in working hours, and then by then they might be asleep or they might be in work and they won't have the credit card to hand, and so you want them to be able to just book. So you're making money overnight without having to do anything apart from set the system up. So make sure that your customer's experience is seamless on the online presence.

Speaker 1:

Then you want to look at the menu, and this is all within this online situation. The menu, the online menu, is it easy to read? Is it bombarded with different options? I always say think of a Michelin star restaurant and think of a typical food joint that we would go, maybe on a Thursday or, you know, a Wednesday or Thursday evening. A Michelin star restaurant will have a small menu because everything within that kitchen will be, you know, tunely picked. It will be perfectly ready for you know the the whole experience of that menu and that's what you're paying for.

Speaker 1:

Or do you have a menu that has 20,000 starters, 20,000 mains, 20,000 desserts and a ton of sides and extras that just overwhelm the majority of us and we sit there thinking, what do we pick? Because there's just too much choice. So what do you want to be? You know you have to figure out what you want to be, to allow your menu then to either create an experience or to create confusion and then guess what they don't book. So maybe if your bookings are down, it could be because maybe the menu is just either too complicated or there's just too many treatments on there. For instance, I was working with a therapist who's got her own business doing very well, but struggling in certain areas, and it was because she has 17 different facial options 17. It was confusing, and so sometimes simplifying your menu, keeping it short and to the point, sometimes just basing it on time, can be more of a positive experience for your customer than actually having too many offerings for your customer to then have to choose because, let's be honest, they don't actually know what they want.

Speaker 1:

They will come to you and that's what the consultation is for, right, which is the next stage, so we'll go on to that in a second. So that's your online experience. Do you offer a seamless experience online and kind of tell them what they're going to get, like a glimpse of into what they're going to experience, and is the booking system easy to find and does the menu basically make them want to book? That's your first checkpoint. So it's a big checkpoint. So, again, if you are thinking about 2024 and you want to start looking at how you could better your business, then that's the first place that I would start. The second checkpoint, then, is getting to you so they've just booked for a facial. You then descend them a reminder to say, hey, you've just booked a facial, I can't wait to see you, but this is where you can elevate their experience.

Speaker 1:

How you can do this is by thinking about the location of your property. So, for instance, if you have a room in a salon that is on a busy street and you know that between two and three or three and four, it is busy because just across the road there is a school and you're having clients turn up late every single time because there is no parking, because it's been taken up by all the parents picking up their kids, this can be a part of the experience you could add in to the email reminder or the text reminder that if you're coming to the appointment between two and four, then there is limited availability in parking due to the school's drop off or pickup. So I highly recommend that you leave at least five minutes earlier than you would normally to be able to find a space. There is parking in XYZ, because everything that they're going through to get to you is ultimately part of their experience with you. So them being stressed because they can't find a park in space. They're then looking at the time, thinking, oh my gosh, my facial is going to be cutting half, but I'm still going to have to pay full price, and then them coming to you and you're in a bit of a disgruntled mood because your client's now late. But whose fault is that? Is it their fault because they've never been to you before and they didn't know that between two and four it's a busy day and so for that reason, they wouldn't have left five to 10 minutes earlier. And so, yes, it's your fault because you haven't made that clear and that's when the socials could come in. If you come into my salon between two and four, please bear in mind there is a school and the school pickup is crazy, so it arrived five to 10 minutes earlier. I highly recommend you park here, and this is what your social media should be about. So checkpoint one and checkpoint two then work together to create that same experience, because I appreciate you can't put all of that in a reminder message. So you want to be thinking about how your socials can actually elevate your customers experience and allow people that maybe are thinking about booking with you to wow them with all this additional info that nobody else does. This is how you can elevate your clients experience, so then when they come to you, they can turn around to you and go. I'm so thankful that you put that post on Instagram about, you know, arriving early because of the school, like if I hadn't have known that I would have been so late because it did take me 10 minutes to find a parking spot. So thank you. So, hey, the subconscious is a huge tick to your business because nobody else thinks about these things when they're setting their business up or even when they're fully up and running in general. So this is just one way that you can elevate your customers experience by getting them to arrive on time, by being aware of what's around them.

