Boundaries and client communication for salons: How to have difficult conversations with grace
Note: This post is sponsored by Mangomint, next-generation salon and spa software
Last week, I shared the first half of my conversation with Marchelle Mckiernan, VP of Sales at Mangomint.
Mangomint is next-generation salon and spa software that makes setting up policies and keeping your business professional so easy.
Coming from a salon-owning background herself, Marchelle is a wellspring of wisdom about how to run a salon effectively and profitably - with a focus on using systems, software, and automation to make your job so much easier!
In this blog, I continue my conversation with Marchelle, as she shares her experience with setting strong boundaries around your time (whether behind the chair, at home, or in the office) and how to communicate these boundaries clearly to all of your clients.
Whether you’re a solo beauty professional with a home studio, a salon owner, or a booth renter, today’s video and blog post will help you out a ton if you have a hard time saying the smallest, yet sometimes hardest word to express in the English language: “no”.
How to communicate effectively with clients while respecting your personal time and space
In the last blog post, Marchelle gave her opinions on deposits as a way to encourage clients not to cancel or no-show, and recoup lost revenue on products that don’t get used.
While she feels like there might not always be a case for charging a deposit (as it can actually cause you more hassle than it’s worth), she does make a good point about the general outcome of it:
It raises the bar on the type of clients you’ll have coming to your salon.
“If you are somebody that wants to raise the barrier of what it takes to book with you, meaning you're running your books in a way where you're not really accepting new clients, sure - charge a deposit.”
“But if you are somebody that's looking to grow your books, you 100% need to lower the barrier of someone being able to get in touch with you [and] to get into your books.”
However, when you’re a new hairstylist, esthetician, nail tech, waxer, etc, you might be tempted to just let anyone in…which is where the problems can begin.
New salon owners and solo beauty professionals often make the mistake of profoundly discounting their services, giving away services for free, or making the barrier to entry so low that they allow their time to be monopolized by clients who don’t respect them.
If that’s you now, or has ever been you, Marchelle has some sage advice for beginning to establish boundaries to maintain respect and dignity:
Set up a communication policy, and make sure all your clients know about it
Marchelle explains that at her previous salon, they didn’t have a full-time help desk, so they set a policy in place that all clients would expect a reply within 24 hours.
“We had a 24-hour response agreement where within the salon, we would always get back to them within 24 hours, whether that was a callback or an email in regards to what they were asking.”
Marchelle explains that when you set a policy and make sure everyone knows about it, it manages expectations and draws boundaries around your (or your team’s) time.
Use a messaging system that relies on real responses from real people instead of bots
While auto-responders can be handy, tinned responses lack that personal connection that’s so important for maintaining a healthy client relationship. Marchelle recommends using a texting app or messaging system that you or a team member check in on frequently.
“I don't like bots. Like if you even go on mangomint.com - please don't do this as a test *laughs* - and you send us a chat message, it's a real person from my team, communicating back to you.
Marchelle explains that with a business-only messaging system in place, you can set boundaries around your time and not have to be constantly flooded with messages during your personal time.
“If you have no boundaries around when people can communicate with you, you're gonna be that person with the higher cortisol. You're gonna wake up knowing you have all these messages, whether they're professional or friendly or not.”
How to set (and stick to) strong boundaries around your work schedule
As a beauty professional, you’re probably one of the hardest working, most committed public servants out there.
But you’re likely also seriously burnt out because you don’t practice saying ‘no’ often enough.
You’re not alone.
And Marchelle understands better than anyone, having owned a salon for so many years:
“I was guilty of this before I had my son. I worked up until 37 weeks. He came early probably because I was just going so hard that by days after my maternity leave started, it was like, cool. I don't even get a little break before you come.”
“But I remember those last few weeks; it was during the holidays. And I would do a 12-hour day. I did not care.”
Besides burnout, the big problem with not setting boundaries about how much and often you work is that you set a precedent with your clients that they can expect you to give them time whenever they need it.
“It always happens the same way, right? It's a Thursday afternoon and Joan calls and she says, ‘I'm so sorry. I have a wedding on Saturday. I need to get in tomorrow. Is there any way you can squeeze me in?’ And whether that's you taking the phone call or the message, it's always like she needs an answer,” explains Marchelle.
“But what we have to first acknowledge is if Joan has been seeing you before, this is learned behavior. She thinks she can do this for a reason.”
“So the first thing that needs to happen is you need to set those boundaries for yourself. Then you need to work. Whether you're working with a coach or you're just utilizing the resources at hand, you have to decide what your policy is around that.”
And then stick to it!
I know it’s hard to imagine saying no to your clients or having to enforce policies that could inconvenience them.
But ultimately, you do it for your own good - because your well-being is at stake if you don’t.
