Many of my inspirations for Blogs come from reading FaceBook posts. There are endless ‘essays’ on specific situations with clients who have had a problem with their nails. Chipping, discolouring, ‘popping off’, allergy issues etc.
Nail pros come onto social media forums to ask for help in how to deal with a whole variety of issues. So many of the responses involve comments such as “sack her”; “it’s not your fault”; “she just wants a freebie”. (I am using the words she and her as it is rarely a male client that complains).
There are SO many issues here that this is Part 1. The next part will follow in a while.
First, let’s talk about ‘people’ and education.
We are a service industry. We deal with ‘people’. There are lots of lovely people that use nail services. But not every client is a nice person. A fact of life!
If you choose a career that deals with ‘people’ then you just need to get over the fact that not everyone is going to be nice nor honest! If you inhabit a world that can decide who you want to deal with as income and success is not high on your agenda, then you can absolutely ‘sack’ clients! Maybe that is a nice place to be?
But, if you want to grow your business to the point that you are earning a great income and maybe it becomes time to consider expanding or closing your ‘books’, then you need to be confident enough to deal with all types of clients: fabulous, loyal, honest through to ‘tricky’, dishonest, after a ‘freebie’ or just plain argumentative.
So many of the posts I read do not have nearly enough information to make any level of educated opinion and result is responses such as “get rid”, “she’s trouble”. I have to say I find this quite offensive coming from a ‘professional’ industry!
Client/customer care is key!! How would you feel if you had a problem with a brand and needed to be dealt with fairly? Would you be happy to be told it is your fault or be ‘deleted’? (We all know there are plenty of posts on just this subject!) What is the difference?
Then we come to education.
If you are confident in your understanding of your nail services and educate your clients from day 1 then there should be no argument! If you have your own ‘terms & conditions’ and stick to them, there should be no problem. If your pre-booking and consultation is thorough, there should be no problem.
This is just scratching the surface of this problem of difficult clients.
More to come, watch this space…