Speaker 1:

Another way you can think of it if you live again, if you work in a environment that's generally quite noisy and there's not much you can do, because maybe you've been tied into a contract because you weren't aware of how noisy it would be, because maybe it's next to a gym and at certain times the gym having weight lifters in there dropping weights on the floor, which can be a huge noise. You could ask your customers to bring their ear pods or their headphones so that you know, as long as they're not, obviously, headphones that go over the head. So you ask me a bit of a problem, but basically allow them to be aware that during the you know one and two. Two o'clock appointment that's available. There's quite a lot of noise coming from in and around an area that you can't control. So it's not your fault, it's not your client's fault. You obviously have to be busy, or do you maybe book your lunch break out at that particular point. So, again, it's not impacting your customer's experience.

Speaker 1:

These are all little details that I would say think about for two thousand and twenty four, because they can make or break the experience and unfortunately you can't control the timings of the gym. But what you can control is what you're doing inside your business that impacts your clients. So that's checkpoint. Two is how do they get to you and all the things that are happening in and around. That you can't control but you can make them aware of. Step three, then, is the actual consultation. So it's the meet and greet and the consultation. Now that is for most therapists. Unfortunately, their consultation, in their eyes, is for two reasons One, to make sure that they're medically safe and two, to make sure they don't get sued. Right, that's the majority of what you get told in colleges and in most academies. Is that that's the reason why you do your consultation? It's never explained that it actually will either make or break your business. What you have to remember as a business whether you're by yourself or you have a team is that people buy from people they like. So the whole point of a consultation is to actually create a relationship between therapist and your client, and that basically means that that comes from certain questions asked Now.

Speaker 1:

One of the biggest questions that I hear time and time again is how's your day? Now if we take them back through checkpoint one and checkpoint two, if their day has not gone very well because they weren't aware that their school was a school near, that they weren't aware it was going to be chaotic and busy, that they were going to struggle to find a parking space, that they're stressed because they're now running five to 10 minutes late for their appointment and they like to be on time. And you then go and ask them a question of how's your day and guess what? The answer is going to be not so positive, and so you naturally start off on a negative foot. So the question you never ask your customer is how's your day? What you do ask your customer is I bet you're looking forward to this facial icon. Wait to give it to you. You want it to be a positive answer, you do not want it to be a potential negative. So if you can avoid that question of how's your day, cause you just don't know how their day has been, all right. That's one of the questions I would say avoid.

Speaker 1:

So the consultation's about building that relationship to gain trust, to find out about your clients. Your clients are not nine o'clock, 10, 15, 11, 30, ooh lunchtime, one o'clock two, 15, three, 30, ooh home time. You work your business like that currently. Then it probably is a reason why maybe you're not succeeding, because that you do not build a business off having a relationship with your clients. You have to think about your client as a person and get to know them, because then they become loyal to you and they won't go anywhere else. If you're not building loyalty within your brand, it's probably because of that reason. So checkpoint three is all about building that relationship, finding out about that client, making sure that that treatment is the right treatment for them, taking into consideration everything that you've talked through in that consultation, and then being able to show them how phenomenal you are by asking the right questions to get the right answers, to giving the best treatment on that bed. That's checkpoint three. Checkpoint four is the treatment itself. So the treatment itself is always down to that individual.

Speaker 1:

So this is where the bespoke experience comes from. Yes, obviously you might have a protocol to follow from your skincare brand, but the fact of the matter is that if you follow that protocol and you don't deviate from it, based on what your clients and your customers' needs are, then why are they going to come back to you when they can go and get that same experience anywhere else that offers that same product line? Your whole point of building a business is to make it bespoke to your customers and allow you to be your USP, your unique selling point. Like you want to be that person that people feel that they're actually listened to, that the treatment is actually created around their individual needs and their lifestyle choices that may be affecting their skin or their stress levels or whatever it is that you have that conversation about during that consultation, right? So you have to start thinking outside that box. Yes, follow the protocols and make sure certain ingredients don't go with certain ingredients and things like along those lines, to make sure that the client's safety is obviously priority, but at the same time, you do need to be able to bespoke that facial in some way to allow them to think, holy cow, I've never had that experience anywhere else. Like that's what you want, right, to keep them coming back to you. That's what you need to offer so that treatment will be based off that consultation. So again, check point. These check points are all working together. And then check point six. Then is the recommendation.