“There needs to be pain on the other side of breaking your own boundary. There needs to be something that tells you, ‘If you don't do what you said you're going to do, there is going to be pain there.’ Because as human beings, we do everything to avoid pain and gain pleasure. So we have to set the boundaries, and then decide how we're going to enforce that upon ourselves. Then we need to learn how to communicate it,” explains Marchelle.
Marchelle shares an example of how you can practice setting boundaries around your time with the fake client, ‘Joan’:
“So when Joan calls on Thursday, we hop up, we grab the phone and we say, ‘Hey Joan, I cannot squeeze you in on a day that I am fully booked.’”
“What we're communicating to her is that what [she’s] doing is not a normal circumstance. It isn't a regular thing to just call somebody, and demand that you get in tomorrow. Then if it is something that is within your boundaries and you could take them and it's not going to cause pain in other areas of your life, you let them know. ‘I can get you in on this day.’”
Sometimes, however, your client will be really desperate - and maybe, just maybe, you’re feeling like you can make room in your schedule, as long as Joan understands you’re not going to continue to squeeze her in whenever she wants it.
Marchelle goes on to explain what you can do in this case:
“Joan says, ‘I'll do anything!’ [So] you let her know under the circumstance that [if she] pre-books [her] next two appointments with [you] in order to make sure that [you] aren't in this same situation again, right now [you can] do her hair. You squeeze her in that last time, she agrees to your policy to book those next two appointments. If she no-shows to one of them, you enforce the policy you've already set.”
How to handle ‘do-overs’ of services that clients request in a way that honors your time and business policies
It happens to the best of us.
A client isn’t happy with their hair or nails or wax job (or whatever it is you’ve done to beautify them!) - either because they changed their mind, or because they didn’t explain well enough what they wanted.
How do you handle it?
Marchelle explains what she’s done in the past:
“When I first started doing hair, I was in the specialized salon and I was only doing haircuts after about four years. This was my first full highlight client, and she was transitioning from an all-over blonde to a highlighted look. Meanwhile, as I start doing the service, she starts sharing the trials and tribulations she's going through in life at that time. And it was like, ‘Oh, this isn't a good time for you to make a change.’ *laugh*”
“[I wish I had] properly explained to her what a dramatic change that is and how to prepare for it and what to expect that day…because you're going to have your natural color between some of these highlights. You're going to feel darker even though you're technically going lighter. I look back on that and I think this was just about me slowing down and taking time to communicate.”
“But if I've got the type of schedule where I'm stacking people in and squeezing people in at the end of my day, I don't have time to do that. So it's really about adjusting the type of services you want to deliver.”
“[But] I think in a high-end high-value, high-cost business model, your redos should most likely be free. The reason being is if you're charging a premium and you’re deep-diving into your consultations, really doing your best to understand and actually communicating to your customer…you gotta charge what you're worth. Okay. Well, what are you worth? Are you really going to be able to deliver to somebody, the expectation that they're coming in for whether it's delivering it in the service or in the communication that says this is gonna take four services to get there, right?”
“If you explain to them properly that it's gonna take four services to get there and they're going lighter and a week later they're like, ‘Oh man, my color faded hard,’ you want to bring them back in and give them that experience. So the next visit, they still want to come to you and not go try this process with someone else.”
“The only caveat to that is you can let those customers know that in order to receive those types of services, where if in a week from now in two weeks from now, you feel like your toner or your ends just aren't working for you, [a touch-up] is available to you, if you take home the proper home care maintenance kit. If they take the insurance kit, [and] the insurance kit doesn't work. I believe that you should take care of them. No cost.”
How you can use Mangomint or other salon software to help you set policies and boundaries as a beauty professional
If you’re still feeling a bit nervous about setting policies that might tick off some people, don’t sweat - the right software can help you confidently set them up easily.
For instance, you can set your hours or your team’s schedule in Mangomint, and then clients have the option to choose from available time slots (and no others!) right within their own Client Portal.
You can also set up a Waitlist option, as needed!
“What's really special about Mangomint,” says Marchelle, “is [I could] set those hours and it gave [clients] the immediate availability for a partial highlight with me. If they could not find something within that window that works for them, they could go ahead and put themselves on a waitlist that would notify me. I really relied on my online booking.”
“So for the most part, if I had somebody reach out to me via Messenger or email or even on Instagram - even on Yelp - we would never book their appointment through a back and forth. We would note the service type and then we would send them the direct link to book that service.”
“When you get to that level where you people need to be squeezed in because you're so busy, raising prices can help, but not in the immediate. You can have an automated waitlist. It's intelligent. It lets you know if something becomes available and you can just plug them in, and give them the express booking link. They can either book it or after 15 minutes you can send it to the next person. There are little features like that that are gonna work in the background for you.”
You can try Mangomint risk-free to see how it can help make everything in your beauty biz run so much smoother today!
But in the meantime, practice setting and communicating these super-important boundaries with your clients. Free up your time, get the respect you deserve, and sleep better at night knowing that you’re making the right moves to protect yourself as a beauty professional.
