customer service advice

SalonGeek

Help Support SalonGeek:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.

Winky

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2003
Messages
162
Reaction score
1
Location
Portugal
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.
 
Personally,I would not tell her you accept it your fault as you don't know if she has been looking after them properly at home, it could be her fault they are lifting.

Like you said, you don't usually get any problems & I'm sure you've had to work a bit speedy in the past without missing any prep steps so my advice to you is don't beat yourself up about it Hun, see how she is when she comes in & if she's not very happy then maybe you could offer her something as a good willl gesture to keep her as a client?

Good luck,

Jade x
 
Thank you for the advice, i'll try not to tell her that i may have been my fault but truthfully it probably really was me. It would be too much of a coincidence that for so many months her nails were fine and suddenly they lift badly when i rushed through her fill. I do feel bad as i always do when something goes wrong, but i also feel she shares the blame because she was extremely late and not understanding last time she came in.
 
Winky said:
Thank you for the advice, i'll try not to tell her that i may have been my fault but truthfully it probably really was me. It would be too much of a coincidence that for so many months her nails were fine and suddenly they lift badly when i rushed through her fill. I do feel bad as i always do when something goes wrong, but i also feel she shares the blame because she was extremely late and not understanding last time she came in.
Hi,
Sorry to hear about your experience. As we are constantly learning about our products I think we also learn about how to handle these situations, It's sometimes hard to say no to a client. If a client does not respect your appointment system then you can be in no way responsible and have to rush them through. When you say no next time perhaps she won't come late again.
Good Luck
Lynda
 
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 :)
 
No you do not owe her a discount! I assume she has booked a regular appointment with you this week and you will have enough time to fix her nails and give her the fm she wants. When she walks out the door she will have her "normal" nails back again and she will be happy.

If you feel you need to address the situation, you could say something like "this is what happens when I don't have enough time to do a proper job" or something like that. I am sure she knows fully why her nails are in the mess they are in, and won't ask you to do it again. She caused the problem by being late for her appointment and you tried your best to do the best job you could in the time allotted.

Next time, you'll know what to say ;)

Laura
 
Thank you for all of your advice, i will tell her that i cannot guarantee my work when i am obliged to rush through the job. I do try to be firm with my clients but truthfully lately my clients have been having more lifting than usual and i suspect that my supplier may have sent me a bad batch of replacement lamps. I'm trying to find out where the problem is coming from and with the salon owner breathing down my back about a little lifting, it's not making it any easier. The clients are managing to go for 2-3 weeks between fills but they are used to 4-5 weeks with no problems.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top