The tools and processes you need to deliver exceptional services at every location.

You’ve already built a successful salon business, opening several new locations throughout the city — or even beyond state lines. You want to take it further, but managing a ton of locations (while simultaneously opening new ones) can feel like keeping a dozen plates spinning without letting a single one drop.

Of course, you can’t be everywhere at once. You need to be able to rely on processes and tools that create a consistent, quality client experience at every location. That’s where we can help. Keep reading to learn actionable tips that can help you and your team deliver reliable results and keep clients happy, even while your business continues to grow.

Key takeaways

• Standardise your processes to build a cohesive brand identity across locations. 

• Establish a clear staffing hierarchy so everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.

• Train your trainers to centralize and streamline the delivery of critical information.

• Embrace the cloud with a management platform that makes the client and stylist experience seamless.

• Build client profiles that travel with them across locations.

• Gather client feedback to find out what’s working and what isn’t.

• Audit your progress regularly and adjust accordingly.

You gotta have standards

Consistency is one of the most crucial elements to keeping clients satisfied throughout their relationship with your salons. A classic McKinsey study dug into numerous touchpoints across over a dozen industries and found that delivering consistent high quality across the entire customer journey is more likely to improve customer satisfaction — and your revenue — than simply focusing on improving one aspect of your business. And it all starts with standardized operating procedures.

Think about a service-oriented chain like Starbucks. You can order a tall decaf skim milk latte (light on the foam) and have a nearly-identical experience no matter which location you visit, even down to the taste of the coffee.

It’s the same with multi-location salons and other beauty businesses. You need to provide a consistent level of quality across all of your locations, so an appointment at a location in San Francisco has a similar vibe as one in New York. This approach allows you to establish a cohesive brand identity and create a defined set of expectations for new and current clients, so they know exactly what they’re getting anywhere they go.

You can achieve this level of consistency by standardizing policies and practices and applying them to each location. Write down your client service expectations, the steps for gathering signed agreements, your refund policy — all of the things you need to provide excellent, consistent customer service.

These documents will be the source of truth that each location uses to conduct business, buy tools and supplies, handle payment disputes, and manage all of the other day-to-day tasks your salon needs to do to thrive. Keep them updated, and keep staff informed of changes to ensure clients get a seamless experience at any of your locations.

Who’s the boss?

Do you know who’s in charge at each of your locations? Do your stylists know? Do they know whom to turn to on-site if clients have questions or concerns about their service? Without an established hierarchy, it can be difficult to answer these questions, especially in the middle of a client service issue.

To alleviate these problems, create an org chart that defines the key roles and the reporting structure for each employee group. The actual chart will be tailored to your specific needs, but the structure should have a consistent logic and flow to it.

For example, you could have stylists report to supervisors, supervisors report to salon managers, managers report to regional managers, and regional managers report to the CEO. An org chart isn’t just good to have in principle; you’re building a ready-made flowchart everyone can use to know who to ask about what.

Train your trainers

Your standardized policies should also include unified training programs. This will ensure every stylist, colorist, and receptionist has the same base of information to work with when helping clients.

How do you educate consistently at scale? Train the trainers. Studies have shown that this method has helped resource-strapped healthcare systems transfer knowledge to new nurses, even amidst shortages of senior staff shortages — and it can do the same for your salon.  

Hand-pick a select crew of instructors and run them through your training processes. Teach them how they should teach others to handle the processes that go into keeping your salon running. Then, send them back to their locations to train the rest of the staff with the knowledge that you gave them. 

This training structure allows you to delegate a critical responsibility while ensuring that your high standards are met. Continue to review your training processes and re-skill your employees regularly to keep their knowledge fresh.

Get in the cloud

Even with clear, codified processes, your digital infrastructure can act as a major blocker to delivering that seamless, deluxe experience. Information silos prevent staff from accessing essential client and salon performance data, keeping them from a full view of your entire business. Poor digital systems can also introduce additional friction to the booking and checkout processes, causing potential clients to look elsewhere for a better experience.

Cloud-based client experience platforms with built-in multi-location management tools eliminate this headache. For example, you could build out one location, complete with services and staffing, then use it as a template for new locations that you spin up.

This approach keeps your offerings consistent while allowing you to customize each location with specialized services. When clients go online to book an appointment, they can see availability for all of the locations near them, giving them the freedom to book with the perfect spot without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. Plus, clients who book their first appointment online are nearly 80% more likely to book their second, so make sure your online booking process is smooth and inviting.

These tools can do a lot more to help you manage an entire fleet of salons with ease. You can view scheduling and workloads, stay on top of your inventory, and run financial reports for one or all of your locations, giving you deeper insight into how well each salon is performing. Some client experience platforms even include marketing tools so you can deliver consistent messaging to all of your clients from a centralized place.

Track client info between sessions

Salon appointments should be a highly personalized experience. You need to make each client feel like a rock star — and you need to be able to do it at scale. Client profiles are a big help in achieving that goal.

Start by using your onboarding process to gather information about the client. What styles do they like? What do they hate? What type of service do they prefer? Do they like chatting in the chair, or do they just want to relax? Are they allergic to any products? Use this opportunity to find out as much as you can, then store that data within your client experience platform so the stylist can refer to it once the client comes in for their appointment.

Encourage your stylists to refine the profile and update it after each visit. Your cloud-based platform will keep that data accessible at every location. That way, your staff members can access everything they need, even if the client decides to make an appointment with a different stylist or visit one of your other locations.

Listen to your clients

You won’t know how you’re doing unless you ask. Gathering feedback from clients is one of the best ways to discover your business’s strengths and weaknesses on a location-by-location basis and as a whole.

Start by adding feedback systems into your checkout and marketing processes. A simple one-question “How did we do?” survey that allows the client to rate their visit out of five stars can tell you a lot about the quality of service your locations provide. Over time, you’ll have enough data to know whether you need to investigate further.

Check your Google Business, Yelp, and other social media profiles for reviews, too. Looking at multiple reviews over a set period of time can help you spot performance trends, but don’t forget to thank individuals for good ratings or follow up on complaints. 70% of Yelp users are more likely to leave a review if they see you’re responsive, so being visible on these sites can help you drive organic reach, too.

Audit your progress

Improvement requires self-reflection. Set aside time periodically — whether that’s quarterly, biannually, or once a year — to dig into your reports and find out what’s working and what needs improvement. Data won’t always tell you the full story, so reach out to your teams and get a sense of what’s happening on the ground. With this knowledge in hand, you can start building plans to adjust processes and make refinements to your business by location and overall. 

Maintaining a consistent level of quality across each of your locations is tough work. The best way to make it easier is by choosing the right tools and the right people, then trusting them to give you the information you need to make the right decisions. Once you’ve built up your infrastructure the way you need it, you’ll be ready to keep expanding at your own pace.