Winky said:
I was hoping that someone could give me some advice on a situation with a client. I work with gel and most of my clients go between 4-5 weeks between fills without any major problems. On her last appointment one of my regular clients arrived nearly 1 hour late for her appointment. As my day was booked with back to back apointments i told the client that i would be unable to do her fill or at best i would do it but had no time to do a permanent french manicure. She was very upset and unwilling to aacept this. In an attempt to appease her i moved my next apointment back a half hour and made my already hectic day worse. I did her fill as fast as i could and tried to do my best but honestly i was very stressed and annoyed. So now, 2 weeks later she apparently has major lifting and her nails are in a sorry state (so i've been told by a hairdresser in the salon). It's very probable that it was something i did wrong, since this never happened to her before. She'll be coming in this week and my question is: am i obliged to give her a "discount" such as a free fm with her fill or some sort of "compensation", or do i just charge full price and say that it was due to her being late and while i did my best to give her the full service her tardiness obliged me to work too fast? I'd really appreciate some feedback, because she is a good client and i don't know how to handle the situation.
Hi! It is very frustrating when something like this happens...
Firstly, I would suggest you DON'T PANIC until your client actually returns for her infil!! If possible, it might be worth seeing if you can book out a bit more time if you think you may have to do more work than normal. At least then, you'll hopefully feel a bit more relaxed before tackling the nails.
If she doesn't mention the previous appointment, then I wouldn't either. Just do the work you need to do and charge her what you would have charged her for a normal infil. I wouldn't offer any compensation or good will at this stage UNLESS she comes in and really kicks off, of course!
If she does, then I would perhaps take the tact that it was only because she is such a special customer to you that you agreed to try and do her infills last time. If it had been anyone else, you would have explained it takes X amount of time to do infils correctly, and there was no way you would have considered squeezing them in to Y amount of time. However, you decided because she is such a good Customer, to do your best in the amount of time you had left. Perhaps apologise if she doesn't feel that was good enough and next time, you are sure she'll appreciate that if she is more than 10 minutes late again, you would have to rebook the appointment as now she can see it does really take the full X amount of time to do infills to the high standard you usually do.
And smile sweetly at all time of course!!!
Hope this helps and if she is really that good a customer, she should perhaps respect you a bit more and not put you in that predicament in the first place....Just my opinion!!
Anyhow, GOOD LUCK!!
Emma x