As a beauty professional, you’re going to make mistakes with your clients. It happens. But how you respond to your mistakes is what makes the difference with your business. It’s the difference between losing or keeping a client. Dissatisfied customers will not return 91% of the time. And they’ll likely tell 8-16 others about their experience. If they post it to social media, the whole city may find out.

While your clients may not always be right – they’re never wrong. In the beauty industry, the stakes are high with your clients. Your client is your paycheck. They feed you and your family. They buy your clothes, meals, vacations, cars, homes and more. So when you make a mistake (or the client thinks you have), you’ve got to make it right, and fast. You can’t let your ego get in the way! Mistakes happen.

The mistakes with your clients aren’t what counts, though. It’s how you handle it.

Being in the service industry is like playing a sport. When everything is going well, you’re playing offense. But when you make a mistake, then you’re playing defense. When this happens, we suggest using the following system to make it right with your client. We call it BLAST!

B.L.A.S.T.

B: Believe what the customer is telling you. Don’t argue!
L: Listen, don’t interrupt.
A: Apologize to YOur client.
S: Solve their problem (even if you don’t think it’s a problem).
T: Thank them.

If you ­fix a problem using BLAST, you’ll likely have a customer for life. If you don’t, it’s possible to lose them for life — AND they’ll probably take a few other customers with them. Learn to be customer-obsessed! You never want to lose sight of the cost of losing even one client.

THE CHALLENGE

Start using BLAST with your clients. If you need to, create a cheat sheet so the next time a client calls with a complaint, you’ll have it in front of you as a reminder.

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