 by Brenda Fishbaugh |
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“Attention
To Detail Is All That Matters,” Says
Salon Owner
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When my May column entitled, “A Few of My Favorite Things” was
published, I received a nice email from Shelly Davis of Dakota’s Fitness & Tanning
in Gillespie, IL (an hour east of St. Louis). Shelly had some questions
about what I liked and disliked about salons I visited, and she wanted to
share what she has done to make her salon a great place to visit. 
Shelly decided to store her customers’ lotions and eye protection at the salon. Since they tan by appointment, their lotion and eye protection are placed in the room prior to their session! “After reading your column ‘The Big Switch’ where you advocated selling eyewear, we made the Big Switch,” Shelly explained. “When the customer buys lotion, we attach their goggles or disposable eye protection to the bottle with a rubber band. We keep the goggles in a Ziploc bag so they don’t pick up dirt, tingle products or get touched. If a customer only buys eyewear, either goggles or disposables, we keep that Baggie paper-clipped to their client card and hand over their eyewear when they walk in the door.”
On slow days, Shelly has her team clean the client storage shelf and reorganize it, noting who is low on lotion or disposable eyewear. “We put a note on their client card so we can tell them they’re almost out of lotion and that we are running a wonderful promotion.” (Now, THAT is customer service!)
“ We are in a small town and we want every tanner to feel special,” Shelly continued. “So, we believe that attention to detail is all that matters. I want my clients to feel like they are the most important people on earth. They remember that and they come back,” she said.
Shelly goes to great length to make her customers feel “they are the most important people.” Every tanning room offers hand sanitizer, deodorant and body stickers, as well as a pre-paid postcard that asks, “How are we doing?” and asks about such details as whether their tanning room was clean and a comfortable temperature, if they had to wait for their session, and whether the staff asked to see their eye protection. She asks if the restroom was clean. (You know dirty restrooms are my personal pet peeve!) The comment cards are anonymous, so Shelly gets the straight scoop. “We constantly want to make our business better, so we use the cards at our staff meetings to decide on our next steps to improve.”
Here’s an innovative idea: Free Sample Friday. “Each Friday, we place a product of our choosing in each tanning room – it may be a bottle of lotion, a packette or a sample cup,” Shelly explained. “Sometimes it’s a pair of Wink-Ease, or an after-tan towelette pack for their enjoyment. We explain that if after their session they buy that product, they will receive a significant discount. Yes, Free Sample Friday definitely increased our sales!” exclaimed the enthusiastic owner.
Shelly described another policy of Dakota’s Fitness & Tanning. “If a tanner leaves their eye protection behind, we take the time to sanitize it, place it in a plastic bag and leave a pre-printed note: ‘We found your eye protection. We hope that you won’t mind, we sanitized and removed your mascara lines. We also took the liberty to seal them in this plastic bag; please consider keeping your eye protection clean and in a sealed bag after every use. We care about your eyes, so should you.’ At first, we thought customers might be offended; however, comments are to the contrary. They appreciate that we do care about them and remark about our sincerity,” she said.
This THREE-TANNING BED, all-women fitness center has a slew of other customer-oriented programs. They offer gifts for referring new customers; they offer $15 off the next lotion purchase once the customer has spent $100 with them. They send birthday and anniversary gifts such as a free infrared sauna session or a zipper pouch with disposable eyewear and after-tan cloths. They clip newspaper articles that feature their customers and send them with a “Congrats” note, and buy ads featuring customer testimonials. “They now bring us testimonials all typed up hoping we’ll pick them to be in our ad,” Shelly laughed.
My favorite is the “Where in the World is Dakota’s” contest, in which customers take photos of themselves on vacation wearing their Dakota’s T-shirts. They actually printed and sold calendars with all the entries and customers win prizes for submitting photos!
If a fitness center with three beds “in the middle of nowhere” can put this kind of creative, engaging energy into customer service, what can you do at your salon?
Tanning
industry veteran Brenda Fishbaugh is president of Eye Pro, Inc.,
makers of disposable eyewear. She travels extensively training
salons on the effects
of UV light on vision.