Thursday, November 8, 2012

Just One Of Those Days....How To Fix a Mistake

    We as barbers and stylist every now and then have one of those days where in the end you know you made a mistake. You get that phone call from a customer complaining about their haircut (you always hope they are polite about it, but more often then not they are usually on the rude side). Last night was one of those nights for me. My last haircut of the evening was a girl who came in asking for a faux hawk.

    The question is how do you handle a disappointed customer? Dealing with an upset customer sometimes takes kid gloves because some people take a bad haircut personally. Some people (mainly guys) take a bad haircut with a grain of salt but others want it dealt with and quickly and more importantly I think upset customers want to make sure we as prefessionals are paying attention and listening to what they are asking for.

    So here are my suggestions in dealing with a upset customer: 1) Listen to them! I get it, it is easy to just kind patronize them but make sure you know why they are upset. 2) Get Them Back in the chair. If you are the one who made the mistake do your best to get them back in YOUR chair so you are the one fixing your mistake and you can learn from your own mistake. If you can not get them back in your chair just make sure you get them back in your shop! 3) Do not forget to apologize. Sometime a sincere apology can go a long way. 4) This is my personal opinion so you do not have to agree with me on this one: Do not give them there money back! Offer them a discount to come back but the truth is we are trying to make a living, too! If you gave every person back there money who was not happy for one reason or another we would go broke! There are those out there that you just can not make happy.

    In the end all we can do is our best and accept the fact that even the most experienced barber/stylist has an occasional bad haircut and we just have to treat our customers professionally.

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