Daryl Conner

Good customer service can be defined as consistently meeting or exceeding your customer’s expectations. In the pet grooming industry, we have a little added complication because people are so profoundly attached to their pets they sometimes react on a deeper emotional level if things fall short of what they expect.
Keeping a few basic concepts in mind can help pet grooming professionals to offer the kind of customer service that earns them customer loyalty and referrals. If a customer has a complaint or concern, enlist these concepts to help navigate the situation.

So, there you are, washing a dog as you have a bazillion times before; when the dog zigs, you zag and plop! Shampoo right in the pup's eye. Now what?

If you are a long-time pet professional, you’ve probably mastered this topic. If you are fresh to the industry, you are probably struggling with it.
How do you handle the dog that does not want to cooperate with the grooming procedure?

When marketing your grooming business, there are ways to get the word out without breaking the bank. The first thing to do is focus on “thinking local.” You want to pitch the information about your grooming to a targeted audience. In our industry, your best investment is to focus on potential customers close to where you operate. 

We recently had someone job shadow for a day at our grooming studio. Her take as she beat a hasty retreat? “It’s loud and messy and hard work.” That about sums it up! But most of us wouldn’t want to trade our loud, challenging, messy jobs for anything. So to keep ourselves healthy and able to continue at our jobs, we should all take steps to stay safe as we work. Read on for some suggestions on how to do just that.

As professional groomers, most of us have cut thousands, if not millions, of dog nails throughout our careers. So what are the best tools to get this critical job done?

As pet groomers, we are more familiar with dog poop than we probably wish to be. Getting groomed can make dogs a little anxious, which can cause them to defecate. Sometimes it can be entirely unexpected, like in the middle of a bubbly bath or while being dried. The groomer must swiftly deal with those " oops, " but what about the deposits made while the dog enters or exits the grooming facility?

When a groomer I admire wrote something extolling the virtues of the Andis Deshedding tool, I paid attention and ordered one. Rarely does a work day go by that I am not grateful for that choice. Groomers often joke about wanting or needing a magic wand, and this tool is about as close as it gets.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to brush up on basics. Maybe a fundamental grooming skill that you were never taught or one you were taught but sort of forgot about. Sometimes it is something you know about, but it is so ingrained that you do it without thinking, so you can’t teach someone else about it. In this case, the topic is about letting the force of water and air help you create the look you desire when grooming pets.

We bend, lift and shift. We brush, scissor, detangle, and scrub. We spend much of the day on our feet. There is no arguing the fact that pet grooming is a physically demanding job. Even young, fit pet stylists report feeling aches and pains, and those of us who are older compare notes about our physical ailments at an astonishing pace. But help is available to keep our bodies working at their optimum capacity.