Speaker 1:

Now, the recommendation shouldn't always be straight in at the facial offering of products. It should be about everything. So if you've got a client that's dealing with acne, for instance, and their acne is related to their stress because they have a very high, high-powered job, they're a mum of two, their husband's also working, so it's always basically a stressful time for them and it actually is causing the inflammatory response of acne to occur. Skincare can only do so much with a hectic lifestyle like your client leads. So do you just give them a ton of skincare and wish them hope for the best, or do you actually say look, your skin is reacting to your lifestyle and, as you mentioned in the consultation, your lifestyle isn't going to change anytime soon. If anything, it's probably going to get a bit more stressful and a bit more intense.

Speaker 1:

So what I recommend is, yes, we're going to put you on a simple routine, because right now, that's all your skin needs, but what I recommend that you come and see me every one to two weeks so I can help de-stress you, I can help relax the muscles in the face, I can help and help allow the skin to function more effectively, because I can clear out all the lymphatic area, I can get you nice and into a relaxed state, allow your skin to calm down Alongside, using a very simple routine at home that basically then allows you to be able to get it done, because, again, like you said, you haven't got time and so you don't do anything. So I'm not going to give you a big routine, I'm just going to give you a small routine, and I recommend that you come back and see me so you know that every week or every two weeks, you've got a place of refuge for an hour, which is all about you and not about anyone else. How does that sound? That way, then you are truly looking after your customer, you're not just trying to force products on them, and you recognize that, actually, skincare is only going to do so much with a skin that actually has issues related to stress and no matter what you do, no skincare can actually sort stress out Right. You can as a facelist, because you can get them into a deep state of relaxation. Remember, a 60 minute treatment done right Right Can be equivalent to eight hours of sleep. Remember that. So you are so much more than just helping them with the skin. You can also help them be the sanctuary to their actual life.

Speaker 1:

So this is what can happen if you build that relationship. Because if you don't build that relationship in that checkpoint before you do the facial, they're not going to tell you that they're stressed. They're not going to tell you that they're, that she never sees her husband and that she's miserable because of it. They're not going to tell you any of this really personal stuff Unless you actually have that conversation with them and only then can you then recommend to come and see you once week, because you have that information to hand. So once that's done, you then basically got them back in for another three rounds of treatment and you've put them on the right skincare routine or just told them to tweak what they're using at home. You then obviously say goodbye and then you do the follow up, which is then another email in a day to two days time making sure that everything's A okay and that, if they got any questions, to come and see you. But they look forward to see where you, look forward to seeing them on the next appointment that basically they've booked in for.

Speaker 1:

And that is the experience, that is the checkpoint experience. And obviously there's so much. There's a lot more I could talk about, but I don't want to overwhelm, but I wanted to just show you how every part of that experience is crucial to the overall outcome of whether your client is going to return back to you or not, because everything matters. It's not just about your facial, it's not just about the treatment you're offering, it's about the whole experience that you're creating for your customers. So for 2024, if you are thinking about looking at changing up your business, spending money on products, training, equipment, etc. Etc.

Speaker 1:

Before you do that, go through those seven checkpoints, look at every part of that customer's experience and see how you, for free, can start to elevate and change things that could just basically elevate that whole experience that your client is going through, without having to cost you a single penny, apart from a little bit of your time and energy in maybe creating some things that could just be the icing on the cake and it makes you different to everyone else around you doing the same thing. So I hope that was useful. It is definitely something that I know when speaking to my one-to-one and mentoring that people just don't realise how much of an impact every part of that checkpoint system has on every single client. It's not just on one or two, it's every single client that comes through your doors. Everyone goes through the same thing, so it's amazing how much it can actually change or make or break your business.

Speaker 1:

So really think about that for 2024, okay, so I hope you enjoyed that, because I love talking about the checkpoint experience, because it really can elevate your experience, elevate your business, and it doesn't cost a single penny to do that, because all it basically requires is a little bit of your time and a little bit of your thought to be able to put this into action, because these are simple things that can be done and it doesn't cost you anything, but it can elevate your experience to no end. So there we go, guys. I would love to know your feedback, so please subscribe, share it to anyone that you think would need this type of support in their business, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode, which is going to be all about bringing your personality to your business. So, on that note, have a great day, everyone, lots of love and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.